“The first question I asked myself is are games art?,” says OCAD U Digital Futures student Saffron Bolduc-Chiong. “How can we make games a more artful experience?”
 

Saffron and her fellow Digital Futures student Emma Burkeitt, are exploring this question with their thesis project Sunken – an immersive game space installation in which players can navigate, interact and play with both physical and digital elements.
 

Sunken explores how gameplay can be combined with theme park design, lighting and environmental narrative to create an artful and engaging mixed-reality experience. They’re also incorporating interactive digital elements including a motion-activated Leap controller, water-activated switches, light-up objects and an augmented reality app. Players can hover over objects with the app to reveal hidden information.


Sunken’s room is set up to look like the underwater lab of a late-1800s scientist, revisited with 1950s technology and experienced in 2016. The aesthetic is inspired by Jules Verne and more modern works such as the video game Bioshock and the immersive theatre experience Sleep No More.

 

 

 

Digital Futures students Emma Burkeitt and Saffron Bolduc-Chiong

Digital Futures students Emma Burkeitt and Saffron Bolduc-Chiong