“Sankofa Says” Big Urban Game at Indiecade

“Sankofa Says” is a place-based game that brings people together on the streets of Culver City as part of Indiecade 2014. To succeed, players join flash rallies at local landmarks, make phone calls to answer riddles about local history, and tell truth from neighborhood fiction.

Every adventure requires hitting the streets, meeting new people. Even locals will encounter a few surprises. With a little luck, you will discover strange cinema history, play with public art, and even help tell the story of Culver City yourself.
More on the game: http://www.sankofa.cc
More on our group: http://www.leimertphonecompany.net/

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Memory Cellars

Memory Cellars is an augmented tour of the new Cinema building. The tour is constructed of binaural sound and voice acting to build a speculative future in which the building is a distributed archive and research headquarters for the MemCel company. The fictional characters give competing stories of the mysterious on goings of the company’s research and it’s foundation. The different stories and archival information are distributed throughout the building and triggered by the participant’s proximity. So it’s up to the participant to traverse the building in order to find different narrative clues and put the pieces together. In addition each story ends with a prompt in which the participant can record their own memories or ideas and thus add to the archive.

The Leimert Phone Company

The Leimert Phone Company is a community design project in South Los Angeles. By repurposing payphones, the project seeks to reclaim public space and create cultural portals to local arts, music, and business. South LA is set to change over the next 10 years as planners focus on development around a new subway line through the area. In the face of possible gentrification, how can a community art project deepen neighborhood identity and broaden access to local business? Our collaborative team chose payphones as sites for public intervention and transmedia storytelling tied to justice.

The Leimert Phone team is composed of students from USC and local artists from Leimert Park. Through a 5-week workshop participants formed 3 project groups to develop unique designs. The workshop used rapid-prototyping and playtesting to facilitate lo-fi transmedia designs to share stories and access local music, history, artwork, and business. Each group presented their work on April 6, 2013 to local residents, students, and a panel of expert community organizers. The groups’ presentations included concept videos, detailed design handouts, visual mockups, and a hardware demo. Examples included a phone to play, download, and purchase tickets to local hip-hop acts. Other one sent you on a scavenger hunt to local businesses to collect stories and receive discounts. (Check out group videos http://leimertphonecompany.net/week-4-concept-videos/)

Visions of Aleph

Videogames lie within a matrix of media, fantasy, and physical action. What would it look like to create a game world that makes explicit this complex position? “Visions of Aleph” drops the player into a world made of text and populated by flying whales, a dreamlike liminal space between fantasy and reality. The game invites poetic play and interpretation as the player explores the rich landscape. Each flying whale that they encounter triggers audio of short story snippets, so their choices and affinities within the world determine the order of the stories. With each play through, the narrative pieces are redistributed randomly and create open-ended story systems for the players to reassemble. What meaning will the player find in their various stories? Will the player discover a grounded reality within this fantastical landscape? You’ll have to play to find out.

(Online Version Coming Soon)