A new urban sport in which the players act solely as supporters. They have to motivate passers-by to kick the ball in the opponents goal.
This is a funny, simple social game that has to be played in public space. Passers-by get to be the players and the players get to be the supporters. The roles of audience and participators get completely switched. It’s a game about connection with strangers and motivating them to be playful for just a few seconds and rewarding them for it with enthousiasm and applause.
Made during a one week seminar at the Utrecht School of Arts by Ies, Robin, Rick and Joël.
Project Lens is an urban game for two players. Using simple technology, ones fate is put in the hands of the other. They have to work closesly together to difuse the bomb.
One of them is blindfolded, and has a camera on his head. The other sees the live feed of the camera on a screen in the “Command Post”.The player behind the screen has to guide the other player through a series of assignments. He does this by giving verbal directions over the headsets both players are wearing. The players have limited time to achieve the goals, otherwise they might not survive…
Played at
We were invited to organise this game in 2010 at the LAU International Theatre Festival in Beirut, Libanon. You can see a compilation video of the trip here. It also includes some gameplay.
We also played this game at:
2010, june 26
2010, september 13
2010, november 27
2011, march 26
2011, june 18
2013, september 13
Fruitfest
Leidsche Rijn festival
Open day Utrecht School of Arts
Open day Utrecht School of Arts
Festival De Beschaving
Rezone Festival
We invented a company called Cerberus Defence. This is a military research company that specializes in the appliance of digital technologies in a military environment.
They developed Project Lens as a way to prevent or reduce posttraumatic stress disorder under soldiers caused by seeing horrific things on the battlefield. With this method, the soldier in the field will never see the traumatic things around him. The soldier in the command post does see them, but only on a screen. People nowadays are used to seeing the most gory things on a screen, without having any trouble sleeping at night.
Project Lens is offered on festivals and such to promote the company, and to get back a lot of test results.
Designing the game
The assignment for this project was to make an urban game. That is a game that can be played outside, in the public space. We experimented a lot with different concepts. One of them was just blindfolding someone and then guiding them through the streets. This proved to be exciting as it was, but we wanted to add an extra element to it. So we decided to separate the guided and the guide as much as possible, with the addition of laptops, headsets and a camera. To make it a more complete performance we added the military setting. For me, this project really proved that a very simple idea can be enough to build a succesful game. I also learned that testing a lot often provides great material.
My role
There were no clearly defined roles in this project. We all worked on the concept and game design. I ended up making the corpse and most of the graphic work, including the logos. After the project I edited the video.
About half a year after the project, I rebuild the technical part from scratch in Max/MSP together with a former classmate that wasn’t on the project before. I also designed new computer graphics. Together with one of my teammates we made the “bomb” that sends feedback back to the command post, using a disassembled keyboard.
Voorbij de Poort is an interactive play in a museum for families. The children get split up from their parents for their own tour, when suddenly the parents go missing. They’re trapped in the statues and paintings in the museum! It’s up to the children to find out what happened and rescue their parents. Maybe the young girl that lived here a long time ago has something to do with the magic disappearance.
Parents cooperated behind the scenes, recorded pre written dialogue and posed for photos which where used in the play.
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De Kapel, Dutch for ‘The Chapel’, is a participatory theatre play in which the audience takes on the roles of different parties in a fictional rehabilitation centre.
This fictional rehabilitation centre is disguised as a pitoresque village within the canals of a fortified island. Antisocial members of society that are a burden to their neighbourhood get relocated there so they won’t be bothering anyone anymore. This is actually a political concept that is realised in at least several European countries.
The audience gets divided in three groups. One group takes on the part of patient, one group is the staff of the centre and the third group will play themselves and form the ‘external commission’.
It’s a special day for the patients and staff in The Chapel. Today an external commission is coming, consisting out of representatives of society. They will each observe one of the patients and advice the rest of the commision on the question if the patient is ready to leave the rehabilitation centre and return to society. It’s up to the patients to be on their best behaviour. The task of the staff is to ensure only the patients that are really finished with their treatment are let go. Some staff members might just have formed a bit too much of a personal and informal connection with their patients and aren’t ready to say goodbye just jet.
This location theatre play is a complex choreography of guiding three different groups that observe eachother, form opinions based on dossiers, fill out bureaucratic forms and make moral descisions at the end.
The groups of patiens and commission members are partly guided by immersive audio monologues that spin the story from a very personal perspective.
Made by ten students of the Utrecht School of Arts. I was resonsible for a large part of the interaction design and I did the visual design.
To view the graphic design work I did for this project click here.
A video compilation of the complete play in Dutch.
On a normal day in December, two youngsters got kidnapped out of two highschool cantinas in Leidsche Rijn, a new neighbourhood in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
What followed was a ten-day online and offline search for the victims and their kidnappers. Why where they kidnapped? What happened? What where the looking for? The local teenagers had to work together to connect the dots that where live acted events, hidden artefacts, websites, social media accounts and other media.
The project was a promotional campaign for the cultural youth club Klub19, a part of Cultuur19.
I was lead game designer on this project.
Team
Sybren Bos
Tamarah de Jager
Sem Kok
Reno Nordkamp
Mirthe van Merwijk
Joël Vegt
Client
Cultuur19
Newspaper article
A player proudly shows his collection of gathered game material.
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