Second Life Event Presentation

My part in our event was coming up with the art work and clues for the Virtual Exhibit. I drew a few of the paintings specifically for this project, but many of them are drawings and paintings I did in the past because there simply wasn't enough time to draw every single piece from scratch.

Coming up with the clues for the event was sort of a difficult process. I had to find ways to connect various existing images in ways that wouldn't be too obvious to the participants. For some, it was a matter of slightly altering an image (like replacing a black cat with a white rabbit, while allowing the caption to still talk about the fat black cat), and others simply had captions that related to one another. Chris worked with me on the captions for many of the images, especially the ones that weren't a part of the clue chains. They served as a way to sort of throw participants off and made it so that the clued images weren't too obvious to spot. Zoe came up with the script that we used for the images, which whispered the image's caption to the participants when they touched the images.

 

Edited Image

 

Original Image

(in this case, there was never a cat, but the caption said there was for the purpose of our event.)

After the event started, it was evident that the way the clues were set up wasn't as clear to the participants as they should have been. Some thought that all the clues were inter-connected and led to a final piece of evidence. It was intended to be 3 different clues with their own, separate, chains leading to 3 different answers that would fit together to point out who the thief was. 

 

During the class event, it became apparent that the clues might have been a bit difficult to decipher. I didn't want to make it too difficult to solve the case, but I also didn't want make it too easy for everyone. In the end, I thought it would have been better off having the puzzle be too difficult and occupying our allotted time slot, than being too easy and ending up with a lot of people with nothing to do.

Back to Zoe

  

Experiment Review/Report

Our event was a very abstract art exhibit where participants had to run around looking for clues to solve the mystery of who stole a painting. It took place on an empty lot which we transformed into a sort of octopus structure with floating structures and glowing rings. There might have been issues with navigating the space in the beginning. I don't think everyone was aware that the clues could be on floating surfaces, or that some of the shapes were enterable.

More screenshots, info, and videos can be found at the blogs of the other members of our group:
http://627zoechang.blogspot.com/
http://627mattc.blogspot.com/
http://627christophert.blogspot.com/

I spent a lot of time making the individual pieces of the gallery. It was particularly challenging for me to find ways some of the images connected, or make clues that are obvious enough for people to figure out, yet still challenging enough for it to not be too obvious. Our team worked very well together, everyone helped everyone, and we met and worked together frequently.

Some examples of the paintings i did for this gallery:

Overall, I felt that our presentation went over well. Here are the results of the survey taken by Zoe.

And some of the Feedback for our event:

Gorgeous artwork!!!

11/4/2011 3:57 PM

I was not entirely aware who was which roles, and I also thought that the thief could be anyone in 627 rather than one of the four roles. It was fun exploring and Sam's art was very impressive!

11/4/2011 3:38 PM

Conclusion:

In the end, I felt that our event well rather well. The roles that we set out in the beginning weren't as apparent as we thought they would be, but it didn't make much of a difference. Many thought that it might have been a bit too difficult, but most of the participants spent more than 40 minutes on the event. I felt that the difficulty of the puzzle made was important for filling up the hour we had to fill. I was afraid that if we made it too easy, the participants might solve it too quick and have nothing to do for the remaining amount of time.  I also thought that the participants would have worked together more than they did, which is also why i made the clues so difficult to decipher, but it seems most of the players preferred to work on their own.