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Since the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, anti-Asian racism has increased dramatically across the country. This trend has left many in the Asian American community deeply scarred during a time of confusion and vulnerability for all. In America, Asians exist in a purgatorial status, frequently excluded from conversations about racism. We felt strongly that these stories should not be silenced under the false model minority narrative.
Our project seeks to convey the magnitude of recent hate crimes by depicting stories reported to the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. The simulation is populated with paper figures programmed with varying degrees of aggression walking along generated paths. When figures of different groups cross paths, the collision results in either a neutral or a negative encounter. One of the victim’s limbs falls and a story appears on the ground, which gradually fades away but leaves an imprint that permanently disrupts the landscape. The stories accumulate as the simulation runs until all of the figures are fully dismembered.
This project creates a virtual experience that invites people to relive, rethink, and reflect their responses/ their change of behaviors towards the toilet paper mania during COVID-19. It is constructed as a museum experience with curated items such as footages, quotes, and sculptures about toilet paper. Viewers enter into a toilet paper roll and tour around the content as the water level rises up, which then eventually floods away all information before they can fully process it. This is to mimic how what we experienced forced us into a panic buying situation during the COVID-19. When there is a threat to our survival, panic and fear set in, impeding our rational decision-making. Through this interaction, I would love for people to reflect on the subtle changes in their mental states and behaviors during COVID-19.
What do you do when the world falls apart? Extinction Party is an educational puzzle game that explores the history of life on Earth by looking at the five major mass extinction events. It will take the form of a 3-foot high standing pentagon shape, with each side of the pentagon containing fun ways for participants to explore what life looked like before and after the extinction, and how why scientists think it happened in a certain way.
My thesis project is one side of this theoretical sculpture, which will be playable as a computer game. The game will be a proof of concept for a larger physical sculpture, which would be installed in a museum. I hope that both kids and adults will enjoy playing with it.