Projects 2014 > Teleportation Tent > Journal
The big question for me – or, one of them – has been… how can we create the conditions for multiple stories to emerge. Endless debates between goal-oriented games that end, stories that are too limited and boring, story systems that are not structurally interesting or inspiring enough… I want this experience to be an imaginative leaping-off point. You walk the plank and then jump off into a sea of association and self-created fun. I don’t like doing too much for children – I want them to do a bit of work themselves and believe that this is the only way to make something genuinely fun and engaging. If the conditions of your play persuade you that your input is perfunctory… then you turn into an inhibited coach potato.
Way back in the first workshop that we ran with the Young Coaches, we were interested in structures that might deliver a great story, every time. But it’s not like a fast food joint or a franchised coffee shop. I want to know that I’m going to be satisfied, but I don’t want the same story every time. So, we played a version of the drawing game “consequences” – with categories for participation. There is, after all, a basic formula to the shape of a story. A beginning, a middle and an end. A shape that shows the level of tension, the emotional twists and turns, the crisis point, the resolution. The “red thread” they call it in film editing. You can create something with tension and happenstance if you put it together in the right order.
Through playing with some versions of mocked-up prototypes, we have discovered that while adults may love the idea of a lastminute.com holiday to almost anywhere, to get away from the dreaded responsibilities of making decisions all day every day, most children want to be in control of where they are going. Not only in control of the destination – but of the very elements that make up the world itself. When asked, some said “Clarks-land! A world of shoes!” or, less surprisingly, “Chocolate-land!”. There were very few requests for the Sahara, Barbados or Tokyo. But, making a system with total choice is also not quite as interesting as making one with room for discovery, happenstance and moments of unexpected delight. Making documentaries teaches you one thing above all others – the thing you hadn’t imagined is always the most exiting, even if you have imagined everything else along the pathway to getting there. Cue – our new world-selection travel system, inspired by a combination of symbolic Tarot cards, Skylanders and small Scandinavian wooden toys. The travel system delivers the destinations – which are themselves the treasured jumping off points for myriad micro stories. The system provides collisions that produce harmony or discord, in the middle of a very tangible and physical system of building and choosing.
So – as the small and perfect user of the Teleportation Tent, you choose from a small horde of little wooden figurines. In the first prototype, there will be nine figurines: three characters, three objects and three environments. At the moment, this is “fox, panda, robot”, “piece of cake, skull, trumpet”, and “underwater, in the forest, on mars”. You have also received, in your suitcase, a small wooden box with a hinged lid that looks something like a treasure chest. You lift up the lid and there is a circular space, with three holes. You must pick from the figurines and place them in the holes – like a shape sorter puzzle game. The design of the circular space and the wooden box are reminiscent of a small theatre stage and you see that each figurine category will only fit into 1 of the holes – with the environment category at the back, to symbolize the role of that choice as the environment of the world you will travel to.
When you’ve picked – and you can pick 1, 2 or 3… you place a coloured sphere on top of the little collection of placed figurines. This is the trigger for lift off – and the projector kicks into gear with a transition sequence… lights flash on and off, the visuals shake a little and you hear ““Greetings master of the unknown universe! We are soon to be hurtling through space at 5,654,321.9 miles per hour, faster than the speed of time so please pay attention to any announcements from your disembodied flight attendant…Please remove all extremities from any big holes. If you have a seat belt, buckle it up now. If at any point you hear the sound of elephants adopt the bracing position. If there is a loss of cabin pressure at any point, oxygen masks will not fall down from the roof unless you have put them there yourself. 5, and sit tight.. 4, try not to hold your breath, 3… relax your shoulders, 2… try not to worry.. 1 LIFT OFF!””or some words to that effect. After the flight, when you touch down, you enter a world that is a collage of the elements you have picked. A fox gently swims around your head in an underwater paradise of swaying seaweed, some far-off fish and a bit of coral. As the fox serenely breast-strokes around the walls of the teepee, he catches sight of the skull and his eyes pop out in terror… until he passes it and he breathes a sigh of relief. You have landed in underwater world where the menacing skull is stalking your friendly fox. You picked the red sphere though – which is code for “joyous atmosphere” so you hear snatches of mariachi music, rounds of applause and generally jolly sound design. The incongruity is fun and a bit strange, especially when the mariachi music collides with the terrified fox. Who knows what he will feel about the trumpet.
Kindly and wise advisors to the project, Dan Efergan and Jake Manion of Aardman Animation – who are just round the corner from the Pervasive Media Studio – have helped us design a back end system to the animation where these sorts of simple collisions are possible. The fox has 5 different emotional states visible on his face, 4 different body states dependent on what environment he finds himself in, and the whole thing involves a lot of Excel mathematical fun.
Now – just time to test it all on some 8 year olds and see if it’s boring or genuinely ticks all the boxes we had back in November.
Posted by Amy Rose