As our last class (and last presentation week) we showed whatever artefacts we wanted, whether new or old and a written statement about about work (this was mostly to be done in week five to prepare for this last class). Trouble getting things to work in the artefact meant I wasn't able to write a statement, but did talk about it on the day.
Some feedback I got from presenting to the class this week was that the terrain textures had a nearly pre-colonial look to it and that the sky's color worked with it well. It has an evocative feel to it while it rested on a the character standing with a mountain/cliff and the sun behind it (image below without the character). There were remarks about how the black mist worked in my favor despite them being a mistake and technical failure. Similarly, how the water at certain parts moved differently (flow direction was perpendicular), both are displayed below also.
Unfortunately, due to a technical issue I was not able to show an older work (Week four's prototype) on the VR. This worked for the better as when I was able to test it, the level was very slow/lagged (this can cause players to become VR sick). It also feed back into the ability to show that the games can work between 3rd Person and VR, but only if the assets are VR Ready (low polygon numbers meaning the headset can do less in terms of showing the game).
Updated Research Question:
How might designing a VR experience that as a tactic harnesses strangeness (uncanny aesthetics), lensed through a te ao Māori pūrākau worldview, build a meaningful user experience that informs about pūrākau (Māori storytelling) through interaction and play?
(Re)doing the statement:
My projects over the course of this class have gone from merely making for the sake of making and to do with a research question that felt empty/incomplete. While each increment had something to do with a previous week's it was loose and lacking something. It lay in just the virtual reality and "play" contexts, where, while cool to look at, had no real substance. This changed as I adopted Māori stories and a more Māori approach to it. The stories seemed to give the projects more life and character, basically what it was missing before. Strangeness came with the change more so than it did without it, shaping other class' work as well.
Change came from the reading of Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers. The prologue (featured in Week five's prototype as audio wayfinding) uses the Māori creation story and so does Te Pō, by Patricia Grace, a short poem on the world's creation. The short story Kurungaituku, by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, inspired strangeness in the form of character, where the protagonist is a half-bird half-woman ogress named Kurungaituku.
This then employed the Māori methodology Pūrākau. Pūrākau, known to many as Māori Storytelling, is the use of myths and legends that shaped people's way of life and how they lived. Used as more history than bed-time story, it meant that one would/should respect their surroundings as it was like an ancestor.
My personal use of this is in conjunction with Iterative Design Processes (IDP). Where Conceptualization is the creation of the world (in the Māori mythological sense), Prototyping is the different recounting of the stories (how different people may say the story differently), and Playtesting becomes the coming together of multiple accounts to fill the story and make it better. There is another method that I plan to use, not from IDP, and it is Participatory Research in the form of recording voice actors who will narrate the project's wayfinding. This method connects to Pūrākau via oral storytelling, the way older generations would tell the stories and whakapapa they new.
The keywords I worked with throughout this class were:
Ephemeral, Solid, Standardized
Dissolve, Layer, Amalgamate
Interpret, Locate
Virtual, Participate
All of which, I feel, correlate with my making and coming to a new avenue (using Pūrākau). Solid marks the foundations on which the Māori creation story sits, Standardized sees it to be thought about for the future (making useful the indigenous beliefs), while Ephemeral shows time's shortness despite how long it may feel. Dissolve strips back all the layers and moves toward Te Kore, the nothing and the beginning. Layer then adds it on in due time and moves to Te Pō. Amalgamate then ties in Papa and Rangi, merging more.
Interpret and Locate are what the player will use, they will take what information they will, and locate themselves accordingly but also locating where they are in the space and what the space means. Virtual and Participate are the forms in which they are presented the work, on a digital/virtual platform with obligatory participation to make it through the world they are in.
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