Skip to 0 minutes and 19 seconds Hello, I’m Phoenix Perry. I am a installation artist and a game designer, and I’m one of the creators of this course. My research focus is human interaction, and I’m really interested in the way we interact with each other in spaces, and fostering communication between people in public environments. My most recent project, Forest Daydream, is an interactive sound environment. It looks like a low poly videogame. When you walk into it, it looks like a forest, except it’s been built in the real world. There are interaction points and games spread out across a quite large space and you have to work with other people to activate the entire forest.
Skip to 0 minutes and 57 seconds The soundscape, which was designed by Ben Kelly, is all sound recordings done in endangered ecosystems. The whole space kind of feels like a giant light and sound forest bath. And, I’m encouraging people to think about disappearing ecosystems, their role in that, and how they can work together to help fix the situation we are finding ourselves in today. I’m really interested in play because it has a really subversive nature in society. It can kind of undo cultural norms and the way that we are expected to be in public space.
Skip to 1 minute and 32 seconds Normally, you wouldn’t pull back the curtain in the gallery and try and hide behind it, or stack a bunch of curtains in a pile and jump off them to attack your friends. You just would not do these things. But because play has this kind of magic circle where we create a safe space for each other, people feel free to bend and question the rules of society. And I feel like play can really offer a way to reflect about our culture in a way that no other medium can. That’s why I build physical environments. So, in 2013 I got really motivated to create this organisation called Code Liberation.
Skip to 2 minutes and 7 seconds And it happened because I had been working in the digital advertising world and I had done really well in my career and gotten myself to the position of Creative Director and Associate Creative Director. And I looked around and there just were not a lot of women. And at that time, I was really integrating my art practice, which was heavily play and games based, with my design practice, which was really focussed on understanding brands and clients and strategy. And, I just was really sad that there were not a lot of other women in a position of power able to make that kind of work.
Skip to 2 minutes and 38 seconds And as someone who grew up, kind of, in Silicon Valley and making projects, my ability to code always really demarcated me from others because I also was able to speak to the technical team as well as the art team. And I really wanted to help other women be able to express their vision and express their creativity the way that I could. And the easiest way for me to do that was help teach a bunch of women to programme videogames for free. I really wanted them to be able to express their stories and their narratives and the way they experience the world. As we grew, we began to support non-binary and genderqueer people. And it’s been a truly life changing experience.
Skip to 3 minutes and 18 seconds I never thought mentoring would do that to me, but it did. I would recommend everyone consider how they can help empower other people around them. So the reason I made this course was to help you get a, kind of, sense of what you needed to learn to make a game, wrap your head around some very basic programming fundamentals for how to code, and start creating your own games about your own experiences.
