PROJECT 16 | Chinatown |
"Chinatown is a site-specific multi-player game level created for physical exhibition at a gallery in the new hip gallery area of Los Angeles' Chinatown, as well as online. The work is not playable; a shifting point of view follows AI bots wandering aimlessly through a game level representation of pre-galleried Chinatown. The work removes the main impulse of gamers: to shoot, and attempts to use a game engine as a tool for expression through which the artist could comment upon and force a different reflection upon the transformation of Los Angeles' Chinatown by artists/cultural brokers of his generation. The work breaks out of the "game box" to use the tools to deal with issues such as gentrification, generational territorialization, and art as colonization." -- Adriene Jenik
As an assistant on this project I worked primarily as a modeler, texture artist, and photographer -- the photo above pictures one of the spaces I created exclusively. The setup at the exhibition space C-level in Chintown, LA consisted of two desktop computers and on projection. One computer ran the multiplayer server, and the other projected the AI "bots" viewport, which changed in real time.The piece was setup as an installation for Brody Condon's final MFA show on 05/18/2002.