A game of horseshoes for the ineffectual Martyr 2.0

Abstract

A Game of Horseshoes for the Ineffectual Martyr (GOH) is a concept game with the intention of encouraging human empathy with racehorses. Racehorses are documented as being subject to treatment that does not reflect the public interest to protect animal welfare in Australia. Based ideologically in new materialism, the game ‘works’ through drawing attention to comparative human and horse physical performance in real space time, rather than being played entirely in virtual space time. GOH V1.0 was exhibited as a semi-interactive prototype in 2013 (playable without actual digital interactivity of display). An academic paper was published on the animal justice research grounding the game conceptually during 2015. This current paper reports on GOH V2.0 development progress as of July 2016. The primary progress concerns actual interactivity of horseshoe placement in the horseshoe pit with game result display. Technology used is software TouchDesigner 088 by Derivative, triggered by hardware computer vision via Pixy (CMUcam5) by Charmed Labs. For GOH V.02 the horseshoe pit is conceived as the ‘controller’ rather than the ‘game’, and the physical design is amenable to rapid prototyping, open source sharing and transportability.