Category: capstone2022

 
This project is designed to give the audience an opportunity to experience what a person struggling with smiling depression might feel through a 2D platformer game. Smiling depression, also known as “masked depression”, refers to the phenomenon where someone might feel depressed inside but pretend to be perfectly content on the outside, which makes it difficult for other people to assess their mental wellness and then give help. In this game, the user will control a character who is living inside a transparent bubble that resembles the “mask” – The bubble is a barrier between the character’s internal and external world – the outside world is black and white while the inside of the bubble is colorful, the outside world is filled with darkness while the light exists inside the bubble. By going through a series of adventures, the user will gradually learn that they have to break the bubble because, although the bubble looks like a comfortable place to stay in, it’s shrinking and compressing the space for you to live in.

This project contains only the last level of the whole game. The name of this level is called “Spiral”, which refers to the psychological spiral in which someone with depression is trapped. Since the game is 2-dimensional, the map is designed so that the user has to go deeper and deeper to break the bubble. However, the bubble will also shrink faster as the character goes down, which creates the dilemma for the user to choose whether they’d like to fight with the difficulties to break the bubble to just stay in the same place but “die” slowly.

The game art is carefully designed as well. The piano piece was played and recorded as the background music of this level. The hand-drawn assets can create a very intimate feeling for the audience. The users can resonate with the music and the images because they seem more personal, which helps them to see the world through the main character’s point of view.

Besides the images used in this project, several other elements were also tested to see how they affect the whole experience. First of all, is the length of the game. Since this project only contains one level of the whole game, the time it will take for someone to finish this game is very crucial, as it influences whether the user can learn enough information about the gameplay and the background story as well as fully experience the “smiling depression” within a certain amount of time. After several tests were made, the level was designed to be played between 5 – 10 minutes, because the user can both experience the gameplay and it’s also a reasonable time for them to quickly review and give feedback. The second factor is the use of color to indicate the collectible items and the traps. Since the game is more about an experience, the choice has been made to not include too many user instructions in the level. Different colors were used to help guide the user: red colors suggest that something is dangerous and should be avoided whereas green and yellow are helpful objects and collectible objects.

 

“Water is like the glass,” captured from a child, is extended to five different textures. Children’s words are always based on the real world but contain a certain amount of fantasy components, half-genuine and half-imaginary. Taking this as an inspiration, the project explores the mysterious relationship between text and moving images by projecting a short conceptual art film into a pool filled with water. The work is played in a loop, starting with water, going through 5 different media, and ending with water.

The ideas do not necessarily follow a logical sequence, and almost every line of text in the work is not true. Still, texts are connected with each other and cooperate with the installation itself to create a unique semi-narrative environment that is fictional.

Most of the video resources were captured inside parks, while some of the audio came from people’s random chatting. These video recordings are casual street photography taken at a respectful distance, of people engaging in mundane activities. Like small pieces of cloth cut from different materials of clothing, restitched, and joined together to form a new piece of fabric.

Projection through water connects the looping video with the real world. Water is the beginning and end of the video (as a point of the cycle), and it is also the medium through which the video is projected. Due to its transparent texture, as the projected object, water is not visible, but indeed exists. This echoes the video’s make-believe theme: almost every word is not the truth, but an inner logic exists between the connection of the sentences.

In addition, the reflection of the video’s moving images is also reflected onto the ceiling by water, turning straight lines into blurred and overlapping curves. The moving images become larger, but the color remains the same, which provides soft light and shadow for the whole project display, improving the immersive experience of the video installation.

 
Usually held in homes or temples, ancestor worship in China is a ritual practice in which family members gather to prepare meals, burn paper money, and pray to the deceased family members on specific dates. Served as communication to the deceased members, the practice is based on the religious belief that the deceased family members have a continued existence spiritually which will look after the living ones, with the ability to influence the fortune of their lives. However, huge changes took place when Chinese society went through the process of modernity with the rapid development of science and technology. On the one hand, commented as superstitious and backward, the ritual practice has lost much of its significance in Chinese people’s life, especially among the young generations. At the same time, the ritual practice has extended itself by transforming into different forms with the application of multi-media and the widespread social media platform in the new digital era. The project strives to bring in new reflections on the ancestral worship culture and more broadly, the fact of death. Furthermore, it also poses questions on how would the old ritual be perpetuated or transformed in the near future. How would we be remembered or forgotten?

Throughout the working process, I have encountered various difficulties and stages of doubting and anxiety. What brought me back to the track is a small break from the computer screen and a return to the origin of my intention of doing the project. I went back home and talked with my grandparents about the ritual practice. What I got from them is not only the informative background knowledge and personal history of the transformation of the ritual but also the experience of conducting deep conversations with my family members about their past and the family history that I have never heard about. At that point, I grew the feeling that the project had become something more than a project of live performance that I have been doing, but deeper broader research that I‘m doing together with my family members. To add more of those personal elements to the project, I recorded my grandmother’s voice of the praying lines she constantly says when burning paper money. The content is mainly about calling the deceased family members, the wishes that are hoped to be realized with their blessings, and hoping for them to have a good meal and return.

 
The hybridization of entertainment space, artistic creation space, as well as socialization areas, shows the future of how we identify our venues and the way we interact with them. This new narrative of entertainment architecture invites new elements of possible interaction between the architecture of a space and their role in how we interact with one another. The encasement of many experiences into the same space provides a haven for artists as well as challenges previous notions of how we identify the architectural spaces of today.

 
There are works about disability recreating the social restriction on disabled bodies to better understand disabilities, or addressing more clinical aspects of solving problems of impairment. While these serve a great purpose in raising awareness about disabilities, discussion about disabled experiences can also provide an original perspective in understanding our environment. Acknowledging the different experiences allows us to understand the diversity of not only abilities but also people. Potential of Limitation is a practice to visualize such diversity with a focus on limitations on accessibility of a physical space.
Drawing from the convention of artworks hung at “average” eye level of “expected” audience being inaccessible for wheelchair users, Potential of Limitation sets moveable space as below the standard wheelchair height of 36’’ (91.4 cm). Such constraints situate the biped audience to unfamiliar body positions and movements. The lights on the hat device leave a light trajectory along the user’s movements which are captured with long exposure photography. The results of this trajectory are processed into two different forms: 1) A picture with low illumination that focuses on the light trajectory 2) A picture with a higher illumination that captures the body position in movement. The former is a record of different artistic expressions while the latter is a collection of data about unconventional bodily movements. These pictures can be viewed on a big standing screen, which are displayed when the viewer fits into a sitting position without a physical chair. This forces the participants to a perspective of a wheelchair user of looking up to the screen, and simulates the physical strain of trying to access information that is not designed for them.
By restricting the spatial freedom and accessibility of information, this project leads the participants to get a taste of physically disabling experience. This experience is not confined to only discomfort, but instead becomes the initiative for a creative production. The combination of these two recognizes disability and its potential as an innovative perspective, bringing the able-bodied to consider disability as not lack of ability, but a different ability.