Theme: Play and Time
Context:
I started off this week by thinking about the way I have experienced “timelessness” when playing games. I wanted to examine that feeling of being so involved in a game that you are not aware of how much time has passed around you. Rather you feel no time has passed, or only invested in the way time passes within a game. For me, this was a very nostalgic memory, as I remembered spending hours playing the Sims and feeling like I needed to play more, even when it was my siblings turn to play next. In more recent memory, I thought of the way sound in games often has this effect, like the horse riding music in Breath of the Wild.
I found insight into this experience when reading Costello and Edmond’s work. Within their 13 frameworks for pleasure in play, this feeling of ‘timelessness’ is a part of the captivation framework. In my experiences, this captivation was in part enjoying the game driving my actions.
I also noticed that these features were also often combined with the pleasure of creation within character creation and customisation.
Initially, my plan was then to create a game which combined multiple features to magnify the captivation experience, but also poke fun at the way time is moving around the player. My initial idea was to create a character creation game, which involved a background world where days and nights pass and random animations occur. I wanted this to also have a kind of nostalgic effect, referencing the games like Sims and random dress up games I would spend hours on.
However, I haven’t made a game before so after attempting to code this, I learnt it was out of the scope of this week.
Hence, I made an object that is a kind of interactive tribute to this time spent. In a way it is about the time that was lost playing these games, but also that feeling of captivation is a part of having fun with play. I wanted to capture this with this three tiered moving piece.
Method:
I made this with paper, cardboard and toothpicks. All the tiers contain 4 drawings, which play out a little animation. Every tier can be rotated by hand, but the whole thing can also be spun.
Reflection:
I was a bit disappointed I wasn’t able to complete my original idea, however I still learnt a lot about coding in the process. I also think it’s important to try these new ideas, and begin the process of learning new tools to expand what I can make. I also had fun in the process, as I had made all the drawings (/assets) in Paint in a very loose, fun way. This made me reflect on the way forms of play are lost to time, like the loss of flash games, as the platforms they exist on come and go so quickly.
This idea kind of fed into the making of my second object. I think there’s a comedic aspect to the way it’s made: using paper to replicate one of the oldest forms of animation, to communicate what feels like an old technology I played with. I think it would be interesting to develop this further by bringing in old parts and making the object more interactive.
Play and self
For this week theme, I did a instagram filter that showcase an old TV model that follow the movement and distorts the users face. It was created as how I see myself and the play part in this project was the everyone could try it, interact with it and also share with others.
The final product is available here : https://www.instagram.com/ar/513323279727898/
When I was brainstorming about the theme, the first thing that came to my mind was filters. My habit when taking photos was to insert a filter, which makes the photos aesthetically pleasing. So I feel like this shows my characteristic the most.
"Since TV is image laden, and favors the eye, we can link it to self image, that the people we see on TV are some how suggesting ways of living and looking that we may feel attracted to, consciously or unconsciously" - Professor Yusuf. Television played a large part in shaping who I am today and I enjoyed watching television shows when I was younger. This is why I decided to include a television model in my project.
I tried experimenting with SparkAR Studio to create the project. I started with a template which simplified the whole process. After importing a television assets from the library( 1990 TV by Warkarma from Sketchfab), I link it to track the movement of the head.
I then added a texture that extract and distort the face of the users to the screen of the TV. With some other textures that I created using the patch editors, I try to resembles the TV Screen material.
After the file was done, I upload the project into SparkAR Hub, which then would enable my project to be published and be available to be used in Instagram. After the files was inspected and approved, it was done.
I had a bigger idea for the project before this, which was to created a clone that has a glitching texture on its face. However, when I was trying to complete the project, I found that the idea was quite hard for me to complete it as a beginner in the app. I would still like to go with similar ideas and this was the compromise that I made for that. In the future, I would like to be able to fulfil it as a side projects.
3D OBJECTS in INSTAGRAM FACE FILTER / Spark AR tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m9Y_QeUckA
Progler, Y., 2003. 'The Impact of Television on Human Relationships' - Live Dialogue. [online] ICIT Digital Library. Available at: https://www.icit-digital.org/articles/the-impact-of-television-on-human-relationships-live-dialogue[Accessed 5 August 2021].
Link: https://youtu.be/Y7fzpR6ANWY
Build: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JjglaRgjKixPZ_UtDVfTMUQbdwkPkxW9/view?usp=sharing
Play and time
In my interactive work, the concept of time is divided into 2 parts – the day and light cycle following the sun and the actual time spent on each activity. The day and light cycle represent the linear time. In this work, a character’s activities are distributed to different location which transfer the linear time to a parallel time. As while as day and light cycling, it conveys a contrast between our normal perspective of time and another form of time. Overall, the options of activities are limited which reflect the time loop – players can arrange the character’s time but still looping in a group of results.
In class, we did an activity about listing words associated with time and play. After that, I started to think about my response to the concept of time and play. I was inspired by an interactive work Possibilia produced by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (2014). It describes a breaking up story in an interactive way – the dialogues are fixed but the video could be switched. I decided to make an interactive work has an overall linear time with switchable activities in different time period. Furthermore, I used locations (up, down, left and right) to represent time periods. Play is also a way of interpreting things (Geertz, 1973) and is classified as the rhetoric of the imaginary by Sutton-Smith (2001). In my response, players could explore the character’s actions in different ‘time locations’ and interpret those symbolic actions in their own ways which makes it a playful interactive work using time as a mechanic.
In practice, I started from modelling the character and stages of different ‘time locations’. I chose 5 activities of daily life which are sleeping, working, walking, entertaining and talking. Then I animated those in a very symbolic way which allows players interpreted them widely.
After that, I programmed it in Unity and added day and night cycle to represent linear time. By that I wanted to convey a contrast between different time concepts.
Sutton-Smith, B. (2001). The ambiguity of play. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. - - - . 1983. Blurred genres: The refiguration of social thought. In C. Geertz, Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretative anthropology. New York: Basic Books.