An early collaboration, I joined Phoenix Perry in developing NightGames as a public artwork that brings an audience together with the opportunity to collaboratively control an interactive environment using music, visuals and gesture. The players’ choices create the world they occupy through a series of networked “instruments” which include motion tracking, gesture recognition, interactive lighting, personal and quadraphonic sound. A rich terrain for free form exploration fills the exhibit space rewarding group cooperation, in addition to individual expression.

Forest Daydream at the Wellcome Collection

Commissioned by the A Maze Festival, NightGames traveled to Berlin as a sonic playscape and environmental activation for the festival.

The piece was re-created for the Wellcome Gallery collection as Forest Daydream along with Fede Fasce, and Robin Baumgarten, in collaboration with MSc students from UAL's Creative Computing Institute. Players explore a physically reproduced videogame space joining efforts to play small games hidden in the landscape. Upon completing each mini-game, players can change the time of day and weather in the world.

The soundscape mixes familiar game tones with field recordings from the Amazonas region of Peru, where the ancient community of the Wampís live; they preserve an ancient cultural obligation to maintain the forest in balance with all living things.

Research has shown that people moving in synchrony brings people together and builds trust. This project seeks to further expand the public’s understanding of game play and theatre to include freeform interaction. By using a series of different sensors we developed embodied controllers for games that embrace all bodies and abilities. Our testing will focus on affect and we will explore the triggers for creating positive emotions with the body during play. By crafting a play space that rewards many kinds of interaction, our controllers will have affordances for many possible ways of moving. This installation welcomes players who may have limited mobility or difficulty interacting with traditional forms of digital inputs. All research in this project will licensed under Creative Commons.

Playing at Creative Coding Amsterdam

Role: Project coordinator, installation producer, software and hardware co-developer

Technology: OpenFrameworks, Arduino, Ableton Live

NightGames Team: Adelle Lin, Phoenix Perry

Forest Daydream Team: Phoenix Perry, Fede Fasce, and Robin Baumgarten, Adelle Lin in collaboration with MSc students from UAL's Creative Computing Institute

Exhibitions:

Wellcome Gallery Collection, London, early 2020

A Maze Festival, Berlin, April 22–25, 2015

Creative Coding Amsterdam, Netherlands. April 2015.

Harvestworks, Manhattan, NY. June 24, 2013. 7-9pm

NYU Games Centre, Brooklyn, NY. June 6, 2014. 6-8.30pm

New York Hall of Science, Queens, NY. June 22, 2013. 4-6.30pm

Come Out and Play, South Street Seaport, New York, NY. July 12, 2013. 7pm – 12am