Negation

The symbol that represents the physical concept of ‘Negation’ from the Dutil-Dumas message.
The symbol of 'negation' built with 'Polished Blackstone Slab' is seen against a setting sun in a red sky. Cattle Depot is tinted in red. A cow is in the far background watching the sunset behind the glass grid.
The symbol of ‘Negation’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot.

NEGATION: the exact opposite of something; the act of causing something not to exist or to become its opposite (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
This political system was the negation of democracy.

POWER

The symbol that represents the physical concept of ‘Power’ from the Dutil-Dumas message.
A giant panda sits on the symbol of 'power' built with black 'Polished Blackstone Slab' outside Cattle Depot. The panda is eating green bamboo greedily. A few cows can be seen scattered in the background around the other symbols, oblivious of the panda. Cattle Depot is on the left of the symbol, the glass grid structure is on the right.
The symbol of ‘Power’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. A giant panda is sitting on the symbol and devouring bamboo.

POWER: political control of a country or an area (Oxford Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
The present regime has been in power for more than 70 years.

Charge

The symbol that represents the physical concept of ‘Charge’ from the Dutil-Dumas message.
A peaceful herd of cows gather near the symbol of 'charge'. This is a top aerial view. The black sign is seen on grey concrete ground. On the top left corner of the image are some brown granite and a metal fence, hinting that Cattle Depot is on the left side of the image.
The symbol of ‘Charge’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. A peaceful herd of cows gather near the symbol.

CHARGE: an official claim made by the police that somebody has committed a crime (Cambridge Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• Peaceful protesters were charged with rioting.

Mass

The symbol that represents the physical concept of ‘Mass’ from the Dutil-Dumas message.
It's daytime. A paranoid cow stares at my camera in the foreground. Behind the cow is the symbol of 'mass' built with 'Polished Blackstone Slab' on the road outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. Two more signs can be seen further in the background. There are other cows wandering around. The glass grid structure is on the right side of the image.
The symbol of ‘Mass’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. A paranoid cow is staring at my camera.

MASS: affecting or involving a large number of people or things (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
Mass surveillance of private communication concerns us all.

Detention (video game)

A scene from the game Detention. A girl in school uniform is in the foreground of a dark sinister gym. On the stage there is a male teacher and a seated girl also in school uniform. On the left of image there are 2 lines of Japanese text. The Japanese language was widely used, as Taiwan was a colony of Japan for 50 years before it was defeated in WWII. On the wall of the gym is a portrait of Sun Yet-sen, the founder of Chinese Nationalist Pary (KMT).
A scene from the game Detention. On the left of image, there are 2 lines of Japanese text. The Japanese language was widely used, as Taiwan was a colony of Japan for 50 years before it was defeated in WWII. On the wall of the gym, there is a portrait of Sun Yet-sen, the founder of Chinese Nationalist Pary (KMT).

Detention (Chinese: 返校; lit.: ‘Returning to School’) is a horror adventure video game created and developed by Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games for Steam. It is a 2D atmospheric horror side-scroller set in 1960s Taiwan under martial law. The game also incorporates religious elements based on Taiwanese culture and mythology. A live action film adaptation distributed by Warner Bros. Taiwan was released on 20 September 2019.

The game references Taiwan’s White Terror period, when martial law was enforced on the citizens. The White Terror era refers to the suppression of political dissidents following the 228 Incident, an uprising that began on Feb. 27, 1947, which was brutally suppressed by the then-Chinese Nationalist Pary (KMT) regime. The government subsequently imposed martial law, which was lifted on July 15, 1987.

Another scene from the game. The point of view of the audience is from a window of a classroom. The grill of the window resembles the grill of a prison cell. The light is warm, soft and diffused. 7 male students, heads down, carrying school bags queue up behind some desks. The student at the head of the queue opens his bag for inspection by a police officer.
A scene from the game.

The background of the story centers on the love affair between a student and a teacher in 1960s Taiwan. The teacher helped smuggle banned books for a secret book club in the school, and when the love affair turned sour, the student reported the book club to the authorities. Consequently, the students and teachers who were involved in the club were sentenced to death or 15 years in prison.

Such persecution was very common during the White Terror period. The punishment was actually much more brutal in reality.

INTERACTIONS [Landscape]

I think a good landscape should be enticing and thought-provoking. The power of landscape design is immense and should never be underestimated. As I mentioned before for this reincarnation of Tuner I plan on bringing it back underground to grow the sense enclose, need for air and to assist in the game plays interactions of fish collecting practices.

SCANNERS
The Scanner is like a radar mechanism, when found and attached to the boats roof hook, all 3 of it orbs rotate about their orbits, at each turn displacing a line to their nearest corresponding subject, ie Fish, Junk and Rockets. All these three orbs speeds can be controlled individually sonically creating an ever phasing sequence. Initially this control was access via the Midi protocol each orb having their own physic knob here on earth. But now the foam of interacting will need to be re-designed into the GUI interface.
The scanner is also a lantern for dark zones epically when the internal torchlight fades due to the boats’ strength depletion . I will supply the new scanner in operation (video), here below are some (blurred) old in game shots.

Continue reading “INTERACTIONS [Landscape]”

Part 2: Animal Crossing (Stop playing politics or face a ban)

A scene in Animal Crossing. A black-clad protester with black gas mask stands in the middle of a park with trees in the background and on the left. There is also a bonfire on left. Behind the protester, there are 6 paintings on easels, 2 paintings are with slogans in Chinese character, 1 painting is with an open palm and 1 painting with a finger pointing up. These 2 hand gestures represent the slogan 'Five demands, not one less (fewer)'. On the grass, there are 3 banners with different slogans, images of the protests and key dates in the movement, such as July 21 and August 31, when protesters and passengers in the tube were brutally and indiscriminately attacked by gang of thugs and police.
Image posted by activist Joshua Wong, via Twitter. This is a scene from Animal Crossing. Behind the protester, there are 2 paintings with Chinese slogans. There are also paintings of hand gestures that represent the slogan ‘Five demands, not one less (fewer)’. On the grass, there are 3 banners with different slogans, images of the protests and key dates in the movement, such as July 21 and August 31, when protesters and passengers in the tube were brutally and indiscriminately attacked by gang of thugs and police.

https://hongkongfp.com/2020/11/21/stop-playing-politics-or-face-a-wan-nintendo-warns-animal-crossing-gamers/


• Nintendo told businesses and organisations to “refrain from bringing politics into the game,” and said those who breached the guidelines could be banned.

• US President-elect Joe Biden is also among those who hope to capitalise on the game’s popularity. Biden’s campaign launched its own virtual island last month, allowing players to “volunteer” at the island’s campaign headquarters and visit polling stations. Under the new guidelines, the island is likely to be banned.

• “It is a shame that Nintendo overlooked the significance of this game.”, said Joshua Wong.

The Gaming Industry: Blizaard

Screenshot of Hearthstone Grandmasters streaming event in Taiwan with Hong Kong player Blizchung. It's a split screen with the Taiwan player on the left and Blizchung on the right. This is the moment when he took off his mask to say "Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times".
Screenshot of Hearthstone Grandmasters streaming event in Taiwan with Hong Kong player Blizchung

On October 6, 2019, during the Hearthstone Grandmasters streaming event in Taiwan, Ng Wai Chung, a professional Hearthstone player and resident of Hong Kong known as “Blitzchung”, was being interviewed following his match, during which he donned a mask similar to those worn by protesters in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests and said “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times”. The stream was cut off shortly after. The following day, on October 7, Blizzard announced that Blitzchung had been banned from the current tournament, would forfeit any prize money (approximately US$4,000 by that point), and would be banned from other Grandmaster tournaments for one year.

So, what’s this risograph thing?

Outline image of risograph printed in pink.
An outline image of a risograph machine

As the work I’m developing moves towards the print stage, it’s time to explain a little more about the risograph process.

My print and printmaking experience started with etching (particularly photo-etching), letterpress, and developed to include screenprinting, and various relief processes, before the transition to digital. Last year, I got the opportunity to develop some work with my friend and collaborator Ruth Jones, who suggested we learn to use the risograph process. This post uses images from developing that work.

Continue reading “So, what’s this risograph thing?”

“Hello work”

This morning I came across the following article related to problems with machine translation (which I’ve been referring to as AI transcription). This has been flagged by language professionals in Japan; it was interesting to see them dealing with the same perceptions of mistranslation as just amusing – they raise the problem of the dangers with miscommunication.

“…the group is most concerned about the negative impact that official miscommunications could have on tourism and Japan’s growing foreign community in the case of an earthquake or a medical emergency.”

Living = Dark Matter

“The official website of Meguro ward in Tokyo, for example, renders kurashi – or “living” – as “dark matter”, while the Kobe municipal government, turns sumai (home) as “I’m sorry”, the machine translation having apparently misread the original word as sumanai, a casual form of apology.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/18/hello-work-or-job-centre-language-experts-japan-english

Hong Kong protesters borrow tactics from battle royale game

First-aid kits that looks like zip-lock bags with pink disinfectant solution, saline and bandages, were left along the roadside next to some plants. They were arranged in a straight line around 1 metre apart.
First-aid kits were left along the roadside for protesters to pick up. Each pack contains saline, bandages and other essential supplies.
A scene in the battle royale game Pubg with nine mobile first aid kits scattered on the ground. There a carpet with the gamer's avatar helping another, a first aid kit that is opened to show the content such as scissors and bandages.
A scene in the battle royale game Pubg with mobile first aid kits scattered on the ground.

Hong Kong protesters borrowed tactics from online multi-player games such as PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (Pubg). They would leave supplies such as helmets, masks, umbrellas, water and first aid kits along the roadside for others to pick up.

In the beginning of the movement (June 2019), there were supplies stations at protest sites. Protesters communicated with each other using hand signs, so that supplies could be passed down a human chain to frontliners. But later police began to crack down on these supplies stations. As many protesters are from a generation that grew up with gaming, they very naturally had a tacit understanding with each other that led them to take up different positions during confrontations with the police. Supplies such as helmets, umbrellas, water and first-aid kits were left along the road side for frontliners to pick up as in Pubg.

In October 2019, a Japanese writer/journalist Minetoshi Yasuda for Bungeishunjū came to Hong Kong to research about the protest. After conducting a series of interviews with frontliners, he concluded that protesters were familiar with military tactics because many of them were players of survival games and fans of Japanese manga and anime. He called the protest movement ‘Otaku War’.

TUNER

Tuner an audiovisual piece originally designed as an experimental live AV project showing initially at Somerset House Londons AGM 2018 festival (since performed at Club Adriatico, L.E.V. Festival, Genot Centre, MK Gall, Xolo,Bleep) and has endured various reincarnations. Now as part of Vital Capacities residency I am developing it to be playable piece as a download and also a recorded showcase! The project has primarily been designed from a solo performance point of view. Programming all the input events and actions via audio instrument protocols with MIDI and OSC. This was to allow a unique haptic setup where I could control multiple elements live and be more at home, as it is part of my music practice also, recsund!
Continue reading “TUNER”

Environmental Issues in Game/ Sims

Apocalypse in games is considered the norm in the game industry, often focusing on first person shooters. Games that involve ethical dilemnas are not as common. However things are changing! I’m going to use this as a simple thread of collecting environmentally conscious and educational storylines in games and simulations.

U.S. Chemical Safety Board
SeriousGeoGames
/Discarded computer products in a municipal landfill. The majority of second-hand electrical goods that are imported to Ghana from developed countries are beyond repair and are either dumped or crudely “recycled”. Greenpeace is campaigning to pressurise the producers of electronic goods to remove the hazardous chemicals from their goods and to become more responsible for end-of-life products.

Next-Gen Gaming Is an Environmental Nightmare
https://www.wired.com/story/xbox-playstation-cloud-gaming-environment-nightmare
Morphy
A Bit like my game /project ‘Tuner’ Morphy stars Morphy, an alien who has crash-landed on an unknown planet and needs to find his missing crew members. Designed to teach players the fundamentals of animal adaptation, players must face a slew of challenging platforming obstacles that can only be overcome by scanning animals whose traits are specialized to their environments. The scanned traits can then be added to Morphy’s abilities, helping players better navigate the gorgeously illustrated environment present in the metroidvania-style game. Morphy is one of six digital STEM learning games created by Filament Games for the Smithsonian Science Education Center.
Rust

Survival games have been a long time in the making but as of late they have ..evolved 😛 . Rust is a good example of gaining trust with fellow players in order to stay alive but also brutal in its human betrayals 🙁

ECO
An expansive, open-world online survival game, Eco tasks players with collaborating with one another in order to build a sustainable civilization using only the resources available to them within the game’s simulated ecosystem. Faced with the threat of an impending meteor collision, players must work together to build a society capable of stopping the meteor without destroying the ecosystem in the process.

Force

The symbol that represents the physical concept of ‘Force’ from the Dutil-Dumas message.
The Dutil-Dumas symbol of 'force' is built with dark grey 'Polished Blackstone Slab' on the main road outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. The image shows a night scene with street lights in the background. The front entrance of Cattle Depot is on the left. A panda bear is checking out the newly built sign on a starry night, to see if there's anything suspicious.
The symbol of ‘Force’ outside the virtual space of Cattle Depot. Panda is checking out the sign to see if there’s anything suspicious.

FORCE: violent physical action used to obtain or achieve something (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

Example sentence:
• The government has relied on brute force to respond to public discontent.

Recreating Hong Kong protest experience in VR game

A night scene in a home-made VR game by Hong Kong activists. Protesters stand behind a barricade as police deploy tear gas. The barricade is made with metal barriers dismantled from the sidewalk. The protesters with yellow helmets and gas masks stand in the foreground  with their backs facing the audience. The barricade is in the mid-ground. The cityscape of Hong Kong with neon signs and high rises are the backdrops of this scene.
A scene in a home-made VR game by Hong Kong activists.

In October 2019, a group of Hong Kong activists have developed a homemade computer game that uses virtual reality to recreate what it is like to take part in pro-democracy protests sweeping the financial hub. Put together in less than a week, “Liberate Hong Kong” allows gamers to don a VR headset and dodge tear gas and rubber bullets during a nighttime clash in the district of Mongkok, a regular scene of battles between police and protesters in the real world.

The developers said they decided to create the game after local eSports player Ng “Blitzchung” Wai Chung was punished by Blizzard Entertainment for shouting a pro-democracy slogan during a live-streamed interview following a competition win.

https://hongkongfp.com/2019/11/13/hong-kong-protests-re-imagined-homemade-virtual-video-game/

Audio description of the visual of the above video

On the other hand, there is a protest game in China called ‘Everyone Hit the Traitor’. The web game lets players beat protesters and pro-democracy activists.

Some view the gaming world as a utopian medium to explore and express their social, ethical and political values, but like any technology, gaming is not deterministic, it is not either good or bad. Video games become a platform where the feature of social movement — Movement-countermovement interaction manifests itself. The pro-democracy camp uses video games to express their political views while the pro-establishment camp borrow the same strategy to counter these views. Such interaction is in fact very common in the real world.

Tapestry of Colors

Street shrines and altars, Hong Kong – A deep longing for the vibrant culture and language of Hong Kong. My fondest memories involve our Ancestor altars and festivals around ghosts, the fires, the festivals and the feasts, I miss that rich ancestor based tapestry guiding our lives. Researching altars to recreate my own altar for my piece.

Thinking about the many nights spend enraptured by the burning flames. Remembering my Grandmother teaching me how to fold funerary money with joss paper, the shape resembling gold ingots of time gone by. I remember the festival of Ghosts, the one I fondly called Ghost New Year, where we visited all the graves of our direct ancestors, cleaning their graves, feeding them and praying with them, and finally a feast with them.

Our final gravesite was in the hills covered by fruit trees and an old stone tomb with mottled and dark gray stone. The smell of joss sticks and candles burning mingling with the sweet smell of the fruit trees and the full smells of tangerines, rice wine and roasted pork. Perhaps my fascination as a child is because of the magic surrealism of folk tales, fables and old Chinese festivals mingled together to give me a fantastical childhood full of legends, Ancestors and learnings.

As I prepare this piece I think of all the beautiful moments of richness, sound and tapestry of colors, sounds and sights that filled my childhood.




Access Statement:

Photo of the artist holding smiling behind an industry film camera.
Onset as Cinematographer with LIFT Filmmentor program (2014) Photo by Rolla Tahir.

My name is Jaene F. Castrillon and I am a professional artist residing in Tkaronto, more commonly known as Toronto, Canada. I am an artist that lives with physical, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities. This is my access statement.






First I would like to acknowledge the land that I am on….. Treaty 13 Territory of Tkaronto:

The sacred land on which [I live] has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.

**This statement was developed by the Elders Circle (Council of Aboriginal Initiatives). It was last revised November 6, 2014.**



A note about Land Acknowledgements. Acknowledging the stewardship of Indigenous people of the land is not enough. We much learn their ways and care for the land as well as they have. As part of that contract, it is understood that we must also work on our respect of Indigenous people’s and ways of life. We must also learn to be humble enough to understand that nature has it’s own natural law.
Until we learn to live in collaboration with the people, the land and everything in creation as equals and relations, only then, will the land acknowledgement have any honor in the words. The land is the blood of it’s people. Walk softly on it knowing that as we walk on this land, we walk on the blood and bones of the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples who have resided here far longer and lived with the land far better then us.

I would like to say that, for me, being anti poverty, anti oppressive and anti racist is an accessibility issue. As a person who is 2Spirit (gender non conforming) and Indigenous, it is important for my work environments to be as anti oppressive as possible. This includes removing ablest, homophobic, Trans-phobic, sexist, colonial and oppressive mechanisms and languages in the work we do and the environments we work in.

In addition here are some other infographs from Home Office Digital, to help us understand how to accommodate people living with disabilities that may be different needs from ours. For more information, contact: access@digital.homeoffice.gov.uk

A Conversation (Word Salad)

This week I’ve been focusing on practicalities for making risograph prints. As my region (England) is in lockdown, this involves a lot of forward planning, material purchase and prep that’s not very interesting to read about. So I’ve also been experimenting with AI transcripts to create a little script from some of the most egregious examples of distortion (looking at you, Microsoft Teams).

This has been added as a document and images.

The aim is to give the reader a feel of what it’s like trying to make sense of a situation which isn’t accessible, and the impossibility of acting on information which doesn’t make sense. During the current pandemic, misunderstanding is not merely an amusing anecdote (a la Auberon Waugh’s tale of mishearing “press freedom” and delivering a lecture on “breast feeding”), it’s dangerous. Currently, the UK offers no BSL interpretation for government briefings. While the BBC provides interpreters for government announcements, not everyone has access to the BBC, and clips shown on social media won’t be inherently accessible. And scientific briefings are not shown with BSL interpretation. It’s the government’s responsibility, not the BBC’s. Too many organisations push the responsibility for accessing information onto individuals rather than thinking about how they can make it straightforward.

So, anyway, I’ve been tiger, because you know, the man who chases two hairs catches mom.