Exhibition Title: Well, it’s a bye-bye, if you call that gone
“‘Come Out”系列的灵感来自于美国极简派作曲家Steve Reich在1966年创作的同名作品“Come Out”。Steve Reich被委任为一场慈善音乐会创作一支曲子，音乐会的目的是为Harlem Six（6个美国黑人少年在1964年时被错误地指控谋杀了哈莱姆区的一家店主）筹集辩护基金。Steve Reich将焦点放在了Daniel Hamm的录音证词上——Daniel Hamm陈述到他不得不撕开他身上由警察造成的伤口让血流出来，以证明自己受伤了、需要救治——他的创作隔离出“出来展示给他们看”（come out to show them）这句话，不断地在两个同时播放的音频轨道上重复它。类似的，格伦·利根（Glenn Ligon）的画作通过反复手工印刷相同的短语来回应了这出悲剧，重叠的词语层在密度与易辨性也产生了变化。”
James Turrell a American artist born 1943, Mainly concerned about the “light and space” throughout his artworks
James Turrell has been influenced by his childhood experience since the psychology perceptual training and that formed his fascination about light and space. In the time 1960, he published his first draft that showed a artist so dedicated to the natural sight that is light and space
“My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.”
Turrell starting to create his spatial art pieces by pure light recorded in 1967. As you can see, the main objects showed in the image are simple geometric, the creation of basics that built up our world. The masterpieces I’ve put in the top of the article called “The Light Inside” published in 1999. A spatial one shaped by a tunnel piece.
James Turrell’s works during 1990-1991
As my view, I prefer to say those works are so related to architecture. to be a guy that passionate with architectural stuff, I could say those works highly showed his understanding about space and shape.
“Interspace and lights are all his creation materials.” — by me
Before I come up with the idea to design a board game, I actually have some different inspirations. The first topic in the club: “Self-Awareness”. I expect my design to solve the problem that everyone might need to face to, about to understand and perceive yourself.
The most frequently occasion that people need to apply their self-awareness, probably when you are forced to “Introduce” yourself. Oftentimes you need to present yourself to a crowd of people, and it will be awkward if you’re not really extrovert person. A board game perhaps can solve the problem pleasantly.
Actually, the game not merely just solve the problem with introduce yourself, but if player could played with each other more trustful and familiar, the game shall bring more connection between people and may break through the self-knowledge. This is the outcome I wish to see or people played after my game could receive.
After the club finished the intro to design, we were ready for the first practical design. Our first topic is “Self-Awareness”. Most of people in the club were thinking about how to present themselves with a poster or a manual book, but I decide to make a design with more utilitarian purpose, which can solve real life problem. I don’t want to make a personal statue.
In the beginning, I started with a idea of something present yourself. A business card, that I can edit few icons and patterns on it, for presenting yourself. Another idea is a string of necklace, each bead painted with certain element. But in most essentially, the format I want to use, a design that can solve every kind problem with self awareness. Which means, the design must be universal.
New inspiration hit me when I was presenting my manuscripts. I linked with the board game I’ve made in the first semester. I quickly changed my idea, claimed that I want to design a board game.
I have a sense that the board game with the self-awareness topic can be already design by somebody else online, so I did few research and gained nothing. Maybe I’m the first person who want to design a self awareness board game.
Ellen has been mentioned she played a board game before really like mine one. Same topic for self-knowledge. The function of the board game is about, you pick card from a pile, and every card have a painting on it, and you chose the one that fit you. I think the game is sort of: “Check-in” type of game. Not really fun if you play it several times. And you don’t really have rules from it, you can play whatever you want. I suppose my game need rules, and have to be fun to play.
When I was running out of ideas, I thought a lot about the format of board games and the rules. My first thought was that the board game might be a test, and I made it quite clear that at the end of the game each player would leave a set of hand cards, and those cards would represent some of the attributes of the person. The idea came from a set of psychological tests we did in the middle of the semester. In my opinion, an accurate result can be obtained through some questions, which may fit the goal of my board game: that is, to give a reply to the player: What kind of person are you on earth
I thought maybe the psychological tests would be similar to my board game, so I went to google and found a psychological test website, chose the personality test. It took me about half an hour to finish such a test. The test is divided into 120 questions, each of which is a simple description of a person. Then you need to choose a score between 0 and 5. Represents how appropriate such a description is for you. “I’m good at keeping a secret” or “I’m easily provoked.”There are 120 of these questions, obvious questions but it’s going to ask you over and over again from different perspective. at last it came out a report. I think the test is very similar to mine, and I seem to be fitted with the test result
But it turns out that this is a way of testing that I don’t accept at all. I don’t think I’d want a board game designed like this or borrowed from a test mechanism. That’s why I totally reject the possibility of a serious report being produced. It is also a process in which I am thinking about my design iteration.
And then I went to Chuck and asked him for some academic advice on psychology, like is there a list of words you can use to describe a person. I don’t think I can be very thorough considered. So I think I should seek some academic help. Chuck, on the other hand, wanted me to do something on my own. He thought he would limit me if he gave me some standards. So I jumped right into the creative process.
Since I finished my first draft of my board game, I test the game out on our coaching time. The process of game is quite good for my expectation, some of the parts need improvements
I really appreciate to my coaching mates and Ellen. We’ve played my α version of game, and after the test, I came out with hereinafter reflection:
The game is fully functional right now, and I move on to the visual design section
The work of visual design is basically turn the freehand sketching into more formal, and electronic form that easy to print. The rework on the cards is the progress of simplify and using color to express more stout feelings.
For example the set of the geometric, I’ve simplified redundant lines and used a strong black figure to express the geometric figures, makes it more figurative and could give the feeling of the attribute that the figure contained.(e.g. the circle is saponaceous, or the triangle is spiky..)
Once I’ve been query by Chunyang (the instructor of our club), he advice me that I may cancel out the color in the figures, because I have the color cards in my game. That means if I’m using the color in other cards, the sense of feeling you can get from color cards will be recede, makes no contrast. I take the advice at first, but I notice that if their is no color in the other card, the sense of feeling would be recede in the other hand. For example, I could have use red for the card fire, but there is no color for it, then the sense of warm and burning won’t exist anymore
Now the board game printed out
I’ve been thinking a lot during the design progress, Almost all the design works that you can see right now are decided by myself alone. Actually I didn’t do a lot researches and asking for help in time, so I spent most of the time to think about what kind like design piece I prefer to show to people, what kind like feeling and gain after they finished game. How could the form(board game) help my design to make people feel the information that I want to people to feel.
I would like to praise myself as I’ve done a good job on design a board game such like this. I combined the topic:” self awareness” suitable in to a design work. The come up reflections are telling me that my board game actually work at the time, it really help people to recognize and have a deeper view of them self, those achievements are what I want to see.
But even though I designed a really functioned board game, there still have a lot space that allowed me to do more improvements for a better version of design. As the contents of cards are all based on nothing but all I’ve figured out, it turned out all the design works are not fully reliable, I could do more research to design a more scientific work that might based on psychology knowledges, Philosophy concepts or those more systematically points.
