Sara Fowler is a Colorado-raised, Minneapolis-based human specializing in graphic design and illustration. She previously worked in-house for the Aspen Art Museum and the Walker Art Center, and is an MCAD graduate (BFA '12). She was recently honored to receive Print Magazine's 2015 Regional Design Annual award, Best in Far West for exhibition catalogue design.
Ben Moren is a Minneapolis based media artist working at the intersection of filmmaking, performance, and creative coding. He is an Assistant Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design teaching in the Media Arts department and the Web+Multimedia Environments major.
Tyler Stefanich uses installations, performances, and software-based systems to explore issues related to history, memory and identity. Currently he lives and works in Los Angeles, California, as manager of the UCLA Game Lab, a creative research center that combines art and technology.
Type of proposal
talk &/or artwork
Description
Collective Action! invites you to work together with other participants to perform creative, collective actions responding to climate change issues. Start by using your phone to explore the Collective Action! mobile website, create a unique avatar, join a team, and prepare to perform!
The core gameplay invites players to perform short actions with other audience members in an informal and collaborative setting. We are calling the prompts which incite these performances collective action tasks. These performances are facilitated by large scale public projection which helps queue players to form groups and provides a collection of tasks for the group of players to perform together. The game will address unique themes around climate change such as water issues or animal impact. Each theme will affect the way we handle projected animations, imagery, the rendering of typography for the collective action tasks, how player’s avatars interact on the projection, how the layout of the space and collective action performance area are organized, and most importantly, the poetic tone of, and type of, interactions the collective action tasks utilize.
As a way of having participants enact and rehearse the kinds of collective actions we need to undertake to combat climate change, one collective action task might invite a group of participants to personify pieces of an abstract phenomenon, like a rain storm. In this case, the prompt can take on a poetic tone where the group performing together reveal the storm. Thinking about a water/perceive theme the prompt becomes; player1, you are a cloud hovering above; player2 you are the sun trying to peek through the clouds; player3, you are rain falling down; player4 you are lightning striking the ground; player5, you are thunder rolling across the hills; player6, you are caught in the storm without an umbrella. Perform the rainstorm.
As a talk:
We would like to discuss Collective Action's Local networked multiplayer & non-competitive game format as a critique on networks which are used to monetize your data. When this happens, video game genres are dominated by “freemium” titles and Massive Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) where mobile gaming encourages solitary, isolated gameplay. Collective Action! is a game that provides potential for bringing people together and interactive art experiences into public spaces. Collective Action! is a game that uses mobile gaming for cooperative and improvisational social games.
As an artwork:
We will present the game for festival/conference members to play!
Duration (not needed for artworks)
As a talk 15-20 minutes with 15 minutes for questions.
As an Artwork : N/A
Workshop technical requirements and materials list (if applicable)
N/A
Artwork installation requirements (if applicable)
We need a projector, projection surface, and network connectivity. (A computer to run the project would be appreciated, but we can furnish one if need be)
Collective Action!
Name : Ben Moren, Sara Fowler, Tyler Stefanich Location : Minneapolis MN / Los Angles CA Email : ben@benmoren.com || hello@collectiveaction.info Twitter : @bmoren GitHub : bmoren Url(s) : http://collectiveaction.info || http://benmoren.com || http://tylerstefanich.com || http://saradellefowler.com
Speaker Bio
Sara Fowler is a Colorado-raised, Minneapolis-based human specializing in graphic design and illustration. She previously worked in-house for the Aspen Art Museum and the Walker Art Center, and is an MCAD graduate (BFA '12). She was recently honored to receive Print Magazine's 2015 Regional Design Annual award, Best in Far West for exhibition catalogue design.
Ben Moren is a Minneapolis based media artist working at the intersection of filmmaking, performance, and creative coding. He is an Assistant Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design teaching in the Media Arts department and the Web+Multimedia Environments major.
Tyler Stefanich uses installations, performances, and software-based systems to explore issues related to history, memory and identity. Currently he lives and works in Los Angeles, California, as manager of the UCLA Game Lab, a creative research center that combines art and technology.
Type of proposal
talk &/or artwork
Description
Collective Action! invites you to work together with other participants to perform creative, collective actions responding to climate change issues. Start by using your phone to explore the Collective Action! mobile website, create a unique avatar, join a team, and prepare to perform!
The core gameplay invites players to perform short actions with other audience members in an informal and collaborative setting. We are calling the prompts which incite these performances collective action tasks. These performances are facilitated by large scale public projection which helps queue players to form groups and provides a collection of tasks for the group of players to perform together. The game will address unique themes around climate change such as water issues or animal impact. Each theme will affect the way we handle projected animations, imagery, the rendering of typography for the collective action tasks, how player’s avatars interact on the projection, how the layout of the space and collective action performance area are organized, and most importantly, the poetic tone of, and type of, interactions the collective action tasks utilize.
As a way of having participants enact and rehearse the kinds of collective actions we need to undertake to combat climate change, one collective action task might invite a group of participants to personify pieces of an abstract phenomenon, like a rain storm. In this case, the prompt can take on a poetic tone where the group performing together reveal the storm. Thinking about a water/perceive theme the prompt becomes; player1, you are a cloud hovering above; player2 you are the sun trying to peek through the clouds; player3, you are rain falling down; player4 you are lightning striking the ground; player5, you are thunder rolling across the hills; player6, you are caught in the storm without an umbrella. Perform the rainstorm.
As a talk: We would like to discuss Collective Action's Local networked multiplayer & non-competitive game format as a critique on networks which are used to monetize your data. When this happens, video game genres are dominated by “freemium” titles and Massive Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) where mobile gaming encourages solitary, isolated gameplay. Collective Action! is a game that provides potential for bringing people together and interactive art experiences into public spaces. Collective Action! is a game that uses mobile gaming for cooperative and improvisational social games.
As an artwork: We will present the game for festival/conference members to play!
Duration (not needed for artworks)
As a talk 15-20 minutes with 15 minutes for questions. As an Artwork : N/A
Workshop technical requirements and materials list (if applicable)
N/A
Artwork installation requirements (if applicable)
We need a projector, projection surface, and network connectivity. (A computer to run the project would be appreciated, but we can furnish one if need be)
Performance requirements (if applicable)
N/A
Et cetera...
Documentation rough cut from Northern Spark 2017: https://vimeo.com/223796594 Password: action