Monday, September 12, 2022

Play Shadowpox Online

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.

You can still play the game here:

shadowpox.org/game









For more background, check out the April 8, 2020, announcement from York University, "Online video game brings to life the impact of staying home during COVID-19 pandemic," and the CTV News and Radio Canada coverage of the game. 

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:

And the gallery has just posted a virtual walkthrough, in which the game concludes the video:

Immune Nations Fall 2021 from McMaster University (OFFICIAL) on Vimeo.

You can also play the game's COVID-19 physical distancing variant Shadowpox: #StayHome Edition here:


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!




Thursday, April 2, 2020

Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic

Conceived and directed by Alison Humphrey, with collaborators including LaLaine Ulit-DestajoCaitlin FisherSteven J. HoffmanSusan Rogers Van Katwyk, and Sean Sollé (full credits below).

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!
It is composed of motion-tracked, real-time animated digital effects, body-mapped projections, epidemiological statistics, and science fiction.

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!
Exhibitions:

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...."

The Lancet review: "Exhibition: The art of immunisation"
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:

“...imagine the action of a vaccine not just in terms of how it
affects a single body, but also in terms of how it
affects the collective body of a community...”
– Eula Biss, On Immunity


A microscope shows us the invisibly small.

A macroscope, then, allows us to see what is too big to grasp with the naked eye:
the impact our choices have on the many hundreds of people around us.

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:

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



Special Thanks