Slow Game as Queer(ing) Exergame: Queer Temporality and Desire for Reparation
Abstract:
Exergames are a category of games that typically involve full-body interactions for physical exercise. Mainstream exergame design and research often adopt a proceduralist approach, focusing on game systems and rules. By questioning this proceduralist approach—which is embedded with heteronormative and universally objective consciousness—I propose the concept of Queer(ing) Exergame to reconsider the neoliberal consciousness inherent in this methodology. Queer(ing) Exergame draws from feminist and queer game studies to advocate for queer temporality and desire, aiming to explore other potentialities in exergame design and research. I will use “Slow Game” (SG) as a strategy for Queer(ing) Exergame, challenging notions of efficiency, productivity, and linear progression in game mechanics, gameplay, and game design. SG is an assemblage of three different agents: the game, the player, and the designer. By embracing “slow” as a resistance to neoliberal and normative consciousness, we can form a queer(er) exergame mechanics, play, and design.
In Subversive Gaming. Palgrave Games in Context. Eds. Aparajita Bhandari and Sara Bimo. Palgrave MacMillan. Publication (Upcoming)
Asymmetric VR Installation and Repertoire: Time and Space in Collaborative Interaction
Abstract:
In contrast to most of the asymmetric media research in HCI that centers on the efficiency of collaboration, this paper ex plores the utilization of asymmetric Virtual Reality (VR) in stallations in storytelling to capture the fragmented time and space inherent in archival materials. I will use my VR project “East Beijing Road” as a case study to discuss how the asym metric mechanism aligns with the concept of repertoire and enhances storytelling by merging disparate time and space through audiences’ collaborative interactions.
Chang, Haoran. “Asymmetric VR Installation and Repertoire: Time and Space in Collaborative Interaction.” In Companion Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), June 21-30, 2024, Brisbane, Australia. https://www.isea-symposium-archives.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024_Haoran_Asymmetric_VR_Installation_and_Repertoire_Time_and.pdf
Ludic Reenactment in Queer Game: Queer Affect and Queer Histories
Abstract:
In this short paper, I will argue that ludic reenactment in the queer game creates a queer time reflecting the emotions of the queer experiences by looking at a small indie game Bottoms Up: A Historical Gay Bar Tycoon by Mo Cohen. Rather than seeing ludic reenactment as a representation of the past, player’s decision makings create different narratives of the past which becomes a queer micro-world building. The multiple histories do not present the past loyally, yet they form as “Anarchive”, re-enacting the oppressive past for re-orienting queer history.
Chang, Haoran. 2023. “Ludic Reenactment in Queer Game: Queer Affect and Queer Histories.” In Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’23 Companion), October 10–13, 2023, Stratford, ON, Canada. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3573382.3616046
Emersive VR: An Expanded Immersive VR Practice
Abstract:
Creating an immersive isolated virtual environment is the canon in the current mainstream virtual reality (VR) practice and design. Audiences are usually situated in a singular and complete form of space in VR to receive the fully immersive experience. Nevertheless, in this article, I propose a different way of thinking about the practice and design of VR. Rather than seeing VR as a singular and isolated space in relation to other spaces, I am considering a potentiality to have a more expansive and reflexive VR practice and design. I call this emersive VR in contrast to immersive VR. Emersion is a concept borrowing from body ecology, which is a field based on the philosophy of awakening and consciousness. Emersion in body ecology is different from immersion in that people can still sustain self-consciousness without being subsumed by the other. In the notion of emersive VR, audiences are not located in a singular and complete virtual space but in a differential space between the physical and the virtual. The spatial difference is folded through the VR experience perceived by the audiences. In this article, I highlight two different approaches to construct an emersive VR experience: expanded sensory VR and reflexive storytelling. In both, audiences are not isolated in a singular virtual world but in a differential space with multiple embodiments. Emersive VR is a reconfiguration of immersive VR. It is to expand the idea of immersive VR and sketch a more dynamic future of VR as a critical medium.
Chang, Haoran. 2021. “Emersive VR: An Expanded Immersive VR Practice.” Virtual Creativity 11, no. 2. Doi：https://doi.org/10.1386/vcr_00055_1
This paper was edited based on my MFA dissertation, which can be found here:
Photogrammetry And Zhongshan Pavilion: Reconstructing Urban Memory Of The Wenxi Fire
Abstract:
In accordance with the government’s scorched-earth policy, on November 12, 1938, a devastating fire was started in the city of Changsha, China. This military strategy calls for the intentional burning and destruction of all valuable resources, such as buildings, food, and transportation infrastructure, to prevent the invading enemy from utilizing them. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the governor of Changsha followed instructions from the Nationalist government to execute this scorched-earth policy. Yet officials mistakenly initiated the fire too quickly and destroyed the more-than-three-thousand-year-old city. In this fire, thousands of people lost their lives, and the majority of the city’s buildings were destroyed. Referred to today as the Changsha Fire of 1938, or the Wenxi Fire, this event left Changsha one of the most damaged cities during World War II, alongside Stalingrad, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Zhongshan Pavilion is one of the few architectural structures that survived the 1938 Wenxi Fire. As technology widely applied in cultural preservation, photogrammetry can play a significant role in preserving this structure for future generations. Yet this project intends to further the conversation about the role of photogrammetry in memory preservation by considering the Zhongshan Pavilion as a heterogeneous site. The resulting virtual 3-D model opens new potentialities in challenging historical narratives that are told in the singular voice (the state’s) as presented at the physical site in Changsha. Rather than following the path of criticizing digitalization as an extension and magnification of fragmentedness and rootlessness, the constructed virtual 3-D model of Zhongshan Pavilion may expand the fixed and structured memory preserved in the physical location and bring vitality to the preservation of multiple memories in a new kind of public space.
Chang, Haoran. 2020. “Photogrammetry and Zhongshan Pavilion: Reconstructing Urban Memory of the Wenxi Fire.” Refract 3. https://escholarship.org/content/qt9w11p9st/qt9w11p9st_noSplash_684752402a241276584a74cb7bd9a4ed.pdf?t=qloqc9