ECHO & ENCOUNTER


ENCOUNTER is a live-streaming media performance that is live, improvisational, and transmedia. This project constructs a game-like narrative architecture that gives rise to a replayable performance piece. Players remotely interact with an actor to tell a short story that is unique to each playthrough. As a collective audience, you can become a ghost, a voice from the future, an alien swarm, an artificial intelligence, death come to collect, a talking plushie, a game designer who has created a metaverse experience, or something altogether different. Each playthrough offers a unique encounter and a new story.

ECHO was an alternate reality game developed in response to COVID-19. The game was created to promote the physical and mental wellness of players, spur creativity, build community, and experiment with serious game techniques during the pandemic.

THE PROJECT was a Chicago-based alternate reality game. This project was a collaboration with new media artist Sha Xin Wei, the Montreal-based Topological Media Lab, and students at the University of Chicago. This game, which took place between April 1 and April 25, 2013, conveyed a single transmedia story through social media, performative role-playing, responsive media environments, and a series of live games. Over the game’s three and a half weeks, players explored three conspiracy groups that were involved in a shared yet mysterious enterprise. Each group fetishized a different element of the eponymous “project” — sound (Sonos), objects (Ortgeist), and movement (Ilinx) — and offered a divergent perspective on the central science-fiction mystery of the game that involved a strange portal into another world. This game explored the possibilities and limits of play in an early twenty-first century media ecology that is characterized by screen-based entertainments, social media networks, and a blurring of work and play.
An ongoing collaboration around Alternate Reality Games and playable theatre, with University and Chicago transmedia game community, including Fourcast Lab, Patrick Jagoda and Heidi Coleman.