Focus
video game demo with custom Arduino controller, built in Unity with pre-made assets and custom shader (2025)
- This prototype is part of my explorations in anonymisation, redaction and physical obscuration.
- I conceptualised an interactive space where conflict narratives play out with you as either active or passive witness with the choice of what to focus on and what level of clarity to capture it in. It is intended to encourage reflection on the role your own values have in your instinctual capture of events, and how certain witnessing actions align with certain roles or belief systems. I'd love to build further on this initial demo.
- Some of the questions I'm considering here are:
- how might a player respond to taking the role of witness and being given little active power
- how does the explicit role of designated witness affect your behaviour in the conflict
- how can the physical, tangible control mechanism make you more aware of this role
- how might socio-political alignment affect what you're likely to capture
- what is the range of witnessing behaviour in various settings of conflict
- how can resolution/pixelation/focus act as obscuration of truths that need to be outed
- how can resolution/pixelation/focus act as anonymisation of vulnerable subjects
- how can we encourage ethics of care in political journalism
the primary mechanic is to 'focus' or 'blur' the images you choose to capture, as a conscious choice to display actions of individuals or groups or to leave them 'unwitnessed'