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Uncomfortable Piece

1. Go Outside
2. Start a conversation with a complete stranger
3. Your only form of communication is using your phone
4. Share your results

Artist’s Statement

Nowadays everyone uses some form of digital media. The first thing that comes to my mind is the cell phone. With all the social capabilities digital media offers, you can talk/videochat/play with your friends and family, or even complete strangers across the world with the push of a button(or a tap on a screen). However, overtime, it has become more and more apparent how attached people have become to their phones. You walk down the street, and you’ll see the majority of people talking on them, or aggressively tapping away texting/posting. This personally annoys me when I see people glued to the screens, since it feels like they are becoming further detached from reality.  So I thought of an activity that would hopefully help try and remedy this problem.

I got inspiration for this score, from reading Yoko Ono’s ‘Grapefruit’-Clockwork Piece, the chess video shown to the class, the happening which took place 2 weeks ago outside of Ryder Hall, and of course my previously stated dislike towards people’s obsession with social media. Firstly, Yoko Ono’s Clockwork Piece deeply resonated within me, since I had recently spoke with my relatives from India whom I hadn’t seen in 7 years. It made me realize just how fast time flies, and how much changes. Then, my professor, Celia Pearce, showed us a video of chess with a twist. The two men playing, were playing on a chessboard resting on a man’s back. This made me think of working with everyday, common activities. I also wanted to add a spin to it, making something unique. Another experience which aided me in thinking of this score was the happening in which I took part of. When we went outside, there was a fairly large volunteer fair registration going on in the quad. On top of that, many students were walking to class. I didn’t think much of it at first, until we set up our happening next to the registration tables. This made me uncomfortable, since we tied saran wrap between two trees(representing a net), and half of us were wearing blindfolds. I ended up standing behind my blindfolded classmates, tossing a peanut foam filled ball over the “net” to my other classmates holding magnifying glasses, cardboard, or some object made into a bat. The activity was very enjoyable towards the end, where I started to understand why it was a happening. The uncomfortable moments, I recalled, helped me in realizing how I wanted to shape my score.

I thought of talking to strangers outside, since I have recently been speaking to many residents in Chinatown, where I work. I know some Mandarin, so I try to start conversations with many of the residents there. The strangers were very friendly and helpful in teaching me new words. I then thought of cell phones, because whenever I’m on campus walking to or from class, it seems as if 2 out of 3 students are fiddling with their phones in some way. So, I thought of creating a score where one has to engage someone, whom they do not know, in a conversation with their phone. My aim is to have this experience to be extremely uncomfortable for the player.

Documentation

Breakfast Orchestra

1. Get a breakfast meal in front of you.
2. Preferably at least 1 solid food and 1 drink
3. Each item is a musical instrument
4. Each bite, each drink and each sound is a note in a grand symphony
5. Imagine that you are playing said symphony as you eat
6. If you wish, try to make actual music with the food
7. Share the results with the world.

Artist’s Statement

“If music be the food of love, play on.” -William Shakespeare

Music truly is everywhere, though we may not always notice it during the hustle of the day. This score gives the user the ability to notice music in the most unlikely of places, and forces them to think outside the mainstream idea of what defines an instrument, or even a symphony. Something I like to do whenever I’m standing around doing nothing by myself is play some songs I’ve listened to in my head. Sometimes when I do this I start to mimic the rhythm of certain instrumental parts on stuff I find around me: pencils, the walls, the floor, the zipper on my bag, a desk, etc. I find it to be pretty therapeutic, and it also allows me to branch off into my own original rhythms when I find good enough inspiration. Music allows you to escape into an ideal world of their favorite genre, so why shouldn’t you be able to experience that in the day to day grind? All it requires is the proper mindset and concentration, and if you are more of a physical actor than a visualizer, then you can tap or whistle or perform whatever other actions necessary to fully immerse yourself.

The inspiration behind this score came from some of the works from Yoko Ono and John Cage. Specifically in Ono’s Grapefruit, I noticed a lot of “musical” score that were organized like an orchestral piece as well as a lot of scores that required the user to visualize something. I was particularly fascinated by these types of scores, and being a fan of various music genres, I wondered if there was a way I could combine these scores with a twist. Then I thought of Cage’s more avant garde musical pieces that used atypical instruments while I was eating breakfast, and I realized the potential of food as music. I wanted to make sure that this score was more about the experience than the final result, because not all people have Julliard levels of musical talent, so I emphasized visualizing the piece without mentioning how good it should sound or what constraints there would be. That would only cause stress for the user, and this score is meant primarily to relax the mind.

As its current iteration stands, this is a solo effort, as each person will statistically imagine a different musical piece from the rest. This can come as an advantage, as it means the user is free to express how they interpret the imagined music without the stress of dealing with conflicting interpretations. There is no conductor commanding your moves, there are no arguing band mates at every measure, there is just your music and you. This lack of right and wrong should be the greatest appeal of this score, and as it gathers participants, it can strengthen their creative abilities and have them continue thinking of the music in day-to-day life. Perhaps then, will they will discover a newfound love for music that I and so many others before me have longed to share with the world.

Documentation

Personal:

3rd Party:

RPG Coping

The game turned out quite different from the first iteration, though the overall premise of the game is the same. This game is a kind of metaphorical interpretation of snippets of my life during which my dad had cancer, and unfortunately  passed away from it. It is a mix of the literal and metaphorical that I think makes the game work as a sort of autobiographical experience. The game itself is personal and in a way the setting and the game itself are just part of a stage for a story that has already played out.

The changes that occurred after some play testing and exploration is the loss of a 4 act piece, and instead the creation of a more flowing story that just highlights certain life events. There are also almost no aspects of modern times, instead of the proposed half the game being modern, mainly because it detracts from the metaphorical parts of the story. The one  modern part that is included highlights the feelings that occurred in real life, and then the game transitions back into fantasy. The story also changed from being so literal to being more about exploration and just figuring out the story as the player goes along.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9Z4EFytsZG7UkppVlNodWJTZ00

The link above has a video of a playthrough of the game, as well as the executable file that can be played if you have RPG Maker VX Ace.

This is an image of the game being played in class, thanks to Texas Ranger(Walker) for taking the picture.

One of the most important parts of this game is that it really isn’t a game. It’s the shell of one. As I said earlier, it’s just a stage for a story, a play in a sense, for something that already happened. It’s an experience in a sense that when people play through it, they get to experience a part of my life, without actually living through it. I chose an RPG setting because, if I could, that’s how I would want to live my life, through a fantasy, quest driven game. The way I structured this game, it metaphorically emulates what I was going through. When I found out my dad had cancer, I just wanted to run, to be able to out run the problem. But no matter where I went, it’s all I thought about. This is represented by the slimes in the game that are ever present, annoying, and slow progress. As time passed, the demons of running away followed me, and the ghosts of my choices and this idea of death haunted me. I also started college, which in the game is the university in the sky, a literal form of “higher education”. The biggest part of this experience, and the reason its called RPG Coping, is because it was a way for me to grapple with my fathers death. It wasn’t easy, and it’s not something I’m still alright with. But in a way it was cathartic to make this game.

There were several influences that lead to the creation of this game. One of the biggest influences was Cynthia Carr and her experiences that she wrote about in her book On Edge. I really appreciated when she wrote about being thrown into the shoes of a couple and the drama that was transpiring between them. I feel like that experience would be genuinely life changing, and in a sense I wanted the game to be that. Of course another influence was Yoko Ono and her views on performances and how she interacts with the audience. I wanted to have the player be a part of my performance, and my life.  Games that influenced the work include That Dragon Cancer which is a game about cancer, but with a very different approach, and Dys4ia which also brings up personal experiences. When analyzing the game through the lens of Schrank and his book Avant-garde Video Games: Playing with Technoculture,  I would say my game is somewhere in the bottom left quadrant, closer to the middle line, where it shows that my story is somewhat political in the sense of what it’s talking about, but the setting and gameplay are quite formal. It doesn’t deconstruct anything, but instead builds upon and existing world to bring a personal experience to the player.