Projects

Artist Statement

For my final project, I wanted to do a game about planting trees and solving environmental problems. I grew up in rural New Hampshire, so I always took having a close relationship with nature for granted. Now, living in a city for most of the year, I find myself longing for that connection. With this game, I wanted to bring some of the wonders of nature to people who might not normally enjoy it, hopefully encouraging people to plant trees and help make their city or town more green. Another inspiration for this game is Atuel, a documentary game showcased at IndieCade 2022, which teaches the player about the Atuel River Valley in Argentina. Atuel is filled with stories from locals describing the deep spiritual connection they and their ancestors have with the river. While my game does not include stories such as this, I hope the mechanics and feeling of the world can help the player form a spiritual connection with nature. The name of my game at the moment is “Treedom” but that is subject to change. Treedom is a 2D platformer set in a forested environment. However, in this forest, something is off. The plants and animals are unhappy and some are even angry. The player navigates the world trying to fix these problems. The first enemy (and the only enemy right now, though I plan to continue this project and add more in the future) is an acorn. When they player strikes the acorn with his shovel (clicking mouse 1) the acorn is pushed into the ground and grows into a red tree. This tree is climbable and allows the player to navigate to places they could not have otherwise. Some other enemy/level ideas include a level where you enter a bee hive and have to calm down the hungry bees by collecting honey for them, another type of seed that grows into a tree you can wall jump off of, and a flock of birds you have to lead on their migration.  I am also in the process of outlining a story for the game that helps tie these events, ideas, and levels together to hopefully have my player go out and develop a relationship with nature.

Playtest 1

Notes from the first playtest

• Finalize models
• Jumping wasn’t working quite right
• The level needs more work to feel interesting
• The background feels really empty

Build of Game At First Playtest

(see class folder)

Current Build of the Game

Below is a quick clip of some gameplay from the current build which you can download below.

Download

(see class folder)

Tilesets/Art Used

https://anokolisa.itch.io/high-forest-assets-pack

https://pixelfrog-assets.itch.io/kings-and-pigs

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/pocketants/images/6/6b/Acorn_image.png/revision/latest?cb=20220915181253

For my activist game, I want to explore the life of another person. 

The activist game starts with a person documenting their day; they capture themselves with pictures and videos. They share the information online to a maximum of 10 people and pose the question: how am I feeling at each given moment? Each participant has to provide responses  of what they think the pictures and videos convey. Each participant is now eligible to participate in the game by posting pictures and videos themselves creating a chain reaction. A day in the life starts with a person that shares their most revealing and vulnerable experiences that allows everyone to learn and grow from each other. One of my inspirations for this game comes from talk show host Carson Daley who shared a picture of himself during a live television show when he was experiencing a panic attack while everyone thought he was having the time of his life.

My game illustrates the artwork of  Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh who tied a rope around each other and did every move together. This artwork was particularly inspiring to me because of how they stayed connected for over a year. They say, “They take out the dog, they  run, they have tea, watch a lot of TV, spend hours at the work tables sitting back to back. For pleasure, they watched  movies and rode their bikes around, one following behind the other (4).” Through thick and thin, this connectedness was therapeutic, but at the same time caused a rift between the participants. I’m not insinuating that there has to be a conflict between the posts, I just want it to be open to all emotions and themes. Linda and Tehching togetherness still created a bond with each other by sharing their lives. I want my game to capture this same meaning and experience.

Another example is Burden’s “ Five Day Locker” piece where he curled up in a two-by-two-by-three-foot locker which he endured for five consecutive days. The text, On Edge, quotes, “… to his surprise, people he didn’t even know came unbidden to sit in front of the locker, to tell him their problems and the stories of their lives. … Certainly, those who came were projecting something onto him. And Burden’s been extremely conscious of audience behavior ever since (Carr 18).” Burden’s artwork shows that everyone has a story to tell even though the person may not look like they do. I want to invoke the same emotion by making the viewers question and critique others’ lives and how it relates to themselves.

Requirements:

1.Maps app (Google or Apple Maps)

2.Money to buy food

3.Discord

Rules:

1.A player selects a location nearby to get food for, the player must not buy a drink

2.All players enter the food they bought into the discord on server

3/One of the other players enters a drink that they would like to combine with the food on the discord server

4.The player must then try and find said drink, buy it and enjoy their meal with it

5.Pictures of the full meal are then posted on a separate channel on the server for full meals

6.Players then share their reviews of the meal combo on that channel

Artist Statement:

  One of my main inspirations for this piece was the game Uncle Roy All Around You. The premise of Uncle Roy All Around you is that the city in which the player is in serves as the arena in which the game takes place. They are then instructed online to complete a number of tasks to help find Uncle Roy. This puts forward the question “Would you be there for a stranger in need?”, to which most players would answer “Yes”. Although I drew inspiration from this game, I decided to go for a generally lower stakes premise which is allowing your meal to be completed by a stranger. In my game, players allow other players to select the beverage to be drunk together with their meal. In response to the question asked of the players in Uncle Roy All Around You, “Would you let a stranger select the beverage for your next meal”. The answers to this question were less straightforward with players in my playtests asking to what extent is the other player a “stranger” etc. Although I chose food and beverage  to lower the stakes, it creates a paradox in the sense that  lending help in some cases is something people are more willing to do for strangers than allowing to choose what they consume, because of course you wouldn’t eat a random meal or drink a random glass of unknown liquid lying in the subway simply because it could contain all manner of harmful substances. To this end I created the balance between reducing the high pressure environment of a seemingly life and death situation to a more lighthearted one which still bore some weight.

  Another source of inspiration for this game is the plethora of online arcade cooking games in which players are meant to put together different meals when given multiple ingredients and are then scored based on the coherence between the meal they made and the standards that were being requested in the game. However, I took out the scoring aspect as a objective element whereas if certain ingredients or combos don’t match in particular meals then a certain number is given as a score and rather opted for the more subjective route where players write their own reviews based on how they feel after they tasted the meal.

As you can see, all sorts of interesting combinations arise from the game, with some players aiming more for humor while others are genuinely suggesting a combination that they like. Either way, it is great fun and everyone is a winner.

In the introduction to Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris, one of the lines reads: “The word Dada itself provides an overarching moniker for the raucous activities of its participants.” For my artwork, I want to call out the double edged sword that is alcohol. 

Alcohol is a substance you can easily find in any household; it is a substance that is used recreationally as a party or social drug but it also has its dark side which is abused by people for its sedating effect. Returning to the quote in the introduction, I want to create an artwork that uses alcohol on its participants to create a “raucous activity”. I want to appropriate the game “Never Have I Ever” as the basis for my artwork. How you play the game is people go around in a circle and say “Never Have I Ever”  with a specific activity and whoever has done it has to put a finger down. Whoever puts a finger down has to take a shot of whatever alcohol they have found in their area. I want the game to follow Macchab’s stance which states, ”tenacious yet mocking presence wants to transform tragic memory into skeptical consciousness, refusing therapeutic mourning by being seditious. As a whole, the leitmotiv of Der Ventilator is productive anxiety, indulging in the play between apparitions and realities, mockery and gravity, and feeding a culture of instability that forecasts Dada’s tactics of provocation in Cologne (220).” I want the game to take a dark turn by revealing something personal for each person, turning the game “raunchy” in nature. Alcohol “refuses therapeutic mourning” and “feeds a culture of instability”. Alcohol is a powerful substance that can bring out the emotion in people and makes the game like “Never Have I Ever” transparent in a sense. 

I feel my artwork is in line with the Paris Dada movement. According to the Dada text, “The cumulative effect of this first “Dada season,” as it became known, was to mark the movement as a nihilistic collective force leveled at the noblest ideals of advanced society. According to critical consensus, Dada represented youthful provocation, an adolescent destructiveness that (for those favorably inclined) should clear the way for a new intellectual engagement with art and the world at large (349).”  Alcohol use can be looked at as a disorder which is a form of self-destructive behavior. The point of my artwork is to expose the dark deep truths of our lives and to invite the somewhat “nihilistic” way of thinking similar to the Paris Dada Movement. I want the users to engage with the game with a different perspective and leave the game learning something not just about themselves but also other people.

Score

1. Attend a class presentation
2. Actively listen to the presenter
3. Once presentation is finished, stand up and give a round of applause and verbally compliment the presenter
4. Sit back down as if nothing happened
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for each presentation 

Artist Statement 

Our intervention, Standing Ovation, was heavily inspired by Uncle Roy All Around You which served as a commentary on our willingness to help out strangers. The essential question “Would you be there for a stranger in need?” was asked to Uncle Roy participants and if they answered yes, then a couple of weeks later they would then have to help out a stranger in need. This idea of encouraging people to support those they are not close to inspired us to think about environments where we are surrounded by strangers/acquaintances. Almost instantly, we brought up our classes and how we feel removed from the lives of classmates that we sit next to. When you’re simply listening to a lecture that feeling is irrelevant but once you have to present, the lack of a comforting face can sway your confidence. It feels like no one is actively listening to you speak since you’re not friends with them, so our main goal was to stage an intervention that revolves around changing this common feeling. Presenting isn’t something everyone is comfortable doing, so when your audience shows that they are listening to you and clap at the end can be reassuring and encouraging for future presentations. 

We were also inspired by Eric Andre’s and Impractical Joker’s ‘interventions’ in society and how they influence the bystanders around them. We wanted to explore how our intervention, standing ovation, would affect our fellow classmates. Specifically, mob mentality, which is the inclination that in certain large group situations, humans often neglect their own individual feelings and in the process adopt the behaviors and actions of the people around them. As this iteration of Standing Ovation was performed by two individuals, the likelihood of this mob mentality taking place significantly increased. At the end of Max’s presentation, we acted on the game rules and gave a standing ovation. We observed a massive increase in class applause/engagement than in prior presentations where the standing ovation did not take place. Funny enough, when the ‘late-comers’ entered the classroom soon after, the entire class ended up giving them a standing ovation. In future iterations of the game, we plan to explore individual scenarios where only one player is aware of the game rules.

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IMG_5429 2

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Intervention Artwork:

Create an educated guess/hypothesis as to where your cat would spend its time in your domicile with you in its environment

Repeat step one but for when you are not in your home

Track and record the location of your cat over some decided amount of time with you in your home

Repeat step three but without you in its environment

Create visual representations of the collected data (I prefer a heatmap for visual aid)

Compare your findings to your hypotheses

By Sophie Uldry

Artist’s Statement:

I’ve always wondered what indoor cats do when you remove human stimulation, and this artwork offered me the perfect opportunity to finally uncover the truth behind what my cat does “behind closed doors.” I’ve created a piece which displays how my own interactions with my cat will influence it’s decisions, in almost a scientific way. This piece was (once again) inspired by my cats and my incessant love for them, but also my understanding of how cats adapt their behavior for humans specifically. For example, cats are not known to meow at each other, if anything this is a behavior which only appears between mother and kitten, but not among full-grown cats. I want to know more about my cats behaviors, and especially understand the variations between their behavior around me versus alone. Thus “HeatCat Tracker” came to life, with the goal to learn about my cat’s behavior differences! I created hypotheses for where my cats would prefer spending their time and made diagrams to better visualize my assumptions, then I recorded and tracked their actual locations both with me around and without me in the apartment. Initially, I tried using a cat GPS tracker for accurate readings on my cats location without me in the apartment, however this proved unsuccessful since GPS is accurate outdoors, not indoors. My cats are entirely indoor cats, so I had to swap to a more DIY approach. I literally recorded (with a motion detecting video camera that works in the dark) my cat over the course of a few days with and without me around. chose a few time intervals to work with, and used this information to create a more accurate (not most accurate) reading of my cat’s location throughout the apartment.

HeatCat tracker took inspiration from a number of works discussed and shown in lectures. The idea of using tracking or location as a main feature of my artwork was perhaps unexpectedly from a game which also attempts to track players throughout their adventure: Uncle Roy All Around You. Though my game is set strictly within my domicile and only involved my cat, the idea of using location in general as the main data point used in this artwork came from Uncle Roy. I was also inspired by discussions of other animal interventions such as the store alarm cockroaches which used roaches dressed in capes containing material that set off store alarms to, well, set off store alarms. This artwork is also fitting of the Fluxus movement’s focus on chance and randomness, as my heatmap outcome will change every time I record new information of my cats location, and once again leaves the outcome in control of a cat, rather than the person creating the heatmap. I’ve included images depicting my process below, including the failed attempt at using the GPS tracker.

My hypothesis of my cat’s location with me active in the apartment.

My hypothesis for where my cat would be without me in the apartment

observed location of cats with humans in the apartment. (similar activity to without, but more concentrated around the two bedrooms)

observed location of cats without humans in the apartment. (mostly sleeping within eyeshot of the apartment entrances).

The entirely inaccurate data collected by a GPS (shows cats outside of apartment, which is impossible for strictly indoor cats)