It’s an unusually serious and candid piece of writing from me. Don’t worry, I’ll back back to the beautiful frivolity of games in no time.

Here’s some lovely print and video to wet your appetites. Enjoy!

Here’s the blurb that I’ve just posted up on the Larkin’ About site:

Our Manchester Histories Festival project with Library Theatre is well underway. We received a large number of applications from artists, and found it very difficult to whittle them down to five. In the end we chose ideas with lots of potential to engage with local history in a fun and accessible way.

These ideas are currently being developed and tested ready for Saturday 3rd March where there will be an explosion of activity around Manchester Town Hall. Players will be searching and collecting, sneaking and peeking, chasing and racing round one of Manchester’s most beautiful landmarks for one day only.

This programme brings together a diverse group of local artists. Gareth Cutter is exploring the Peterloo Massacre through a chase game depicting the relationship between the cavalry and the protesters. The surreal is explored in Rebeka Haigh’s exotic bird hunt, whilst Bren O’Callaghan gives us a fascinating glance into the experience of Black Elk, a member of the Lakota Sioux Indian tribe who was left stranded in Salford in 1887. Peter Keeley hurls us to the centre of a petty crime at the turn of the century which must be paid for. We are then catapulted to more recent years in Oscar Mike’s team game of secret communication, bluffing and political loyalty.

Further down the line we’ll publish full programme details. Stay tuned!

The marathons are the Brighton Marathon on 15th April 2012, and the Greater Manchester Marathon on 29th April 2012. I intend to ‘race’ Brighton as close to my PB as possible, and to ‘get round’ Manchester as quickly as my abused legs will let me.

I run a fair bit and don’t raise money for charity usually. However, the challenge, at least for me, will be significant so I hope those of you that know me can find a few extra shillings to toss my way as motivation. I’m running for Freedom From Torture, a very worthy charity and one I strongly wish to support in any way I can.

If you want to support this charity and spur me on, check out http://www.justgiving.com/Vee-Uye

In the oddly shaped but charming upstairs bar of Chorlton’s ever popular drinkery, each of the three acts on the line up performed live to selected visuals, lending the night a cinematic air and evoking a relaxed and attentive mood in the audience, the perfect atmosphere for a post Saturday night pint or two.

First on was Vei who improvised a blipped out electronic score over the haunting gameplay footage of the independent art game Limbo. The game is darkly emotive albeit gorgeous in its simplicity and the soundscape woven through it from Vei’s rig felt perfectly synchronous with action on screen. I felt an urgent need to buy the game and to see every gig Vei does from here on out. Level complete?

Limbo

Vei

Next was Manchester based beatboxer/vocal sculpter Jason Singh. The talents of this artist have to be heard to be believed. So listen for yourself. Jason was accompanied by the unbelievable violinist Olivia Moore. I recently caught Olivia improvising with Irfan Rainy, Baba Israel and Contact’s Mixed Movement crew. I didn’t think then that I could be any more impressed with her but I was wrong. Working together to create an improvised score to the urban grotesque short Street of Crocodiles, Jason & Olivia made a formidable team. I was blown away whilst feeling at times distinctly unsettled. But then I always enjoy art that evokes some of the less revered emotions.

Street of Crocodiles

Jason Singh & Olivia Moore

Finally, thebrokendoor, a live drum n bass four piece, played an improvised alternative score to Singing’ in the Rain. The whole thing! When I read the blurb for the night, I’d assumed that they were either going to do some kind of medley or just a version of the classic and eponymous track. This was a reasonable assumption as the proceeding acts were around twenty minutes long. However, as the opening credits rolled, I realised we were indeed going to shown the whole film and I immediately decided I wasn’t in the mood to watch it all. That feeling lasted about thirty seconds. thebrokendoor revolutionised the viewing experience of the film, incidental music enhancing the hilarity of already funny scenes and the drum and bass updates of the film’s show tunes had me dancing in my seat. Before I knew it, the film was over and I was already thinking about other movies I’d like to see get thebrokendoor treatment.

Singin' in the Rain

thebrokendoor

All in all, not bad for a Sunday evening in a local boozer. Hands down highlight of my week.

Event images pinched from Paul Green.

Early push for the next Larkin’ About event in the calendar. Click on the poster for more info.

Problems? Sure. There’s always loads we can learn from running events like this but we are pleased to say that the night was a success and we look forward to many more.

I’ll be posting at the Larkin’ About site with more information on the event itself, images, video etc during the coming few days. In the meantime, here’s a lovely write up at musingfrommanchester.com.

MixTape.

During the event, I ran my first new game since last year’s 7:Candles:Mcr. The game is called MixTape and I’ve very pretentiously described it as:

an infinitely recursive player collaboration

or

ten lies we told about love.

What I mean by the description is that each playthrough of MixTape generates content from the players that is then used as the basis for the next playthrough.

Context.

The piece is inspired by Hannah Nicklin & Jason Rohrer. In fact, the ‘infinitely recursive’ element is pulled directly from Rohrer’s description of his shooter Inside a Star-filled Sky. Rohrer makes beautiful digital games with big themes – love, collaboration, loneliness, death – and was the first designer that enabled me to understand that games have that capacity, as much if not more than more traditional forms of narrative and/or interactive media. Hannah Nicklin wrote a gorgeous soundwalk/unrehearsed performance called The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You, which I took part in and was incredibly moved by. Upon mediating on the work of both Rohrer & Nicklin, MixTape was conceived.

Mechanics.

There is a search & find element to Mixtape. I placed 9 analogue cassette tapes around the ground floor of Contact, in obvious and not so obvious places. But finding the cassettes was not the essential element of player interaction and I imagine in the future that I will replace this facet altogether.

Players start off in groups of 3, each with a cassette Walkman (provided) and a games sheet mocked up to look like a cassette inlay sleeve.

The players worked in a team, each responsible for finding and listening to 3 of the 9 cassettes. On each cassette was a song I had picked with a monolgue mixed over the top. At the end of each track, the players heard the song title, the artist and the running order of the song.

The objective was to write down the correct sequence, artist, and song title information on the cassette inlay. Players had to regroup and share information and experiences to do this. Finally, each player chose a ‘Track 10′, a song that they would put on their own mixtape. They then wrote a short explanation of what that song meant or triggered in them, or why it should be included.

That was the game on the night. But MixTape doesn’t end there.

I will use the chosen Track 10′s to record a new set of monologues, inspired by the players’ words and the mood of their chosen songs. These will then be recorded onto a new batch of cassettes and the process will start again. Hence, an infinitely recursive player collaboration. Each playthrough generating and inspiring new player content.

At least that’s the plan.

Narrative.

My experiences and understanding of mixtapes is that always making them for people I liked or loved. There was something very personal about painstakingly selecting a set of songs that you than gave to another person in a very exposing way. So rather than being about that other person, mixtapes always about yourself. They are the way in which you wish to be perceived and the words you wished you had spoken.

Speaking with Larkin’ Agent #3, people make mixtapes for different reasons too (long journeys, for instance) but MixTape is very much about being in and out of love. Therefore, the narratives or monologues I recorded were about different stages in different relationships, both autobiographical and completely fictional. It will be interesting to see how much of the thematic remains intact as players begin to shape the narrative for themselves.

What went right.

I was very nervous about the monologues, both in terms of my vocal delivery (I’m not a natural public speaker) and in terms of the frank nature of the content. I usually squirrel away my creative writing free from the potential criticisms of others. However, I was very pleasantly surprised that most of the feedback from the game consisted on praise for the writing.

Players really seemed to get into the idea MixTape as an ongoing process in which they are now part of, which I’m really pleased about as, for me, that is the entire purpose of the venture.

I also got the impression that players found it beautiful. Again, couldn’t ask for more in that respect.

Finally, the retro-technology worked. Thankfully.

What went wrong.

Two main things I picked up on. First, The levels weren’t quite right on the recordings. As I often spoke over music, the process of recording on computer, then to CD, then to tape, coupled with the fact that players were listening to these cassettes in a fairly busy bar, meant that some of my narration was hard to hear. Definitely room for improvement here.

Second, more people wanted to play MixTape than actually got to play it. I had three Walkmans and set groups off every half hour, figuring the game to take roughly 30 minutes. During this time, potential players had to wait for the Walkmans to come back and a lot of people simply didn’t get a chance to play. If I had, for instance, 9 Walkmans, I could have continuously rolled out players every 10 minutes. I will certainly do this in the future.

All in all, a successful and promising first outing for MixTape. I’m looking forward to running it again. And again. And again…

Much has happened since my last post. I’ll fill y’all in soon.

In the meantime, how about you have a looksee at my next event with Larkin’ About? As well as organising the event, I’m running a new game called MixTape. It’s a work on progress. Expect to see some thoughts on the creative process and how it went up soon.

On Friday night, I’ll be hunted through the streets of Bristol by a horde of zombies during the headline igfest game 2.8 Hours Later.

Now, I have had a life-long love of all things zombie. I’ve played a lot of zombie-survival-horror games and enjoyed some super zombie trash cinema. However, I seem to have recently developed a quite severe fear of the walking dead. Really severe. Just in time for igfest.

Marvellous.

2.8 Hours Later from SlingShot on Vimeo.