In the early days of the pandemic, before there was a vaccine, when everyone in the world was just trying to flatten the curve, the Shadowpox team adapted our in-person game Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic to an online game we called Shadowpox: #StayHome Edition.
Shadowpox
Monday, September 12, 2022
Play Shadowpox Online
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Shadowpox in Person!
Game on! For the first time since the start of the pandemic, you can now play Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic at the McMaster Museum of Art from September 2nd to December 10th, 2021, as part of the exhibition <Immune Nations>:
https://museum.mcmaster.ca/exhibition/immune-nations/
If you can't make it to the gallery, there's a page on the game in the expanded exhibition website here:
Immune Nations Fall 2021 from McMaster University (OFFICIAL) on Vimeo.
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Shadowpox: Citizen Science Fiction
The artist's capsule "Shadowpox: Citizen Science Fiction" will be part of the exhibition “Life, A Sensorium,” presented by Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology as part of the International Symposium of Electronic Art, (e)Montreal, October 13-18, 2020.
Alison Humphrey will be presenting Shadowpox alongside Michaela Pnacekova (Symphony of Noise VR) and David Han (Friend Generator) in Life: A Sensorium – Artists' Talk on Art & Video Games on October 13th. Please join us!
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Shadowpox: #StayHome Edition
Play Shadowpox: #StayHome Edition here:
shadowpox.org/game
And tell the team what you think!
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic
Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic is an interactive digital installation – a full-body videogame designed for art gallery exhibition.
UNAIDS Chief of Staff Annemarie Hou gets a 100 protection score! |
If you have played the game and received a three-letter score code, click here to see your Infection Collection or Protection Collection. (To see all 99 cards, click here.)
Lab coats aren't chic, but they do show the pox! |
- <Immune Nations>, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Canada. Sept-Dec 2020.
- CRAM, a city-wide festival celebrating academic research in Toronto. 5 April 2019.
- Public Notice, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada. Sept 15 2018-Jan 13, 2019.
- <Immune Nations>, UNAIDS, Geneva, Switzerland. May 23-June 30, 2017.
- The Art and Science of Immunization symposium, Public Health Ontario and Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, Canada. April 13, 2017.
- <Immune Nations>, Galleri KiT, Trondheim, Norway. March 13-24, 2017.
Monica Geignos, First Lady of Namibia, plays Shadowpox at the opening of the <Immune Nations> exhibtion |
Review from The Lancet's coverage of the <Immune Nations> exhibition:
"...Of the remaining contributions, one of the most engaging is Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic, developed by Alison Humphrey, Caitlin Fisher, Steven J Hoffman, and Lalaine Destajo. This interactive installation quite literally renders visible the invisible, as participants must choose whether or not to be vaccinated against the 'shadowpox' pathogen, before having the opportunity to trace the impact of their decision as an animated population is exposed to the threat of infection. On completion, participants are able to view their 'infection collection' or 'protection collection', as the population is transformed from an aggregate statistic with a series of detailed individual stories. This is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and playful ways to illustrate both the individual and population-level implications of community immunity...."
James Smith, "The art of immunisation", The Lancet, vol 389, June 17, 2017 |
Profile from Brainstorm, York University's showcase for research and innovation:
Interactive video game highlights the impact of vaccine decision-making
From the <Immune Nations> programme:
A macroscope, then, allows us to see what is too big to grasp with the naked eye:
Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic imagines the emergence of a vaccine-preventable disease composed of viral shadows. Part fact, part science fantasy, this mixed-reality installation combines real-world statistical data with theatrical simulation using motion-tracking, live-animated digital effects.
Fear and courage incarnate as the pathogen is projected onto the player’s own body (Pox on Me). Risk and the individual immunization decision are cast in a wider light as the player sees the power they have to protect or infect others (Pox on ‘Em). Finally, the player is invited to visit an online space to meet their “infection collection” or “protection collection”, where population statistics become multiple individual humans once again (Poxémon).
This installation is part of a larger project conceived and directed by Alison Humphrey, with technical direction by LaLaine Ulit-Destajo: an online science fiction storyworld co-created with performing arts students on four continents. The first Shadowpox laboratory took place in June 2016 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and the project spread to North America, Europe and Africa to mark the centenary of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.
Alison will be teaching a new Shadowpox-based course exploring the biology and sociology of immunization at York University in September 2020, and will offer free online resources for secondary and post-secondary learners and teachers around the world who want to create their own Shadowpox co-laboratories. Please send inquiries to: join [at] shadowpox [dot] org, or through the feedback form below.
Community immunity (the proportion of a population who must be immunized to prevent the spread of an infectious disease) cannot be achieved by the courage of a single hero, but by the dragon-slaying of hundreds of thousands. The Shadowpox project's participatory storytelling structure, interactive theatrical technology, and online video portal will enable its young adult artists to inspire reflection and debate in the audience of their peers, generating new insights into one of the thorniest political dilemmas of public health: voluntary participation in the collective good.
For more information, read the explanatory panels from the UNAIDS exhibition:
- "A Game of Shadows" charts the first, theatrical incarnation of Shadowpox, written and designed by Alison Humphrey and coded by LaLaine Ulit-Destajo, in a 2016 workshop with nine graduating actors at RADA.
- "Population-Level Statistics" shows how Steven Hoffman and Susan Rogers Van Katwyk modelled the "severity score" (using the real-world public health data of 193 countries) which is at the heart of the second, gallery incarnation of Shadowpox.
- "Your Protection or Infection Collection" explains how, as The Lancet described it, "the population is transformed from an aggregate statistic with a series of detailed individual stories" written by Caitlin Fisher.
An inventive player finds a workaround for an oversight in our user interface |
Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Minister of Health for Ghana, racks up an impressive Protection Score |
Jane Philpott, Canada's Minister of Health, takes a turn with the expert guidance of York Augmented Reality Lab Director Caitlin Fisher |
Credits
- Royal Academy of Dramatic Art: actors Fehinti Balogun, Natasha Cowley, Sayre Fox, Skye Hallam, Tom Martin, Polly Misch, Abraham Popoola, Maisie Robinson, Jamael Westman, and Director of RADA Edward Kemp.
- Videographer/photographer: Simon Eves
- Statistical analysis: Susan Rogers Van Katwyk
- Poxémon deckhand: Sean Sollé
- Animation: Jos Humphrey (logo), Geoffrey Cramm/Shutterstock (waving/walking people)
- Graphics: Leremy Gan (Poxémon pictograms), JuliarStudio/iStock.com (game still figures), Ivsanmas/Shutterstock (flag circles), IngImage/Rbiedermann (world map)
- Immersive Storytelling Lab, Augmented Reality Lab and Future Cinema Lab
- Alice Lab for Computational Worldmaking: Graham Wakefield
- Bioss the Foundation: Gillian Stamp
- Public Health Ontario: Natasha Crowcroft
- The Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: Heidi Larson, Conall Watson
- Oxford Vaccine Group: Sarah Loving, Maria Moore
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research