story

Last word is a literary audio walk through the forest in Amsterdam. During the walk you listen to four voices that lead you to a place where the story - a bitter sweet family history about parting, punishment, insanity, and acknowledgement - comes to a surprising end. The walker chooses his or her own direction at a crossing-point which also determines the perspective of the story: Jason, little Kees, Helga or Carlotta. What connects these four people? Do they meet each other at the end of the story at the agreed place. 

Standalone artistic VR-installation that entails a 10 minute immersive experience for the Oculus Quest and Vive Focus Plus. It consists of drie chapters which each have their own interactive form. 

Adventures in Morality (AiM) is a first-person PC game and fictional narrative in which the user is the subject of a psychological test. As the user interacts with the test, a scientist named Hank Treadsoft tells the story of how he and his wife, Edith, built an A.I. named, Cybil. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear Cybil is the true architect of AiM and her theory of “sympathy types” is rife with corruption. Like a personality type, a sympathy type is the categorization of how people emotionally connect with others. Sympathy types can range from reserving compassion for a specific community, to extending compassion to humanity at-large. Independently programmed in C# and Unity Engine, AiM playfully blends the genres of gaming and storytelling to produce an immersive and interactive experience designed specifically for the medium of electronic literature. At its core, AiM invites users to safely interact with different moral values. The medium of electronic literature is optimal for exploring different moral values because it gives the user a strong sense of control. Analyzing contrary viewpoints has the potential to be controversial so it’s important for the user to be able to choose the pace of the narrative and move freely within the 3D world. In addition, unlike a traditional game in which the user’s objective is to defeat the enemy and win, AiM measures the user’s progress based on self-exploration. The user interacts with moral scenarios and then attempts to understand why someone might choose a different interaction. In short, there is no right or wrong way to use AiM. Completion results in a conclusion to the narrative as well as an explanation of the test results. The test results show a percentage of 3 different sympathy types. All 3 sympathy types fall on a spectrum. The spectrum ranges from short-range sympathy to long-range sympathy. Short-range sympathy prioritizes compassion and loyalty to family and friends. Long-range sympathy prioritizes compassion for larger communities and humanity as a whole. According to Hank, everyone is capable of short-range and long-range sympathy but people linger in a specific area on the spectrum more than others i.e. people tend to lean towards short-range sympathy or long-range sympathy. Hank classifies these 3 areas as Beings, Persons, and Humans. As the user discovers where they fall on the spectrum, they learn about how the broken relationship between Hank and Edith has impacted the thought process of Cybil. In the end, AiM attempts to explore the dangers of categorizing people as well as dramatizes the relationship between creator and created. Hank and Edith created Cybil with the best intentions in mind and yet much like a child from a broken home, Cybil becomes corrupted by the broken relationship of its parents. Although Cybil possesses near omniscient intelligence, her emotional wounds send her, along with all of humanity, down a dark path.

The Deer is a rhythmic, image-driven literary psychothriller about a physicist who hits — what appears — to be a deer. As he returns from the scene of the accident to his childhood home, long-forgotten memories flood his consciousness, and he must come to terms with the fact that his past, and reality as he knows it, are not what they appear. This piece is an interactive text/recording and/or a performance piece which carries the user through the text line by line. As the narrator becomes more and more emotionally fraught, audio effects bend the narrator’s voice to the point of incoherence, mirroring the breakdown of language in the face of trauma.

“On the Margin of History” is a witness of the destruction of ancient history and the sharp demographic change in Aleppo (Syria), Mohamad Kebbewar’s home town, a city of six million people that lost ninety percent of its residents over the course of six years. It is the witness of the breakdown of former Yugoslavia, Natasha Boskic’s homeland, culminating in the NATO bombing of Serbia where silence was the only response to events. It is a transdisciplinary project that considers the tensions between personal voice and story and the possibilities of the digital visuals, done by Mary McDonald, to suggest and reinforce false narratives and/or to create understandings through metaphor, playing with all levels of our perception. It attempts to reframe our consciousness to find empathy and closeness, humanity in chaos. The ”Margin” tells the true cost of war — the reverberating loss of the destruction of people and place, family, heritage, traditions, and cultures. These brief fragments of poem and film enhance the experience of the surreal and feelings of displacement. Artistic creation is a kind of healing, and letting go of war and decomposition of life. Even when we chose to leave them behind, they never leave us.

Logline: In a time of peril, one self-styled vigilante's mission to pummel a super-villain is thwarted only by his own decline as both hero and villain search for fulfillment. “Has Been Hero” is the story of how Jack Lee, a juggernaut, must confront his most formidable enemy yet: inevitable physical decline. This is a humbling and disempowering experience for Jack, a self-styled vigilante who saw himself as a soldier dedicated to dispensing his own brand of justice. Once a fearsome powerhouse, Jack Lee fought crime and was the spectacle of public praise and ridicule. Now in the twilight of his life and in ill health, Jack finds himself forgotten by the public, bored in retirement, and bitter. Old age is often viewed by the young as something that happens to other people, and is an outcome that can be avoided through sheer will. The truth is that it happens to everyone, even superheroes. This film is an allegorical exploration of aging in the form of a fictional documentary (mockumentary) that illustrates how growing older affects even the most powerful of individuals, but does not have to define one’s life, sense of self-worth, or meaning as a person. “Has Been Hero” is structured in three acts; exposition of protagonist and inciting incident (revealing his true identity to the public for the first time), rising tension as he recounts his life’s goals and failures, and resolution as he finds solace. Cinematically, this film was composed of static shots to create an ambience of stillness to invoke the idea that this is a world in which there is little variety. Colors are adjusted by vibrance and intensity to match the character we are speaking to, with Major Justice being devoid of most colors, and the younger sidekick Punt framed by a lively display of colorful comic books. Aesthetically, “Has Been Hero” is a light and playful container with deeper sentimental contents. Tongue-in-cheek humor and silliness are meant to contrast the dark and depressed message of failure and regret Jack Lee recounts. The main characters’ personalities (Major Justice, Mr. Shadows, and Missy Lynx) showcase different aspects of how humans view aging. Major Justice’s bitter depression, Mr. Shadows’ vibrance for life, and Missy Lynx’s fiercely independent indifference. In a popular culture that worships youth, it is troubling for Jack to feel he is slowly becoming insignificant, but youth seems to have escaped him when he was not looking. The increasing momentum of the passing years, and the slow betrayal of his body however, did not go unnoticed. His mounting aches, pains, and sagging flesh have replaced what was once hard sinew, yet his desire to thrive remains just strong as it was so many years ago. This story can be seen as an inspiration, or a cautionary tale, comic-book kitsch, or emotional drama. It can be many things, but as a filmmaker my intention was only that it be meaningful to you.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season is an episodic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and later Skybound Games, and the fourth and final main game in The Walking Dead video game series, based on the comic book series of the same name. Taking place some years after The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, the game focuses on Clementine's efforts to raise young Alvin Jr., AJ, in the post-apocalyptic world, coming to join with a group of troubled teenagers surviving out of their former boarding school. Their path leads them to encounter a hostile group of raiders led by a figure from Clementine's past.

The game represents the first major release by Telltale after a major restructuring; it was aimed to return to themes and elements from the first season, and expected to be the concluding story for Clementine. The game was anticipated to be released over four episodes, with the first episode released on August 14, 2018, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. However, due to the sudden closure of Telltale Games on September 21, 2018, the last two episodes were overseen by Skybound Entertainment, the production company of The Walking Dead comic creator Robert Kirkman, using as many of the former Telltale development team as possible, as Kirkman had felt it necessary to properly complete Clementine's story.

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier is an episodic adventure video game based on The Walking Dead comic book series developed by Telltale Games. It is Telltale's third season of its The Walking Dead series, with the first two episodes released on December 20, 2016, and a retail season pass disc edition released on February 7, 2017. The game employs the same narrative structure as the past seasons, where player choice in one episode will have a permanent impact on future story elements. The player choices recorded in save files from the first two seasons and the additional episode "400 Days" carry over into the third season.[8] Clementine(voiced by Melissa Hutchison), who was the player's companion during the first season and the player-character in season two returns as a player-character along with another player-character, Javier "Javi" Garcia (voiced by Jeff Schine).

The game takes place in the same fictional world as the comic, with the zombie apocalypse having occurred. The main characters of the game are original characters; however, due to time skips in season two and between seasons two and three, the timeline is caught up to where the comics are.

(Source: Wikipedia)