“Games of Futility” was one third of a final project for Danny Rozin’s “Pixel by Pixel” class last semester. Eventually I decided to do something else and save this idea in my “do it later” list.

The project will be mainly using processing and a live camera feed. It will be a series of 3-5 games with simple, Sisyphean goals that are seemingly easy to achieve but are actually impossible to retain. The games can be repeated indefinitely, resulting in a sense of futility.

In the two processing sketches I have so far, a player’s goal is to constantly refresh the camera feed by moving the mouse. In version 1, blue particles need to be “wiped away” to reveal the image below. In version 2, two “live circles” rotate around the mouse (represented by a red circle); the player refreshes the camera feed by moving the red circle around. Both versions create fragmented self portraits as a result.

My next steps:

1. Explore other ways to control the game other than using a mouse—e.g. gesture or voice controlled.
2. Develop more sketches to make this into a series