It was the day of the studio exhibit. I’ve met up with Kazuki at around 11:30 AM. We were the first to prepare for the studio exhibit. Our project is called Witch Hunt. Preparing for the exhibition quickly managed despite a lot of materials being used to set up the table. Dan also brought us some additional material including a decorative table cloth, a tall cauldron and a plastic sword to replicate the 19th Century-style setting. I borrowed an extension cord from the Media Library to help place the speakers under the table. For the music, I’ve downloaded the soundtrack, cut it to three minutes to fit the length of the game and connect the speakers using the headphone jack in my phone. The music was played through the speakers connected to my phone. I had to adjust the volume slightly to avoid disturbing the game and other groups in the studio.
I was hoping that our creative exploration would draw attention by large groups six or more people who are interested in playing the game. We’ve looked around the studio exhibit at other group projects. Then a number of people became interested in our project. I was one of the players who participated in the game as Kazuki demonstrates the rules. I was holding onto my phone playing the three-minute day music as the participants’ figure who the witch is after the first player was eliminated. As the night music played, the game was over as the witch was finally figured out. It was great seeing our game being viewed by the audience.
Despite growing demands from my group partner along with a group member departing, my part in the collaboration for the group project went well for the studio exhibit as I printed the newspaper articles for display on the table. Kazuki managed to change the theme of the game from the original crime mafia concept to the 19th Century-style Witch Hunt concept. Next time I would like to have more group members to help balance and reduce the workload we put in for our exhibit. Having more members helps relieve the pressure from myself and Kazkui allowing for improve flexibility for the group project.
Experiences of immersion are temporal and much of it suggests analogies of virtualization. The timing of immersion is considered to be a curiosity as it rarely relates to chronometric time (Cubitt 2007). For the players of the game Witch Hunt, people were immersed in this virtual reality during the process of meditation as they sleep during the night sequence of the game.
Immediately as the studio exhibit draws to a close, the class had to pack up the materials and make way for the following studio exhibit which is about to take place soon after. We returned the Dedo lights and the extension cord back to the Media Library. The class had a final photo together. After years of COVID denial, it was great experimenting with games in the real world once again. It was good for me to return to the classroom fully and to be able to do a studio course once more.
Reference
Cubitt, S (2007) ‘Immersed In Time’ in Visual Communication, vol. 6 no. 2, Sage Publishing, pp, 220-229.