Experimental Game Design

Artwork #1: Score

Josh Gersh Score

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

When I initially pitched my score in class, something felt wrong. It didn’t feel like it reflected what I wanted my projects for this class to be, and I felt empty repeating the score that I had created with the only inspiration being that I like dice. As I paced around in my apartment after class, I remembered part of Diary of a Wimpy Kid that resembled a score. A teacher tasked the class with designing a robot, specifically what functions a robot should perform. The first thing that the class thought of was words that the robot shouldn’t be allowed to say. And as they got caught up in writing down a list of swears words the robot wouldn’t say, eventually class ended, and all they had to show for their work was a list of swear words. While I quickly realized that I shouldn’t replicate that exactly, I liked the general idea. I then remembered a bit from the podcast Chapo Trap House where one host jokes about shooting a movie trailer designed to be really popular at the time, but once people buy tickets and watch the movie in the theater it’s just him saying “I lied, there’s no movie, but hear me out and why I should have the money to buy a samurai sword”. I decided that something like that was more appropriate for class as a fun final iteration of my score.

With the assurances in class that happenings count as art, and that as long as you do the readings and turn in something based on them you can get a good grade, I went to work on constructing my actual score. I wanted to work in the question of whether or not I cared about my grade into the art, such as using it to create an expectation that I did make a video of my score being done only to tear that down by having it be the rickroll video and hastily writing up a score after my presentation as a last ditch attempt to save face but then showing that that was part of my actual score which had been written before class.

If my commitment to this class and my grade in it remains unclear let me clarify. I did not read or make any attempt to acquire Grapefruit by Yoko Ono until the day before the playable iteration of the score was due in class. When I did look through it, I only planned to try to use it to relate my dice score to the room piece during my presentation, which I didn’t end up doing anyway. However, I did follow Yoko Ono on twitter well before this. I’m not saying that my piece was some revolutionary art independent piece independent from these past movements. On the contrary, I think it reflects that same spirit. Despite my procrastination of Grapefruit, I did do the other readings, and similar to the music created using modified or broken instruments, my presentation was the result of a modified and broken score. The meta-score of “Perform a happening consisting of lies, deception and trickery. Write a score documenting the process after the fact” served as a mechanism to modify and break my original score, which resulted in the drawing and video I presented in class.

Attached below is the link to the presentation I showed in class, the score I hastily wrote up after, and the score I wrote up before showing that it was planned the whole time.

Presentation

Actual Score

Actual Actual Score

Proof I followed Yoko Ono on Twitter

Addendum: I saw the “Let’s Try This Again” email and I kinda sent some mixed messages pertaining to doing the readings so I’d like to add a new point. I remember in class the patch to the nude raider patch that added the Duchamp goatee to the naked Lara Croft model was mentioned, and although I didn’t say it at the time, I remember that patch was also mentioned in the Games As Art reading we were assigned that was written by none other than our great professor Celia Pearce. Furthermore, I am channeling the spirit of that patch right now. This addendum is the patch to a patch goatee added onto my dumb score project, which I have argued above is already a modification to the idea of scores themselves. The only difference is that my original project did not objectify or sexualize women. If this difference is enough to refute my claim that my work pertains to the art, readings, and themes of the class, then that is a sacrifice I probably should make rather than try to argue that my original project objectifies and sexualizes women.

Addendum Documentation:

YurenChen(Vincent)Score

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

 

(Media/documentation will be added later on as the process is not complete)

Score:

Purchase a 7 pound cut of Ribeye
Wrap it in dry-aging wrap, and place it in the fridge for 3 weeks
Observe it.
Feel it harden.
Smell it.
3 weeks later,
Cut the dry-aged ribeye into 4 2-inch steaks,
Watch a video on how to cook steak.
Cook the steak to medium rare.
Enjoy the steak, perhaps with some Bordeaux, and maybe some asparagus on the side.
Share the remaining steak with friends and family.

Artist Statement:

As I pondered upon the similarities and relationship between a recipe and a score, such as how a score that is also a recipe can be more than just a recipe, and what the score is capable of offering beyond the context of just preparing food from the recipe, I came up with this score. Dry-aged steak is one of my favorite foods, and I hope whoever attempts this score will enjoy it as much as I do. While I did consider turning my recipe/score into something bizarre, I budged to my foodie self and decided to please my tongue instead. After all, I set my recipe/score to be one that should bring happiness and pleasure.

I think the concept of creating a score that includes a recipe is somewhat parallel to the Fluxus musical scores of John Cage and David Tudor. The musical scores were also taking an existing form of instructions(music), but adding onto it to create avant-garde art. Like the freedom the Fluxus musical scores often gave to their performers and participants, I think my score of a partial recipe gives the participant a lot of choice such as how to prepare the steak, whom to share it with, with only a few specifications that I personally deemed necessary.

I think the ultimate aim of my score is sharing: me sharing a recipe with whoever comes across this score, and them sharing it with the people they love and care about.

Nickerson’s Score: Release

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

“

Imagine a creation, it does not have to be much, but it must be yours…

Now set to work

Build the spawn of your imagination piece by piece

Little by little witness the result of your focus come to life

Finish

Bask in the work’s glory

Realize that it is temporary

And destroy it

When finished, destroy this Score…”

This idea is stemmed from mainly 2 things. I wanted a score that was in itself, enjoyable to complete. It’s an experimental game design class after all, and games are meant to be fun. I wanted the first 5 steps of the score to make the participant connect to their creation. The final part of the score, is inspired by the Matchbook score meant to destroy art. Just burning any old art is one thing, but destroying your own art is a whole different thing. Now, the score here took the form of a goofy Picture + Video, but that’s just because that was the limit of my skillset. I’d find it more interesting if a person was to spend an even longer time on a piece, maybe music, maybe animation. I would love to see someone fall in love with their work, and then brush it aside like it was nothing. Almost like the sand mandalas that Buddhist monks make:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBrYUlOYK0U&ab_channel=WellcomeCollection

Everyday Music Artwork

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

My music piece:

Score Instructions:

  1. Make music with everyday objects or events
  2. Record them
  3. Put them all together at the end of the day
  4. Listen to your day

Conclusion after a few trials:

When I first thought of my score, I believed I would be able to create a somewhat musical sounding piece using random objects or noises. Inspired by John Cage and his avant garde style of music, the idea was to be able to listen to how your day went or what you did. Instead it turned into a jumbled mess of random noises that are rather painful to listen to. Although the piece resulted in a jumbled mess, this jumbled mess somehow perfectly encapsulated a rather mundane day. From a relatively boring task like washing dishes, to my alarm clock blaring, this recording captures parts of my day that otherwise would’ve been easily forgotten if not for this art piece. I will continue to document more of these scores in the next few days so that I can compare my new scores to this iteration (they will also most likely end up as a jumbled mess).

“Instruments” in my recording:

  1. Typing on my keyboard
  2. Washing dishes
  3. Tapping pencil on my notebook
  4. Opening and closing fridge
  5. Alarm clock
  6. Coins spinning
  7. Roommate beatboxing
  8. Eggs on skillet

Yiheng He (Henry) Infinite Refraction

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Score Final Iteration: “Infinite Refraction”

Score:

One object, a transparent bottle with water, a camera

Take the picture of the object and put it into the water.

Observe what changes through refraction.

Try to make a new object look like the refracted one.

Put it into the water again and repeat the steps.

Take pictures for everything you made.

See what changes from the beginning to the end.

Art Statement:

The refraction through the water is kinds of interesting experience. When I was small, I try to look at this world through a bottle of water so that I got a totally different scene. Water is one thing that has magic. When I put the spoon into the water, it seems to be bigger. Additionally, when I move the spoon to the front and back, it changes with the distance to me in the water. I took a group of pictures for this.

At this time, I watched the video from Zach King, a You tuber who focus on the visual magic. In the newest video, he makes water magic which is to create visual error by water. There’s a part that he put a pencil into the water, it looks like the pencil is bended by the refraction. However, when he takes out the pencil from the water, it was really bended. By the video, I think that I can record one thing get refracted again and again and start my preparation.

For my preparation, I firstly start to find a transparent bottle. A normal plastic bottle without any patterns is easier to observe. Then, I need an object that can be easy to transformed or make a new one after refracted. I tried to put my wire into the bottle but there’s no big change. At last, I choose to us the wire to create a shape and observe its refraction. It’s really hard to use normal objects like spoon to play since I cannot make its form after refracted. That’s why I choose the wire.

The central idea of this score is that — when people pass the information to each other, something in detail will be changed since the information is conveyed through people’s memory. Thus, after some times of information get conveyed, it’s different to what it was before. My score is to stimulation this progress and compare the final object to the original one. For example, in the pictures I uploaded, the wire is much fatter than the origin one. In our real life, especially when we try to tell our friends something happens, this thing is “refracted” again and again. At last, it becomes a Rumor which is totally different than before.

It’s my first time combine the homework to the word “experimental”. I did many steps to achieve these pictures especially the choice of objects. I enjoyed the progress of doing experiments!

 

P.S. I’m trying to make a video like that through this method.

Here’s the final one I made:

The action is inspired from Ono’s Grapefruit, “Painting to Hammer a Nail”, about doing one thing again and again everyday in the morning. From my point of view, the water refraction is transitory and changing ever time when you change the angle of observing. Thus, I choose not to do it everyday but repeat in one time until I can’t. I really love how Ono shows her final piece out but I only have the pictures and videos — water refraction is a fleet thing. So I try to edit a video at the end of my works.

TunePiece Score – (Joey)

by | Oct 6, 2021 | ,

Pick up an old instrument

Choose a piece

Play the piece

Ask someone to twist and turn the knobs

Play the same piece

Tune the instrument.

 

Artist Statement

I came up with this idea while reading Yoko Ono’s book, Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings and listening to pieces made by John Cage, most notably, his love for tinkering with instruments, such as the piano, with screws and coins. What catapulted me to make the decision of tuning the instrument at the last line of the piece was reading Keyboard Piece where the artist typed on their keyboard and then opened the computer. Their work’s meaning is different from what my meaning will be, but I felt that the processes was essentially the same. My intention behind my piece is to break the daily routines of musicians where whenever they pick up their instrument or begin to play their instrument, they would usually always have to check if they are in tune. If they are not in tune, they can still play a piece correctly but rather, they would play the piece differently. However, I truly wanted the performers to play the piece the same way but experience the unique notes that may come about with an out of tune instrument. This leads me to many questions that I wish my piece can ask towards the audience members. Would their play still be the same piece but just out of tune? Or would a newly created piece be created where the rhythm is the same but now the piece probably doesn’t have a melody or maybe it does? I wanted to create an exploratory form of expression through playing instruments that every time TunePiece is performed, the piece would be uniquely different each time. Especially on the violin where there are four different strings that all have different pitches to tune, if they are not in the regular intervals of each other, the piece that is being played would always sound different. Furthermore, just like Yoko Ono’s participatory art, I wanted the audience to be somewhat involved with the music making process. When I ask others to “tune” the instrument, I basically ask them to completely change the entire piece even though the song on the music sheet is still exactly the same. This way of modifying an instrument is inspired from John Cage’s performances but in different and much safer way. However, the eccentric music that is produced is exactly the same. My score can be repeated every single time with new combinations of notes and with new people “tuning” the instrument, implying a smaller message that everyone can compose art that is uniquely different but also allowing musicians to explore more freely the musicality of the pieces they are playing.

Documentation:

TunePiece

Jackson Faletra Score: Good Luck, Have Fun

by | Oct 6, 2021 |

Don’t forget the most important rule: Make sure to have fun!

Play that new game you just got for hours at a time

Spend time with friends and family

What? Do your chores? Go to the gym? But that’s not fun. Why do something if it isn’t fun?

Put on an endless stream of online content to sort of watch

Pick up a new hobby for, like, a week or two

Start your homework? Send an email? You’re joking, right? Just do it later I guess.

Stress about all of the boring, important things you need to get done

Struggle to catch up on all of those things far past their deadlines

These ones must be fun because you’re going out of your way to make them happen

Do it again

 

This piece was partially inspired by some of the works we discussed in class, such as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, where the art itself is somewhat dangerous to the artist. While not exactly “dangerous”, performing my piece would definitely be harmful for the artist. It was for this reason primarily that I didn’t explicitly carry out this score. However, I obviously drew pretty heavily from some of my own firsthand experiences, so I do have a bit of a sense of what doing it deliberately would be like. I was diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago, and I wanted to use this score to sort of show in a more understandable way the kinds of things that causes me to do when I let it get out of hand, as well as explore the idea of what giving in and taking it to the extreme would look like.

This also plays into the other main theme I wanted to explore, which was taking everyday things or lifestyles and turning them into art to give a new perspective. When taken at face value, this just seems like a set of unhealthy habits. However, I think looking at it through this lens shows it in a bit of a different light and allows possibly for a better understanding of the subject. Like I had mentioned before, this score was never really intended as something that should actually be performed, but more as a different way to think about some of my experiences for both myself and others to learn from.

Justin Brady Score: Dream Paper

by | Dec 10, 2019 |

For my score, I was loosely inspired by Yoko Ono’s Painting by Hammer and Nail, wherein the executor of the score repeats an action every day in the morning. It reminded me of a routine I sometimes do in the morning of writing down my dreams in a dream journal. I also realized how I never really do anything with my dreams after I have them and write them down, and wanted to change that. So I wrote my Dream Paper Score, as follows:

Dream Paper

Go to sleep.

Dream about something

Type your dream in a dream journal.

Pick a font size/style that will fill the page completely.

Print out the dream on cardstock.

Repeat the process every day, printing on the same piece of paper.

Use a different color every time.

You’re done when there is no white space remaining.

Artist Statement: The main purpose of this assignment was to attempt to give a sort of form to the messy mixing of memories and dreams over time. What starts as a relatively clear memory is obscured by other, newer, equally clear memories (at the time), until they all obfuscate and mesh together into a mostly incomprehensible mess. An interesting occurrence of this particular work was that there were still lines from individual dreams that could be clearly made out in the finished piece, most notably “and a flip phone.” at the bottom.  It kind of showed me how even though i originally thought that everything would be lost, there are still particular facets of each individual part that compromise the whole which are unique and visible in the final product, just like memories in an aged brain.

Here is the final piece, which I have pompously titled “and a flip phone.”

Ball Painting Score

by | Oct 7, 2019 | ,

Take multiple Tennis balls and different color paint cans, put the canvas in the middle of the room. Give the artists multiple gloves to be able to pick up and roll the ball across the canvas of different colors.  If everyone is alright they may bounce the ball to each other assuming they dont mind getting paint on themselves. The idea originally came around when my friend and personal trainer Kevin Brewerton showed me a video of him doing art with his boxing gloves and punching the canvas with paint on his gloves.  I wanted to take a step further and try throwing a baseball or hitting a baseball against the paint however many things can go wrong so quickly with that. Baseballs can deflect and hit someone, not enough space to protect the whole area from getting splashed. I then thought about doing something similar with throwing a tennis ball between two people against the wall but there’s still the potential of breaking the canvas and also dealing with covering up as much ground so we won’t get paint everywhere.  

What is needed for the happening:

  • Tennis Balls (six for this Happening)
  • Tempura Paint (Blue, Orange, Red, Green)
  • Paper plates to hold the paints
  • Disposable Gloves to help handle the tennis balls
  • A giant Tarp to paint on and also prevent the ground or room to be painted on
  • MISSING: (19in x 24in Paper as the canvas)
    • Tarp became the new Canvas

The results of the Happening: Lack of preparation for the Happening resulted in many changes to the final presentation. Didn’t have a place to prepare for the project nor could I get the tarp that I wanted to stay on the wall. The solution to this was to lay the tarp on the ground and instead bounce the tennis balls covered in paint.  The results are shown here:

The tennis balls ended up soaking up the paint and not splashing as much as I wished there would be. I had fun with the idea and it would be a lot of fun to potentially take this idea and reserve a room, get a ball that will splash more, and have the liberty of chucking the balls at full force without worrying about damages.  I find this can be a fun way to relieve stress by doing physical while also making art through your own physical actions.

SCORE Final iteration: “To Eat an Apple”

by | Oct 7, 2019 |

To Eat an Apple

Pick an apple from a tree. Choose it carefully to ensure the best quality of taste.

Eat the apple until only the core remains.

Find an empty patch of soil and plant the core of the apple; ensure that there are seeds in the core, not just an empty shell.

Water the soil every day; fertilize it frequently.

Continue nourishing the soil until a sapling sprouts from the ground and grows a couple inches tall.

Find the best books, textbooks, and paintings you can.

Throw them at the sapling.

Leave the sapling in the pile.

Continue to water the earth, even if you can’t see the plant.

(a) Wait until a tree grows upon the books.

Once it reaches a couple of feet tall, take a picture of the tree and frame it.

(b) If the tree does not grow, repeat again, but with an orange.

2019 Fall

Artist’s statement:

“To Eat an Apple” was inspired by a children’s science experiment known as the “Potato Maze” and the scores in Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. The “Potato Maze” is a science experiment I did in 7th grade, in which a potato is placed at the bottom of a maze-like shoe box with a hole at the top. The goal was for the potato to grow a stem around the obstacles to ultimately poke through the hole and reach sunlight. In addition, I loved the absurd and destructive nature of Yoko Ono’s works, which I wanted to embody in a way that involved college. This semester, as a freshman, I’ve had to adapt to the new college lifestyle. These ideas culminated in “To Eat an Apple”, a score in which you symbolically take the role of a parent, trying to raise an educated child. The apple is heavily tied with the concept of knowledge as the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the “Fall of Man” is often depicted as an apple. In addition, an apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head is the common explanation for the beginning of his research on gravity. The work all together is intended to recreate the feeling of parenthood and entering a child into the college process. In the start, eating the apple is analogous to having sex, as the activity itself satisfies a base desire and (after planting the core) results in new life. Afterwards, the played needs to care for the soil by fertilizing and watering it. Once it sprouts from the ground and becomes large enough, the player throws textbooks and other works at the plant, in order to simulate the schooling process, which can be overwhelming yet ultimately beneficial. As the player continues to water and fertilize the soil laden with books, it becomes difficult to observe the plant itself, so the player must provide distant support. Ultimately the sapling must navigate through the pile of books and grow on its own with the resources given (now transformed into a sort of fertilizer). In the end, if it succeeds, you celebrate with a picture (kind of like at a graduation), but if it doesn’t, you move on and attempt again with a different fruit, an orange, symbolizing that the traditional education route may fail one child, but it may succeed for another (apples to oranges).  As discussed in class, the gameplay of this score are intended to convey a meaning, rather than the story itself, as the player unwittingly takes up the role of a parent.

Documentation:

(For some reason WordPress won’t let me upload photos, so I uploaded them to the google album linked below, and you can view them from there)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/84w2poA1bguPA7nM8

Photo 1: The apple I’m using to do the score, picked fresh from the Dining Hall.

Photo 2: Me, biting into the apple, it was really juicy. Not pictured: Me eating the rest of the apple.

Photo 3: Me, holding up the completely finished apple core to show that the deed had been done, I had consumed the apple, leaving behind only the core.

Photo 4: A picture of the seeds contained inside the core of the decimated apple.

Photo 5: The core in a hole in the soil, being prepared to be buried. (I did this somewhere in Fenway in some soft soil).

Photo 6: The core completely buried now, with soil and wood chips pushed over it.

Photo 7: Me, watering the spot in the soil with the apple core.

That was as far as I could go as the plant didn’t grow yet.