Almost Recognizable
Is there any meaning to be found in a desert wasteland? A game about the nature of authorship and interpretation of art. If you made something that only you understood, and someone else found it without you around to explain it, what meaning would they find in it? Would they know what you were saying, does what you meant even matter? These were the questions I was meaning to ask with this project.
Gallery
The brief for this project was to find a work of art in the virtual exhibits of the Museum of Sydney as the focus of the game. We were asked to interpret the art into some kind of feeling or perspective, and translate that into a game. I chose the Dawn Sentinel by Norma Redpath, an abstract sculpture made of some bronze-looking metal stacked into odd shapes resembling squares. I thought that the object looked like a ruined alien appliance, vaguely recognizable as something that might not make sense to me, but known to the original crafter.
So I moved forward with this perspective, focusing on the relationship between the author, their work, and their audience. In the game you are trapped in a vast desert environment, a carpet as your workspace, and the beginnings of something resembling a sculpture. The point of the game is not made clear to the player, as I want the player to try interpret for themselves what the game is about. Whatever conclusion they arrive at is correct, because I do not tell them otherwise.
The main mechanic of the game is squinting at black spheres to "interpret" their purpose and form, creating random building blocks to form something larger. I intended this mechanic to mimic the formation of a perspective when analyzing art. Once you have built your thing by chucking other shapes at it, you can take a photo which exits the game. You are no longer responsible for the art you have made, and have no power over how it is seen or interpreted by others. My intention here was to mimic the feeling of publishing art or media online, out to an audience.
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