Exploring transitions between traditional culture and digital media

The Hani App Fabric project by UCLan Senior Lecturer in Games Design, Bev Bush contributes to the visual arts by exploring transitions between traditional culture and digital media to create new artefacts.

This research is a collaboration with The Global Sound Movement.  Audiences can interact in a unique way with GSM sampled sounds from the drums of the Hani Tribe in China to create an embroidery pattern which celebrates their rhythms and traditional costume designs.

“Can gamification be used as an interactive and transformative tool for artistic expression to engage learning, encourage appreciation and to illustrate traditional, historical and cultural related experience?”

Advertising designer Elliot Harris’ animated film of 2002, ‘Burberry-Rain’ identifies the 4 – dimensional properties of Burberry fabric. In 2013 Sophia George developed a game based on ‘The Strawberry Thief’ which re-vitalized the art of William Morris. The Hani App moves beyond re-vitalization of a design to involve interaction with sound and illustration of traditional crafts, exploring the use of digital tools to create unique artefacts. This acknowledges and records ideas and objects which may otherwise be lost or forgotten.

‘The Art of Computer Game Design.’(Crawford, C. 1997)

‘Play, Games and Gamification in Contemporary Art Museums.’(Romualdo, S. 2013)

‘Gamification in the Arts.’ (Bouchard, A. 2014)

An exploratory, prototyping methodology was used in this project, allowing for a flexible development style. Sprite Designs were created in Adobe Photoshop and implemented into the App using Scirra’s Construct 2  game engine. The work was inspired by GSM’s photos and sampled sounds and is available to the public as an interactive App on the GSM website, also in the GSM South China Exhibitions and as a video on Vimeo with images of artefacts that can be purchased from the shop at this link.