Reimagining Urban Playground
Deluo Chen
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Let’s Play -- Immersive Playing in the Bingyutang
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, people lost many of their weaker social ties – relationships with strangers and acquaintances. This project uses playing games as an agenda to encourage the renewal of these diminished ties.
To facilitate the opportunity to restore these weakened ties with strangers after the pandemic, the project intends to implant an immersive game for 4 players into a self-enclosed, clannish district in China.
The game’s narrative is inspired by a local heritage building called Bingyutang. It was the retirement home for a special group of single women, called Zishunv (Self-Combing Woman自梳女). Under the misogynist culture in ancient China, women in Canton Delta decide to remain celibate for a whole lifetime and work independently for themselves. The main objective of the game within this project is to complete an old ritual of Zishunv called Self-Combing.
Players will explore the heritage building and a retrofitted building in front of it to collect essential elements for the ritual. The missions would lead them to explore the whole district and engage with the local community.
Click here if you are interested with the thesis about Zishunv’s in-between posthumous identity and their dwelling, Bingyutang.