Interactive Sharing

Moving across various types of interactive works and platforms, I find myself intrigued more by the interactive aspect of the work.

In this sharing, I found an interactive art website called silk weave where users get to create interactive generative art. In the featured image is what I created on this website. The visuals are psychedelic and artistic which also reminds me of the Art Media Nexus / Pattern Design module that I would like to take in the future to complement my skills if I ever make an interactive art website

 

Try it out at weavesilk.com!

Interactive Narrative Sharing

Make Me Pulse is an interactive website which has amazing user interactivity accompanied by eye-catching aesthetics. I was particularly drawn by the concept of holding the mouse or buttons as the graphics unfold and how objects trail the mouse. This also invokes the stuff we learnt in Processing.

 

I personally feel this website is underrated and needs more views. It aims to get audiences to contemplative about their resolutions for the year ahead. The general idea and concept of interactivity is versatile and could be adapted for other projects. Could be something I’d like to work on for my FYP!

Narratives for Interaction: Project Update

‘Beyond Seen’

Following a heavy production and filming schedule, we decided to simplify the plot to something more relatable and doable.

We’ve minimized the casting in the storyline but still holding main content of the plot.

However, we’ll still be shooting scenes of the character’s environments namely Home, School & Studio.

Updated plot

A new location of dance studio is added as the updated plot follows a student dancer in her everyday life. She seems popular and things look good on the surface. However, a darker side unfolds as the player navigates along.

We have started the filming and will be shooting as well as editing concurrently.

Premises: Home, School, Dance Studio

 

Additional POV

We have also incorporated a bonus play for users – to play in the point of view of her friend. The purpose behind this is to trigger some thoughts on what a player could have done to help their friend in retrospect.

Behind the scenes footage

Narratives for Interaction: Interview & Planning

Overview – “Beyond What We See”

As presented from last week, our group is interested in making an interactive movie game based on mental health in Singapore. The consequences of the storyline will be based on the player’s choices during the course of the narrative.

Our story is based on the life story of Sha, currently 24 years old. She had depression and Borderline Personality Disorder.

Our full presentation:

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Moving ahead from the presentation, we kicked start our project this week in terms of finalizing the planning process. Agenda achieved:

  • Interviewed Sha (main protagonist based on her)
  • Storyline planning + branching choices
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Interviewing Sha was very pleasant as she was open to sharing about her experiences

 

From our interview, we were able to hear her personal story of her battle with her mental problems – she felt left out at home, was bullied in Secondary school and Polytechnic, not understood by her peers and at times her visits to the psychiatrists proved ineffective. She is a success story – able to overcome her hurdles, she now an advocate and she has an app geared towards helping those with mental health problems.

After the interview, we were able to get a clearer gauge on how to complete the story. We have finished the story and this is the outline on the branching plot.

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With the planning process more or less finalized, we are now ready to proceed in the making of this project.

Interactive Narrative Inspiration

These 6 Unique Video Games Battle Anxiety and Depression, One Level at a Time

With our project on the topic of mental health, I found an narrative game that also seeks to raise awareness on this illness. A feature of this game that caught my attention were the kinds of metaphors is uses to illustrate depression – it’s not direct which leaves room for interpretation.

 

The game has its high and low points where at certain parts, the character drifts and breezes through a canopy and the music gets cheery and faster. The mood gradually changes where falling leaves start to get fewer and backdrop gets gloomier – a great play of  metaphorical emotional landscape. Essentially, the player is going on a search on their passion.

 

For our project, perhaps we could adopt the idea of contrasting moods of what a person with depression might go through. Also, the play of character choices where the outcome of the character might not exactly correspond with what the player chose.

Interactive Narrative Sharing

Cronulla Riots – It was described as a day that shocked the nation. In December 2005, a nasty racial riot broke out Down Under triggered by Lebanese Muslims insulting the Australians. The violent mob that had 26 injured is now documented into an interactive website where an experience is introduced to the viewer. We get explore themes and navigate around the issue literally, allowing us to delve deeper into the riots. An interactive website is a brilliant as riots are caused by social, economic or political factors, no matter which would domino into emotional strain and tension within the rioting parties. With an immersive experience, people are able to relate to it and reflect on the aftermath.

Visit the website here! http://www.sbs.com.au/cronullariots/documentary

Reflection: garden of forking paths

This non-linear narrative is mind-blowing and non-understandable at its first read.

Yet the enigma compels you to read on at the same time. It goes on to intrigue you with his style of writing and decipher the paragraphs by piecing one information with another.

A feature of this literature i’d like to point out and commend is its genre. It interestingly fits into several categories. You could call it mystery, detective, or psychological thriller.

Have your pick, but I’ll classify this as magical realism. With its reality context, we are able to relate to it yet things get slightly peculiar when a tinge of magical realism is injected into the narrative.

Ultimately, I was immensely fascinated by the allegory of the ‘garden of forking paths’ which was actually came in both physical and symbolic forms. I am impressed as they were well blended into the plot. The labyrinth was a physical setting, seen as Ts’ui Pen’s Pavilion of the Limpid Sun.

Also, I saw it as setting of non-linear branches of its plot, which encompasses many levels. Last but not least, Ts’ui Pen’s novel is also a labyrinth, consisting of countless endings.

All in all, this was in fact a good read as the author did a fairly good job with this genre of magical realism. If not done well, it would turn out cheap but this one was applaudable.

Although I woudn’t be exploring in this direction for this semester’s project, I actually do look forward to reading more mind-blowing narratives like these.

 

Interactive Narration

Quandary is an online game that challenges students to make important decisions and think critically when there are no clear right or wrong answers.

It has a narrative that comes in comic format. I’d say it’s perfect for lazy people as there is even a voice narrator when you hover over the speech bubbles!

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A higher level of interactivity comes to play when users get to exercise their decision making

How it goes

You play the captain aka the judge. The fate of planet Braxos lies in your hands. It starts off by laying out 4 solutions and narrowing down with two, followed by making decisions that are built on the previous ones.

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At the last part, your aim is to sort out who will agree and who will disagree. Eventually, the conclusion is told in a brief comic and your score is tallied.

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This is a practical game for schools to adopt as part of teaching students to work with ethical skills and decision-making. The storyline is engaging and it actually compels you to think and tests your memory.

 

I would’ve scored a better grade back in junior school if i played these games instead of Battleon.

 

Play it at https://www.quandarygame.org/play

Narrative for Interaction: Ideation

Horror-themed Puzzle : Picking up clues to form a narrative

Think Mystery. Enigma. Conundrum. Along with a dark theme. Who wouldn’t love a story plot along the lines of that? Okay maybe not everyone but it’s sure to intrigue some.

Inspiration: Hotel626.com

As the name goes, the interactive horror-thriller online game is only available to ‘guests’ from 6pm to 6am. Between this timing, you can play a game made up of mini heart-thumping tasks as you take a walk through the haunted hotel.

It has heart-racing interactivity as users are picking up clues and solving puzzles along the way.

Examples of interactive gameplay

  • Scanning across the room in pitch darkness with a camera.  post-8-1223759419
  • A click will trigger a flash in its pitch darkness and you need to capture an image of the ghost that runs around the room.

 

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Boo.

Another one is to collect clues

  • You accidentally enter the courts of a decapitated asylum and get greeted with a psycho that happens to look like Amos Yee

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  • You scan around the room to find drawings on the wall – clues you have to remember
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  •  Prompted by a random generated question  eg. Enter the number of eyes / number of horse legs marked on the wall
  • You key the right code combination and you make it through to the next round, continuing your narrative

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Will you play my game?

 

 

Platforms: Website / VR Headset

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One medium I’ve always wanted to work with is the VR headset.

It’s a burgeoning technology and the ideas of an interactive narrative on this platform is countless.

I tend to picture my end product before I work on the topics so i’ll just leave this here

Ultimately, I hope to create a work that would hold the audience attention and be ‘addicted’ to it instead of a one-time project / interaction for IM year 2.2