crip_anthology (2016-2024)
2025 · Experimental, Game · Experimental essay game
A narrative essay-game centering the patient within the medical-industrial complex Through a lens of Cripistemology and institutional critique
The story is told through a recursive loop of (limited) gestures and liminal spaces: between hospital wards, waiting rooms and counselling rooms, and blends between two perspectives: perspective of the crip self (me); and the gaze of the system (CCTV). It asks what it means to heal, and confronts the contradictory void of trust that resides between patients and doctors.
About
A narrative game / interactive essay that centers the subjectivity of the patient within the medical-industrial complex, driven by my own experience through a lens of institutional critique. It tells the story via multiple perspectives, sampling notes from personal medical reports.
Intentional Use of Repetitive & Restrictive Gestures
Mechanically, the game intentionally limits player agency with limited movements (players are only allowed to move their hands and head, they can only perform limited tasks through puppet like movements such as taking pills, filling out forms, etc.) while juxtapositioning this with unconventional controls (ie. playing as a patient but the control moves the doctor; playing as a file in the file room), reflecting the lack of control the patient experienced within the medical system. And the performative nature of patient-doctor relationships.
Storytelling Through Multiple Perspectives & Agencies
The game is played out like a video sequence that cuts between scenes. There are two main narrative tracks, one is the voice over of my essay that reflects on the medical journey and critiques the system that failed me. The other narrative of the game emerges through objects and perspectives that assemble the medical system that define me - hidden in the forms, on the CCTV monitor, patient document, through gestures and backgrounds that emerges through time. There are also two separate perspectives, one is from “me” in first person perspective, and the other is in CCTV monitors, with sections from my personal medical documents rearranged into short bullet points, and displayed line by line on mouse click over the CCTV image, while the “me” is always centered in the screen performing the same repetitive gestures. These two perspectives crossover in fragments and tell the story in parallel, contrasting between what I see and how I am perceived and processed in the system.
Environmental Storytelling through the Liminal Space of the Medical-Industrial Complex
Rooms in this game are reconstructed according to my memories, but purposefully remove the doors. Here I reference a criminal interrogation technique that involves positioning a suspect’s back against the door, thereby removing the door (and psychological escape route) from their sight, this is a tactic often used to make the suspect feel “trapped” and heightened their anxiety, while establishing a spatial dominance in the room. In a way, the counselling rooms work similar to interrogation rooms, where I need to constantly prove that my feelings are real, are important, and prove that a re-evaluation is necessary. These clinical spaces are liminal in that they exist at the threshold between sickness and health, between patient and person, between institutional and personal identity. They represent the reality of being trapped in diagnostic liminality.
- Role — solo - design, development, voiceover
- Tools — Unity, Tracery.js