EXPERIENCING DIGITAL PLACES
In this section:
◉ We will examine several commercial digital places, and the experiences of place (often colonizing, conquering, and violent) that they encourage.
◉ We will learn about a few different ways to record our time in digital places, to help inform the ones we make later:
● Writing down memorable experiences in digital places
● Drawing an "experience map" of our time in digital places
● 'Photographing' significant events in digital places
● Screen-recording our walks through digital places
◉ We will take tours of several digital places made by several artists, and examine the experiences of place that they encourage. Below are links to explore them in your browser.
Key Concept: Digital places encourage and discourage different experiences (feelings and actions) through their design. Many digital places encourage colonizing, conquering, and violent experiences with places, for example. By being sensitive to the ways digital places encourage experiences through design, we can design digital places that invite a wider variety of powerful, meaningful, and interesting experiences with places (without relying on colonizing, conquering, or violent norms).
ACTIVITY: Looking CRITICALLY at digital places in popular culture
Before making our own digital places, we're going to look at digital places made by others, and figure out how they encourage visitors to feel or do certain things. First, we'll look at some popular commercial games, and the ways they encourage players to feel and act toward places.
Below are ~2 minute video clips from four popular digital places: Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Mario 3D World, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Choose one or two video summaries to watch,. While watching, note answers to the following questions:
What activities and experiences does this digital place encourage?
Does the game show us who lives or lived in the setting before the player showed up?
What is the player's relationship to the inhabitants of the place? How does the player treat them?
(We made note of our own observations beneath each video. These aren't "right" answers. but might be helpful for teachers making connections to the themes of this lesson.)
ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS
CRITCLIP-Animal Crossing.mp4SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD
CRITCLIP-Super Mario 3D World.mp4Luke & Oscar's Observations
What activities and experiences does this digital place encourage?
This place encourages arriving at and settling upon a land, and then extracting resources (like chopping down trees for wood) to build more buildings and structures on the land.
This place also encourages visiting other islands solely to extract materials from.
Does the game show us who lives or lived in the setting before the player showed up?
The narration tells us that the main island is "deserted."
What is the player's relationships to the inhabitants of the place? How does the player treat them?
While the island is "deserted," there are many plants and animals that inhabit the island. The player is encouraged to kill and collect the animal life (fish and insects), and to use the plants (chopping trees, picking fruits).
Luke & Oscar's Observations
What activities and experiences does this digital place encourage?
This place encourages the player to move through the place, collect money and power-ups, kill the creatures living in the place, and find the goal, where they can raise their flag.
This place also encourages moving through it in a variety of ways, including running, jumping, climbing walls (as a cat), and destroying barriers (as a giant).
This place also encourages finding hidden secrets by rewarding exploration off of its main path.
Does the game show us who lives or lived in the setting before the player showed up?
There are a variety of creatures living in the place before the player arrives.
What is the player's relationships to the inhabitants of the place? How does the player treat them?
The only possible interaction Mario has with the inhabitants of this place is killing them, or ignoring them on the way to his goal.
RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2
CRITCLIP-RDR2.mp4SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER
CRITCLIP-Tomb Raider.mp4Luke & Oscar's Observations
What activities and experiences does this digital place encourage?
This game encourages shooting and physical fighting with other settlers in the Western setting. It also encourages riding and caring for a horse, and forming relationships with other settlers. It encourages visiting a variety of settings, including areas populated with many settlers and 'remote' areas in the desert and mountains.
Does the game show us who lives or lived in the setting before the player showed up?
The narration says that "civilization" is expanding rapidly into the "wild and lawless frontier" - it makes no mention of the Indigenous people who inhabited the land before the white settlers.
What is the player's relationships to the inhabitants of the place? How does the player treat them?
(From the trailer clip) there appears to be no relationship with Indigenous people. It is possible the game as a whole includes Indigenous people, though based on the interactions shown in the trailer, it is likely that the relationship would be violent (this is a game we haven't personally played, and would likely be educated about by our students).
Luke & Oscar's Observations
What activities and experiences does this digital place encourage?
This digital place encourages traversing and exploring in a variety of ways, climbing along walls, shimmying across narrow ledges, and climbing trees.
It also encourages entering ancient and sacred sites of Indigenous people and stealing artifacts from them (true to the title "Tomb Raider," I guess!).
It also encourages a lot of deadly violence, both toward humans and other animals.
Does the game show us who lives or lived in the setting before the player showed up?
There are a number of (stereotypical) Indigenous people presented in the South American setting.
What is the player's relationships to the inhabitants of the place? How does the player treat them?
At the beginning we see a friendly Indigenous quest-giver who Lara seems to be helping (it's not clear why the quest-giver needs an English visitor to do this mission for them). There are also a number of characters in stereotypical feathered Indigenous outfits who Lara kills very violently.
COLONIZING, CONQUERING, and VIOLENCE IN DIGITAL PLACES
Thinking critically about games and other digital places (even ones we like!) can help us identify ways the digital places we make can be stronger, and can avoid harmful or lazy tropes. One common trope in many commercial games is that they encourage colonizing, conquering, and violent actions and experiences in places.
What do you already know about colonialism?
What historic events to you connect to that word?
Can you connect any of the things you saw in the above videos to that word?
Historians have identified many different types of colonialism. However, the two most commonly discussed ones are exploitation colonialism and settler colonialism:
(Left) Mario raising his flag after conquering World 1-1 in Super Mario 3D World. (Right) Col. John C. Fremont raising an American flag to claim the Rocky Mountains for the United States,
SETTLER COLONIALISM
Primarily focused on stealing land
Settlers travel from one place to another place
Settlers plan to stay in their destination place, and make it a new home
Settlers claim land for themselves, usually by violently stealing it from the present Indigenous residents of the land
Settlers kill or displace the present, Indigenous, residents of the land
Usually, more generations of settlers arrive, and continue to claim more land for themselves
Current settler-colonizer countries include the United States, Australia, and Canada.
(Descriptions adapted from Eve Tuck and Marcia McKenzie's Place in Research.)
EXPLOITATION COLONIALISM
Primarily focused on stealing labor and riches
Colonists travel from one place to another place
Colonists use violence to overpower the present, Indigenous, residents of the land
Indigenous residents remain on the land, but are forced (through violence) by the colonists to work for them
Colonists export riches from the land (collected or created by exploited Indigenous laborers) back to their original home
Historic examples of exploitation colonialism include Britain's colonization of India and Belgium's colonization of the Congo. In the present day, American companies using low-paid and unsafe labor in other countries has been described as colonialism.
What aspects of the games in the above videos can you connect to any of the listed aspects of settler and exploitation colonialism?
Our challenge in this unit is to try to create digital places that encourage other types of activities and experiences besides colonizing, conquering, and violent ones.
RECORDING OUR EXPERIENCES
Now that we've looked at some commercial games, we're going to visit some virtual places by artists that encourage other ways of experiencing places. We're going to use a few different methods for keeping track of our experiences in these digital places, to inform our own creation later. By looking at these alternative artworks, we can try to make places that invite actions and feelings that don't rely on colonizing, conquering, or violent relationships to places.
By keeping track of, and reflecting on, powerful or meaningful experiences we have in digital places made by others, we can be thoughtful about the ways the places WE make can produce experiences. Below are several strategies and tools for recording experiences in digital places.
Writing an "Experience Inventory"
An inventory is a list of things you have. You can make an "experience inventory" of the ways the digital place affected you - for example, what feelings you had or what actions you did! As you go through the digital place, write down:
A notable sight and sound from the digital place.
Something in the digital place that would be impossible in the physical world.
How did you feel in this place? What things made you feel that way?
How did this place encourage you to act? What did it encourage you to do? What about the place encouraged these actions?
Are these actions colonizing, conquering, or violent? What adjectives would you use to describe them?
Drawing a "Sensory Map"
A sensory map is a kind of map that doesn't record where things are in a place, it records the experience of moving through a place. Every person's map will look different, even of the same place. The map on the left here came from my "virtual walk" in the video below. On the map on the right, the artist marked with a star points on the journey that were especially memorable experiences. When making a sensory map:
Don't make it while you're going through the place! Rather, wait until afterward, and use your memory to draw it. This will help you focus on memorable experiences more than accuracy.
Record how you moved through the space. How could you visually show things like changes in speed or direction? How could you visually show points where you "stopped to smell the roses"?
Use color to mark points where you had a significant experience. How you use color is up to you. Maybe different colors mean different feelings. Maybe different colors mean different intensities of feeling.
Snapping Screen-Captured "Photos" of Notable Moments
By taking screenshots during notable moments during our visits in digital places, we can record them without having to translate them into text.
It's important to reflect on your 'photos' after a visit. For each photo, ask yourself:
Why did I choose to take a photo of this moment/object/event?
What does the photo tell me about the experiences and actions this place encourages?
Here is a tutorials for capturing screenshots to take "photos" on our virtual walks:
Recording a Screen-Captured Video "Virtual Walking Tour"
One way to record our experiences is by screencasting our time in digital. This is a tool used by streamers and YouTubers, but is also a way we can keep track of how digital places make us do and feel things.
Follow this tutorial to use the on-line screen-capture tool Screencast-O-Matic:
2020-03-30 20-42-25.mp4ACTIVITY: EXPERIENCING DIGITAL PLACES
The above link includes three different spots to record experiences in different ways.
If you are learning remotely or by yourself, you may not need the sheet, and can write and draw on your own paper. Teachers teaching remotely: Consider doing these activities in a shared JamBoard.
Below are recommended steps for this activity. Feel free to omit or re-order any of these steps (we do every time we teach this)!
● Screen-record a 5-10-minute exploration of it, and/or take at least three screenshots of notable moments during a 5-10-minute exploration.
● Create a written "experience inventory" (use the sheet or above description as a guide) as you go through the place.
● If you're in a group, discuss your experiences with classmates who explored the same world, then with the class as a whole. Did you have similar or different experiences? Notice similar or different things? What choices did the artist make to prompt the experience(s) you had?
● Screen-record a 5-10-minute exploration of it, and/or take at least three screenshots of notable moments during a 5-10-minute exploration.
● AFTERWARD, reflect on your experience and draw a "sensory map" of your journey from memory (if it helps, you can refer to your photos/video, but try to stick to memory).
● If you're in a group, discuss your experiences with classmates who explored the same world, then with the class as a whole. Did you have similar or different experiences? Notice similar or different things? What choices did the artist make to prompt the experience(s) you had?
◉ Choose one of your two explored worlds, and imaginatively reflect on the histories of that world.
● How was this place different before you showed up? Who was here first? What was here first? What was happening? What is your character’s relationship to this history?
● What real-world histories, outside of the fiction of the digital place, have shaped the virtual world? Can you find any information about the person who made this world? Are there real-world realities you see reflected (or ignored) in the virtual world?
● What is a significant past event that shaped this place? What disasters, successes, setbacks, or liberations shaped the ‘present’ place you’ve just visited?
