Projects to Join

Existing/Ongoing Projects that can be joined directly

Digital Graffiti Gallery and Art Beyond Question - Data Collection/Ethnography

Graffiti and other wall art has been the most popular topic for this work here at UNM by far. And so far it has resulted in two different game ideas, each of which could be taken much further. Digital Graffiti Gallery is a campus graffiti curation activity. You can read more about it here. Art Beyond Question is a scavenger hunt involving the (sanctioned) wall art in downtown Albuquerque. These two games barely scratch the surface of our interest in the topic however. Much more is possible. What is the difference between graffiti and a mural, a tag and art? Who gets to decide and how do different perspectives on this material tell us more about the world we live in. Who does this art, under what conditions, and what are their stories? What about the people who have to remove graffiti?

Bonus: There is an Honors class based on graffiti this semester on Weds. morning. The instructor has expressed an interest in collaborating with you.

What’s promising There’s a lot to learn about ABQ from its graffiti. It’s a microcosm for issues of ownership, access, and control among various groups. Here, graffiti is closely connected to urban roots and a mural tradition that goes back further. DGG has a good mechanic. ABQ gets us off campus connects to “permitted” work. Neither game really gets us into the interesting issues or the worlds involved though.

What’s next

tech: new version of DGG that incorporates notebook, tags, and quests; makes use of the web for viewing later; can actually be used for curation. Skills: ARIS, web, research, game design.

narrative: use something like dgg to tell the story of graffiti in ABQ or generally; tell stories using graffiti and murals as the illustrations. Skills: writing, research, game design.

Culture: Incorporate interviews with people involved (artists, cleanup, managers, store owners, youth organizers, etc.). Could be used to tell the story as in narrative, or more anthropologically, to document local culture. Skills: ethnography, writing, video editing, photography, game design.

Teaching: Find someone whose teaching could make good use of involving students in the work of DGG.

Dow Day - Situated Documentary

Situated Documentary from Luiz Lopes on Vimeo.

What’s promising Dow Day takes the idea of a documentary (in this case Two Days in October, The War at Home, They Marched into Sunlight - a book) and the idea of Then-and-Now books, and puts them together with one added twist - you interact with the story as a fictional character, not just view it. By thus situating the documentary, the hope is to create more relatable, engaging experiences around important events that have happened nearby, and to be able to see our surroundings not just for what they are on the surface but as a continuation of past events.

Resources

• Dow Day ARIS game

• Jim Mathews

• Two Days in October

• The War at Home

• They Marched into Sunlight

What’s Next

tech: Dow is just barely interactive in the sense that the story unfolds linearly and the player’s actions do not influence their outcome. ARIS is capable of more open-ended story telling, and it is up to you to create a situated documentary that asks more of the player. 

Skills: library research, game design, writing, video editing, historical thinking, possibly interviewing.

Games for Health

kkomamon playtest from UW Mobile Learning Lab on Vimeo.

There is interest in developing a game that will get kids running around. Rupee Collector and Kkomamon are the first experiments in exergaming in ARIS. Can you improve upon these designs and see what is possible with AR and exergames?

Resources

• Rupee Collector

• Kkomamon

• The Not So Secret Life of DDR (exergaming and social factors)

• Ian Bogost’s articles on exergaming

• Playtest of Rupee Collector and Kkomamon

What’s Next

Play an exergame yourself.

tech: Mod the existing games, or make one of your own that’s better.

ehtnography: find people who stay active. Ask them about why they keep up with it, how they got started, how it connects to their lives other than the direct physical benefits. Conduct your own playtest - find a group of kids and get them to try one of these games.

Everyday Art

Last December, Jim Mathews and I began a project about everyday art. It’s a fuzzy space, but the basic criterion was things that people do that are artistic, but you wouldn’t usually go see in a gallery. We interviewed a farrier, and watched him shoe a horse. We also talked to a man who makes electric guitars out of cigar boxes in his garage in Rio Rancho. We also met with Ed Baragiola, an old friend and mentor of mine. He makes lots of stuff - for example guitars from found lumber and motorcycles out of just about anything.

Our idea was to produce some sort of exhibit that could be used to get youth all across the country engaging with the everyday artists in their communities. We wanted to collect seed content (and more if possible), curate it so as to tell the story of the artists and also give a very strong indication of how others might conduct their interviews (how to ask questions, what to collect, what issues to think about, etc.), and finally create a structure that would allow others to contribute and communication about these ideas to spread.

Resources

• Footage from Chris and Jim’s interviews in Dec. 2011.

• Jim’s everyday art project in Wisconsin.

What’s Next

narrative: Organize the interviews we have collected to tell the story of everyday art.

tech: Create the exhibit structure.

ethnography: Find everyday artists and interview them, find a pilot group to use our everyday artists to go and find their own (school group maybe). Talk to other artists, community members to better explore what the term “everyday art” might mean. Collect additional information from our artists.

UNM Tour

Local tours are sort of an easy target. We all know what a tour is, and they are dead simple to make in ARIS. In fact a couple students made a mobile version of the standard tour every prospective UNM student gets. They worked with marketing to get all the talking points, and did a good job of digging up relevant media, even throwing some optional content in and recording their own interviews. Unfortunately, their contact in marketing moved to another job and UNM has not used the tour at all. Continuing this project could be coming up with your own tour that had another perspective or marketing the existing tour so that it actually gets used.

Resources

• Existing UNM tours

• CSWR - lots of info about historic UNM

• People with interesting perspectives on campus

• People who give tours for a living - they can help you figure out how to make an exciting tour.

What’s Next

Marketing the existing vanilla tour.

Making an underground tour with a specific agenda or audience in mind.

Making a then and now tour that transports the participant back in time.

Figuring out what makes an intersting tour versus a boring one.

Others' Projects to find out more about

ARIS in Spain - lots to learn from these artist/botanists. Maybe set up a collaboration with them and Connexiones - Spain for June 2013!

Up River - another of Jim Mathews projects. You can play the game, read a chapter he wrote about how and why he made it, and then use those ideas to work on similar projects closer to home, maybe in connection with VB Price's class/book on the environmental history of NM.

World of Adventure - Dana Atwood-Blaine won the award at GLS 8.0 for best poster for the research she did on a game she made for middle school science. She's looking to work on a new project and to extend her game to other schools. You might be able to help.

Remembering Rebecca - Digital Humanities students Laura Heiman and Caitlin Miller at George Mason University used ARIS to create a tour of a historical house. ARIS was useful to them because, due to the nature of the property, nothing physical could be added - ARIS allowed them to augment the location digitally.