APD Week 4 | Place

This weeks topic was how we can incorporate place into play. Due to the lockdown in Melbourne, this meant that going outside and creating an interactive experience was impossible. Instead I thought about a larger scale project that could make being stuck looking out a window more exciting. By creating a transparent screen that would be installed in a specific location, a game or animation could be played that used the view behind as the game world geometry or background. These would need to be bespoke, site specific and require minimal explanation to play/ use. Having the player interaction work in alternative ways through custom controllers and or body tracking would hopefully also help engage people with the content.

When considering places these could be installed I initially thought about public spaces, such as parks and public transport hubs such as Flinders Street Station so that access was easily available. During events such as Melbourne International Games Week installations such as this would help bring the event to the rest of the city and potentially inspire people to look at technology and multimedia. It also occurred to me that having something interactive and a bit whimsical could be potentially beneficial in places such as the Royal Children's Hospital in areas where long term patients stay. The possibilities for what could be created are endless.

I drew inspiration initially from Holland Kerr’s response that used plastic containers with static images painted so that when viewed from the right angle create playful scenes of everyday life. I also thought about installation by the advertising school Brother in Madrid that used mirrored surfaces, graphics and text to imply we were living in a Black Mirror episode (Design Boom 2020). This played with the ideas behind the show and recontextualised the viewer as part of the piece. 

In the future I want to develop this project further and actually install these in the city somewhere. They have the potential to create social play and hopefully put a smile on peoples faces, which is something we could all benefit from. In this way they become part of the community. I would need to start with smaller scale prototypes and practice modifying the LCD screens (as well as finding a way to protect the hardware running them).

Design Boom 2020, this speculative ad says black mirror's season 6 has been released - it's reality, 2 June, viewed 17 August 2021,  <https://www.designboom.com/design/netflix-black-mirror-season-6-ad-reality-06-02-2020/>.