See/me&u/ l a ter <3
可 $$ 摸疑器

Your boring life is on live. High-five!

Interactive installation,
work by Lok Yi Cheng.

2-sided video projection on wall,
work by Shera Cho.

With buzzwords and gables, the title has revealed our work is related to Internet culture. Taking the meaning of “simulator”, this work simulates our life in a gaming setting.The gaming set- ting combines surreal street views and dating sims where the main character will pass through the same street every day and try to hook up an interested romantic partner with the dating application. But what we are unsure here is whether our charac- ter is seeing the real me and you, or a virtual one?

Idea Development

For the project theme, we initially would like to merge our individual developed ideas together as one project. But they did not seem to match very well, therefore, we took the topic of fate and human connections as our foundation of the idea and continued to build up on it. During our exploration of the topic, we asked ourselves “what is the fastest and most efficient way to find a romantic partner”, and we popped up with the same answer of “using a dating app”. However, the answer did not convince us quite well because both of us also hold the same prejudice that dating applications are full of lies, where people would hide their real selves and “fake” their identities.

Another question derived: what is it that makes us think it is “efficient” in the first place? To further understand relations between dating applications and mingle culture in Hong Kong, we downloaded a few dating applica- tions to test it out. Without having real chats, tones of personal information as well as preferred mate qualities were required to fill in as we tried to enter the application. A short conclusion could be made here: the effi- ciency was made by the “qualifications” of the users, and with the “qualifications” users can trim down their searches and find their “best shot”.

With this logic, we would like to develop an immersive gaming experience which is about the journey of find- ing a romantic partner, however gradually twisted himself/ herself during the chats. Inspired by Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, we hoped to show our story not only with the conversation but also bit by bit with changes in the background. We imagined separating our work into two parts: (1) virtual world: conversation between the main character and romantic partner on the dating application that shows self-praising, exaggerating and distorted love values (2) “real” world: an ever-changing world that is full of ridiculous news and affairs. As both parts have booming information, the audience should find themselves can only focus on either part, in this way, we can achieve the outcome of neglecting the reality as he/ she chases for his/ her “true love.

Dating application interface.

The conversation begins with the romantic partner asking whether the main character is going to purchase a new smartphone.This is the basic access for materialistic love, that the partner should have a good financial condition so as to secure his/ her daily expenses.

On the second day, the romantic partner asks the main character for dinner, and our main character has choices between going to a Chinese restaurant or a “high- class” Japanese restaurant. This has referenced local culture about “Kong Girl” (港女文化)that is directively accusing Hong Kong female whom are being picky and materialistic. The word “Kong Girl” has been popping up after 2005 and until today, the use of this word as well as the underlying meaning is still widely applied on different issues and news, such as news of a Hong Kong lady who was angry after seeing her boyfriend not willing to pay for dinner (HK01, 2021).

As the bonding of our main character with the virtual romantic partner is building up, more ridiculors requests are brought to the conversation, questioning the materialistic romance in today's world.

Interactive animation built on Powerpoint.

HKBU AVA Gaduation Show 2022.