The Perfect Escape

Work

At the 2015 VIA Games Salon: Rules for Another Self, an exhibition and experimental arcade, I explored various indie artists' work through the game medium in their attempt to disassemble standard frameworks of performance, gender, and power. The most eye-opening piece of digital art I experienced while I was there, however, was KWAAN, an online indie multi-player exploration-based adventure.
KWAAN advertises itself as an online adventure world about nature, myth, and play; however, what it offers to its expansive audience from imaginative young children to veteran adult gamers alike is an immersive experience in a dynamic ecosystem that thrives on the cooperation of players in performing tribal rituals, beautifying the pixel environment, and interacting with one another to create life, all for the sake of nurturing the spirit of the world, KWAAN, and maintaining the beauty and harmony of the gentle atmosphere. Interestingly, the game began as an experiment commissioned by a French cognitive science laboratory to test the theory of engagement, a key idea in the integration of technology in learning. Through KWAAN, one becomes invested in performing profoundly important tasks to the society and meaningfully interacting with others, blurring the boundaries between the intimate and the collective. 

Experience and Response

While I was demo-ing the game, I was overcome by a sense of spirituality and pacifism. The pixel art, though perhaps considered primal in the modern age of gaming, was vibrant and idyllic, evoking a great sense of appreciation for the beauty of the virtual environment. The soundtrack also aided in creating an atmosphere of tranquility and whimsicality with its focus on a few basic sounds as opposed to an overlay of several complex pieces as is often the case for modern games. Throughout the experience, I felt that I transcended the realm of humanly worries as all of the in-game players were transformed into Dwaals, tiny, but significant inhabitants of a remote island on an eternal sea, perhaps purposefully non-gendered as a subtle gesture to our institutionalized binary. As I performed various rituals that served to nurture the world tree, KWAAN, created unique artistic additions to the pixel environment, and interacted with others to collectively maintain the harmony of life, I immersed myself in the interdependent relationship between civilization and the natural environment; I relied on the available natural resources to perform necessary tasks and live life to its potential, just as the spirit of the world depended on my ritualized actions to remain healthy and vibrant. 

Product

The above work was done with Photoshop and a mouse because I lack a graphics tablet, and felt that with the limited free art resources on iOS, using my iPad was not an option. Because KWAAN is a pixel art game, I felt that its impact could be best represented to others who haven't had exposure to the game through another perhaps more well regarded form of digital art: digital painting. However, I attempted to retain the "pixality" by purposefully choosing brushes that were quite grainy.  To evoke a tribal atmosphere, I decided to depict an abstracted version of a gathering around a fire underneath an overarching tree, analogous to KWAAN in the original game. The tiny figures around the fire are purposefully ambiguous and carry a speck of green on their "heads," abstracting them even further from humanity, and closer to nature. The overall image looks quite child-like with its unrefined brush strokes and basic color palette, hopefully adding onto the effect of whimsicality and innocence. 

Reflection

Initially, I was very unsatisfied with my work, as I felt that I hadn't done the original game justice. I felt that even though my painting was quite primal, I didn't demonstrate the nurturing relationship between the leaf figures and the tree, nor was I able to depict the beauty of the environment. I attribute this partially to the fact that I did not center the fire, thus making the figures seem insignificant, the opposite of my original intention. Also, even though I had wanted to evoke an appreciation for one's surroundings, the background of my piece was painted with an extreme lack of detail, leaving very little to be appreciated to begin with. 

However, I do feel like I was able to portray the tribal rituals that are so profound to the health of KWAAN and the cooperative nature of the gameplay. With the increase in textures available through multiple tools on Photoshop, I was also able to capture the centrality of the spirit tree by making it more detailed than the rest of the piece, as well as retain some of the pixelated art style. The piece overall may look childish, but upon further review, it adds a layer of whimsicality that mimics the presentation of KWAAN.