ANYTHING, ANYWHERE
-MEDIA REVIEW-
-GREENBUSH MINE-
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Local Backlash Against Dust, Noise and Light Pollution 🏠
Lithium Production Creating More Powerful Technology💻
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The Damage Caused To Local Flora and Fauna 🐸
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Increased Profits For Green Bush Mine, In Turn OpenAI💸
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Australian Legislation Encouraging Mining 📑
THE GREENBUSH MINE EXPANSION
Located in southern Australia, Greenbushes mine is the largest lithium mine on earth. A proposed expansion to the mine in 2026 has been met with backlash due to concerns for local wildlife
LITHIUM = DUST = ROADKILL/CONTAMINATION
The dust created from mining decreases visibility on roads, putting land animals at risk of becoming roadkill. Dust spreads to the surrounding water and sources, increasing the risk of disease to animals
-GAMEPLAY LOOPS-
“Click” to expand decision tree
-LEVEL 3-
Dust is contaminating a black cockatoo’s Marri tree
-LEVEL 2-
Dust is contaminating a frog and it’s eggs
-TIED TO THE REAL WORLD-
My experience is so tied to the real world that last Christmas, the drought in Australia meant this player couldn’t pass level two. This dust forcast was so high it crashed his computer
-WEATHER FORCASTS-
If the above forecast shows rain, that means it’s a good time to play level two
-ALENDA CHANG-
-GAME ECOLOGIES-
In my research I looked at Alenda Chang, and mapped her tenants of ecological game design into my experience.
Games should be meaninfully site-specific (Weather data and an Australian site)
Games should suggest the power of non-human agency (AI NPCs and non-human perspectives)
Games should play with scale (Transitioning from mining machinery to pollution)
Games should become analogies for contemporary issues (Climate change)
-Group 1-
Players would speak before the voice recognition system had a chance to process their words. I fixed this with a widget indicating the loading time, before prompting the player to talk
‘Click’ to enlarge
-PLAYTESTS -
I wanted to see how players would interact with the experience, mostly testing the voice recognition and AI interactions
-Group 2-
The AI responses and player cues would interrupt each other, which I corrected by using the same media source for each. Additionally, players would miss seeing the stable diffusion visuals due to a lack of understanding of what triggered them. I added a sphere to denote the start of the visuals
-Group 3-
Due to the novel nature of speaking with intelligent animals, some player’s still wouldn’t ask a question after being prompted to speak. I corrected by using the AI to remind the player to ask a question if the voice recognition didn’t pick up any feedback
‘Click’ to enlarge
-Group 4-
Players would got the hang of speaking with the AI would often try to make it break character by asking ‘silly’ questions. I thought I would indulge them, however while the AI would break character, it would also remind them of their energy usage.
‘Click’ to enlarge
‘Click’ to enlarge
-THE NETWORK -
I connected the human stressors (Habitat destruction and water pollution) to the ‘actors’ that they affect. The player interacts with and becomes each of these agents throughout the experience. The player's inevitable culpability in the ongoing environmental crisis is highlighted throughout the experience as they are made aware of their energy usage. While the narrative focuses on the negative environmental impact, the experience derives its name from the infinite variability of Generative AI, which the player uses to access ecologies anywhere in the world.
-GENERATIVE VISUALS -
Not only can the player ask the AI animals anything, but they can also generate visual representations of anything within the dataset. The experience continues by giving the player freedom to choose their next destination. The destinations, information, and visual representations will continue to grow and change over time as the dataset expands. As AI becomes more powerful and the weather around the site becomes more extreme, the experience changes despite the player or developer's intention, creating endlessly evolving and unique gameplay.
-ANYTHING-
While I have focused on habitat destruction and water pollution, equally valid ecological stressors are light pollution and invasive species. These, along with the web of creatures they impact, could set the difficulty level of my experience, which a more complex network creating a more complex narrative and gameplay.
-ANYWHERE-
Using the power of procedural generation and the adaptability of AI, entire worlds and narratives can be generated from a single prompt. Distributing assets depending on the biome, determining animal locomotion from a set of player controllers, and creating narratives by using the AI to search the web
-MATCHING THE SITE-
-SIMPLIFYING-
The initial visual aesthetic was more surreal, and I wanted to maintain that while incorporating site-specific vegetation.
-THE MINE-
I used the ELVIS lidar database to generate a heightmap of Greenbush Mine
NOT JUST AUSTRALIAN MINING, BUT….
While I am limited in time and expertise, I hope that my project can work as an introductory level to the infinite possibilities of Generative AI
