Empathy is a conceptual, 2D experience that plays out in the same format as a 2D game. My work is often related to a commentary on the novel ways that we communicate with each other. This is especially relevant today in our present moment, and rather than offering a pessimists view on the matter, I have decided to embrace this new way of doing things. Empathy likewise attempts to create a compelling space riddled with abstract concepts that may not be readily understood, and yet it creates this sort of ambient beauty that compels you to explore and find out more. The seemingly basic mechanic of being able to leave a message in the space adds even more dimensionality by giving you the sense that someone is there with you even if you don’t see them. And with that said, the main message is that we are never alone. This is a something I often overlook myself as I’m sure many of us have thought even preceding the current pandemic.

For the visuals themselves, you may be wondering what they mean. The islands which you can visit are these meditations of landscapes that I researched along with cultural icons from these places that represented concepts of community and unity. I then created abstract representations of these symbols in the forms of the figures that can be seen standing on each island. For example, the west island you will encounter a representation of Futunfunefu Denkyemfunefu from the Ghanian culture which is symbolized by a two headed alligator which shares a stomach. Likewise, there is Koru Honu on the east island which comes from the Maori culture which is in present day New Zealand and is represented by a sea turtle, and on the North Island we have Malinalli which originates from Aztec culture in present day Mexico and is associated with the god Patecatl who is often shown with the agave plant.

The process of the work was a mixture of creating 2D assets, finding existing assets that I could modify and implement into the space, building the necessary server architecture in Node JS, and adding any client side programming that is needed in the C# language. It is worth noting that this project had a physical component planned for it and didn’t make it into this installation. However, many of the same ideas conceptually made their way into the 2D experience.