Tagged installation

MERGE is a co-creative experience rooted in communal sitting, interactive games and storytelling. Designed as an interactive exhibit, participants come together to create new constellations and tell original stories in an immersive environment.

This project began as a collaboration with Nadine Khoury, based on our previous thesis-related work. Communal floor-sitting and multiplayer interactive exhibits seemed to go hand in hand. Our initial explorations and sketching led to an interactive experience with four people seated around a large area, collaboratively creating something in the middle. This turned into a literal space (the cosmic kind), with the participants guiding space particles towards each other to co-create constellations.

The interactive experience eventually expanded into a full exhibit, with storytelling and communal sitting at the core. While creating the entire experience was out of scope, the prototype included a fully playable game, a 3D model of the space and an interactive pilot test in the Student Innovation Center.

Process and Background: MERGE: A Collaborative Intervention [PDF]

This project involved creating a proposal for a creative inquiry engaging a temporary community. I focused on connecting two temporary communities:

1. The local community that formed in our neighborhood after the August 2020 Iowa Derecho
2. Present-day exhibit viewers playing a multiplayer videogame

The creative inquiry would involve creating an original interactive experience through which present-day players could experience stories and memories collected from the post-derecho community. The project would also explore interactive videogames within the gallery/exhibition context, investigating how shared interactive experiences can help us preserve, share and learn from past stories.

Framing this work as a proposal rather than a completed game helped us think through the logistics and scheduling for a multi-phase project. It also provided good experience articulating research goals and positioning creative inquiry alongside other academic research and externally funded avenues.

Proposal Details

Concept Art