12/19/17
The digital age has created multiple platforms for story telling. With technology being such an integral part of every day life artists have moved from canvas to the screen and are reaching audiences in new ways. There’s no doubt I-docs and interactive gaming are engaging ways to reach people, but has new media allowed for an effective way to tell stories that addresses issues humanity faces?
The first artwork I chose is Keiichi Mastsuda’s Hyper Reality which takes place in Columbia and is shown through the lens of a woman whose world is colorful, bright and loaded with advertisements. It’s as if all the online ads moved to the space in the sky. While the woman is out grocery shopping her programming starts to malfunction …show more content…
The Cancer of Time created by Dominic Turmel (Conception and creative direction), Ko-op Mode (Conception, design, illustration, and development), Jean-François Nadeau (conception and copyediting) and Stéfan Boucher (conception and music) is an app that follows a character as he is diagnosed with time cancer which is essentially being worried and controlled by time. It’s commentary on how humans always feel like they should be doing something and have great anxiety about “wasting” time. The app hasn’t been updated so it crashes with the current Apple software, but the game has a very eerie tone. The main colors used are bold and dark like black or red, but sometimes white or pastel colors are used to give a lighter but unnatural feeling. The game is also personalized, you are able to answer a test honestly and see how you view the concept of time. All the characters can speak but its an inaudible sound which adds to the tone of boredom and emptiness. One scene is, the main character is in the waiting room to see the doctor and a little girl begs her mom to use her phone. This is a subtle hint that the issue of people not being able to deal with doing nothing stems from constant visual stimulation. The message the game sends is to cherish time and be comfortable taking in life with no distraction. In Game Design as a Narrative Architecture by Henry Jenkins he discusses the idea of games as