FINAL PROJECT PRESENTATION (VISUALST 201SL) The Epistemological Game: Walking Through Three Generations of the Duke Family By Clarissa Ai Ling Lee

BEGINNINGS The idea for this project began because I wanted to be able to study how one categorizes information and also how one deal with information that is absent, buried, marginalized, suppressed, or merely absent. The idea was to build a database to demonstrate this idea and to have it visualize through a graphical user interface. I started building a mind map to demonstrate my intentions.

But to narrow the ambition After much thinking and tinkering around, I realized that what I wanted to do was to create a game that could help various ‘expert’ users interact with knowledge categories. Though I am not sure how one can properly determine knowledge categories. After many weeks of indecision (while also working out probable technical details), I discovered that it is probably best not to decide on the categories myself

CONT’D But to allow the users/players of the games to create their own categories. However, since I need to set the base (which is not set in stone), I went back to the mind map and decided that the best way to show this is through an architecture of information. Hence a building. To tie it back to the umbrella theme of our class, I’ve decided to anchor the façade on the Washington Duke Mausoleum and the inside be constituted of the Crystal Palace.

Why the Crystal Palace You can read the long answer in my project document. The short answer is, I want a building that pioneers radical forms of knowledge, whether in its design or in the exhibits it hold, to be the platform from which I embark on this journey. Of course, the choices are also arbitrary. I am building this epistemological game as a game for researchers, a simulation tool that will aid researchers in dealing with and thinking reflexively about their project. Researchers are able to think through their methodology, to problematize existing ones and to construct new ones.

The Duke Family Of course, to link the project back to the class, I needed to work with something relating to the Maplewood Cemetery and a number of the Duke family members were buried there. So, why not begin by studying the intimate details of individuals from the past. As much as possible. Hence I refer back to the mind map and begin to construct the database of the Duke Family. You can see it here. here There were many visits made to the Duke Special Collections. A genealogical chart is constructed of the three generations. See herehere

Object Material and bringing them all together Photographs and photocopies were made of some of the archival materials, some of which can be found here and here.here When the entire game comes together, they will all be pulled into a main database from which they could be exported to the game. Users can also add to these material base on their own research. To understand better how all these work, I should stop here and let you enjoy the video I have put together of the storyboard. For more details, you can always go to board-for-a-Researcher%27s-Game

Before that, I want to show you some scenes description captured from Google Sketchup used to design the storyboard.