The final presentation of our class Reflexive Methods in Design/Art Practices was given on the platform gather.town. The subject of this semester is “landscape design”, in which we generally follow Burkhardt’s concept of Strollology. According to my teaching plan, students will create different artefacts to shape the experience of landscape. Further, by installing the artefacts physically in the field, we can stroll in the “designed” landscape and create a reflexive experience. However, due to the pandemic breakout in Taiwan, all activities on the campus were cancelled!!

As an alternative way to reflect on students’ design works by strolling in the field, we created the virtual map of the whole field area on gather.town. The platform is a virtual social space where users move their avatars in the pixel environment and make video-conference with each other. The platform strongly recalled my experience of early RPG games, and I got the full motivation to explore how its editing backstage can realize my concept of a virtual pixel field.

The work took me a long time, and I finally got there. The result is not perfect, but it already allows visitors to stroll there and explore the hidden figures and stories of the local area. Besides, presenting students’ design work in our self-created virtual field was a very inspiring experience. In our playscript, students should wait next to their artefacts, and the visitors (teachers and people from the local area) will come to visit their work. However, the live situation was almost uncontrollable. Students just could not “stay” but want to interact. They gathered together where the artefact was presented. – Hey! You are master students, aren’t you? – However, the little demon of playing like children just couldn’t be held back anymore.

We had a great time on the pixel map. Best thanks to gather.town for providing such a wonderful playground (and for free). I see a great potential of this platform.

Here is our live stream of the presentation:

And, of course, feel free to visit our pixel landscape. It is a representation of Guanglin, a rural area near Tainan in Taiwan, where population ageing and migration are crucial issues.