Abstracted Sound Story
Randomly Selected is an audio based immersive exhibition originated from the language communication game S.S.S.S. The exhibition targets the common struggle of language barrier that many immigrants and international students experience in the United States.
The original game S.S.S.S., which stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection, is a common airport security measure targeting passengers from foreign countries. To raise awareness to issues extended from language barriers such as bias, discrimination, and racism, the S.S.S.S. game reverses the roles of the interrogator and selectee in the screening process, by structuring the scenario to be an American international student traveling to a foreign country.
The two players of the game are respectively a native speaker of the chosen foreign language and an English speaker who speaks a little to none of the same language. Both players have designated sets of materials to assist them in the communication process. For the interrogator player, they have institutional documents instructing them the procedure of the interrogation and the set of questions to ask; for the selectee player, they have flashcards which include keywords, phrases, and sentences both in the foreign language presented as phonetics and English translations.
The Original Game: S.S.S.S.
Sample Game Version: Arabic
Interrogation Sheet
Traveler's Hint Cards
Gameplay
Installation Background
Randomly Selected pushes the core concept further by inviting the audience to observe the interrogation process, presented in the form of recorded audio clips from actual playthroughs of the S.S.S.S. game. The transformed installation is set in a claustrophobic room to both reproduce and enhance the pressure present in an interrogation scenario. The only props in the installation are a table with two chairs at each end of it and the same paper materials used in the S.S.S.S. game. The audio clips for respectively the interrogator and traveler play from each end of the table to further simulate the sense of space. The audience is invited to engage with the installation by either observing from the side or sitting in the position of either the interrogator or the traveler. By placing the same paper materials from the S.S.S.S. game on the table, Randomly Selected not only keeps its core as an analog game, but also invites the audience to participate in the interrogation by using the materials to decipher the phrases from the audio clips.
Building off of the game, the installation we exhibit here is an attempt to zero in on what makes the experience of S.S.S.S most engaging to the people that interact with it, i.e., listening to the interaction between Traveler and Interrogator, trying to participate in the ongoing social communication puzzle presented between the two people, while taking a safe step away from the stress of being actively involved as traveler or Interrogator.
The ideal environment for this installation is to be in a small claustrophobic room with two chairs on either side of a long to create a feeling of isolated separation between Interrogation and Traveler mimicking the feel of being in an airport interrogation room.
Spacing of player and Interrogator feeds into our design allowing us to set up the Traveler and Interrogators documents on opposite sides of the table, alongside audio projection so that people that walk into the room can assume the position of Traveler or Interrogator to and piece out the puzzle from either end.
Audio Clip: Interrogator
Audio Clip: Traveler
Installation
Responsibilities
• Designed the original S.S.S.S. game based on the given constraint of using "language", using foreign languages and an airport investigation setting to simulate the present pressure faced by many international students when entering the U.S.
• Designed and wrote the interrogation sheet and traveler cards for the Mandarin version of the game/installation.
• Expanded upon the original game to build the audio-based installation.
• Designed the installation space to include the main components of sound recordings from the traveler and the interrogator, along with displayed interrogation sheets and hint cards on the table for the audience to read.
• Recorded and mixed all voice clips from the interrogators and travelers.
Events & Recognition
Prospectives Symposium 2022: Digital Art and Activism - Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities