Project #2: How to find a fox

The goal of this project was to design for a reaction - an emotion, a response - using a single object as an alluring jumping off point. After seeing a number of different curiosities, collected and narrated by Dominic to peak our interest, I was taken by the idea of there being hidden, magical little moments embedded in the everyday world, invisible until, in the context of this game, you suddenly realized they were there.

Maybe this emergency procedures
sign?

I initially played with the idea of hiding puzzles within the signage already in the buildings (secret messages, codes, etc). While I liked this idea a lot, I was a little nervous of my ability to pull off an identical look to the existing signs within my limited time frame.

Simultaneously, I was getting more intrigued with a podcast (99% Invisible) that I'd heard recently. It told the story of a Victorian-era American lady, heiress to a large estate and finally free to use it to pursue her passion: forensics. Having studied it unofficially for many years, she used her book-smarts, knowledge of crime scenes, and fancy-lady skills to create a whole series of time, dollhouse-like dioramas of real crime scenes, with every detail faithfully reproduced. These scenes were used to teach and train forensic analysts, and are still used for this purpose today. The tiny, detailed scenes are delightful and macabre at the same time.

Nutshell Study #4, The Parsonage
courtesy of deathindiorama.com

I started to play more with the idea of doing tiny dioramas, and having those be hidden objects buried into some existing context. I originally was planning to place them inside, and after looking at some locations in the classroom thought about trying the basement hall instead, which Dominic suggested had many nooks and crannies. It did, but most of these crannies looked the same, and were in the same general location (in corners along the floor), making it not much of a discovery exercise: you could just look along the floor until you found the next one.

I then decided to take a look in the courtyard. I immediately felt that this was the right place: there were a range of little hiding spots, it already had a bit of a hidden-garden feel to it, and there were already existing creative projects throughout, adding to be ambiance without requiring any work from me.

See: random, creepy string draped
around

My cousin and craft-buddy helped me scope some good places and measure out dimensions. Then we assembled a collection of supplies (including some found chunks of concrete, grasses, moss, berries, etc), and got to work.

Several hours later, we emerged with 5 little dioramas. Four were essentially open-air, and one was in a little box, requiring you to peep in to see it.

One of the dioramas

I also created an actual calling card as the lure for the experience, introducing a simple narrative that a Monsieur Renard (Mr. Fox) had paid you a visit, and suggested you drop by his five little homes in the courtyard. Each home had a different theme, which I placed an element of (e.g. some berries, a mountain in the background) on a card so the player could know when they'd visited each home.

The morning of class, I arrived early to set up the little dioramas in various pre-selected spots around the courtyard.

I had also really wanted to add windchimes as a sound element, but couldn't source any in time. I found a 10 hour (!!) Youtube video just of windchimes playing and hooked it up to a Bluetooth speaker, but found that it dropped the connection when I went back into the building, so sadly that didn't work.

However, the rest of the setup went pretty well. Students needed a little coaxing, but figured out that they were looking for different houses for the Monsieur Renard character. I discovered that they thought that the clue sheet was giving information about where they might find a home (I'd intended it to have unique elements from within the diorama so they'd know which home they'd found). Next time, I would probably change that to align better with expectations.

I also found that although the easter egg hunt aspect was fun, and people seemed to enjoy the displays they found, having to direct them to go seek out the dioramas ruining some of the effect of "discovering a surprise" that I was going for. If I were to do it again, I would want to experiment with more subtle ways to lure people out there.