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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Peru To Host Tales Of Play, Adventures Of The Unexpected

Starting tomorrow, the Centro Fundación Telefónica cultural center in Lima, Peru will hold an exhibit on fantasy worlds and gaming territories titled "Video Games: Tales of Play, Adventures of the Unexpected". The show will run until October 4th and looks to introduce "new perspectives for the worlds we inhabit, the experiences we share, and the ways we are being influenced."

The pieces and games in the exhibit seek to question the expectations we may have from typical games, as well as the roles and rules we've come accustomed to. They also hope to focus less on competition, scores, and other common motivators, instead eliciting excitement in players through "new play tactics and behaviors that are being encouraged within game environments".

You might recognize some of the participating independent artists and games such as Tale of Tales' The Path and thatgamecompany's Flower, but I've outlined a few interactive experiences below that you might be unfamiliar with. Some of these are nuts!

The Girlfriend Experience by Martin Butler:

"The Girlfriend experience is a multiplayer game allowing you to enter into a real-life person and use this person as an avatar. However, the available avatars are real people too, so in order to win their trust and have them perform special tasks, you first need to get to know them and find out what is possible. If you are rude they will probably cancel your playtime."

Amagatana by Yuichiro Katsumoto:

"Amagatana is an umbrella for enjoying a blissful walk after a rain. After the sky clears up and the umbrella has served its purpose, we often swing around our umbrellas on a whim. By augmenting such motions with the sounds of clashing swords, AMAGATANA transforms scenes of everyday city life (i.e. The walk home from a train station) into subjective game-like arenas.

Amagatana classifies the user’s actions into 3 levels, using accelerometer data obtained while the umbrella is still and while in motion. In addition, AMAGATANA also recognizes 5 “Special Moves”, that are invoked through specific double-articulated sequences of the aforementioned levels."

The Night Journey by Bill Viola & USC EA Game Innovation Lab:

"The Night Journey is a video game/art project based on the universal story of an individual mystic's journey toward enlightenment.

Visual inspiration for The Night Journey is drawn from the prior works of Bill Viola. Narrative inspiration comes from the lives and writings of great historical figures including: Rumi, the 13th century Islamic poet and mystic; Ryokan, the 18th century Zen Buddhist poet; St. John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish mystic and poet; and Plotinus, the 3rd century philosopher. The interactive design attempts to evoke in the player's mind a sense of the archetypal journey of enlightenment through the "mechanics" of the game experience - i.e. the choices and actions of the player during the game.

The player's voyage through The Night Journey takes them through a poetic landscape, a space that has more reflective and spiritual qualities than geographical ones. The core mechanic in the game is the act of traveling and reflecting rather than reaching certain destinations - the trip along a path of enlightenment."

levelhead by Julian Oliver:

"levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors.

In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit.

Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in, a trick designed to challenge the player's spatial memory. Which doors belong to which rooms?"

You can find more information on the show, which is curated by Daphne Dragona, at Centro Fundación Telefónica's site (Spanish).

Comments

Just found out about this on my local paper (I live in Peru BTW). I'll be attending tomorrow. I wish Jenova Chen was a guest though...

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