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Earth and ash: inventing (not reinventing) within interactive spaces

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Earth and ash: inventing (not reinventing) within interactive spaces

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Content Earth and Ash
Inventing (not reinventing) within interactive spaces
by
Christopher Bowles
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2024
Copyright © 2024 Christopher Bowles

Acknowledgements
Thank you to my advisors Sam Roberts, Joe Garlington, and Brent Strong; my Thesis
professors Laird Malamed and Martzi Campos; and all of the incredible IMGD faculty.
Thanks to my team Bernice Wang, Albert Morones, Natalie Hopkin, Jordan Noble,
Madi Garman, Amanda Sharkey, Colette Quach, Laura Zhang, Danika Abenoja, Leeam Levy,
Kristen Coburn, Quentin Burley, Lola Thomas, and Lilah Capp.
Thank you to my parents, Joan and Bryan Bowles, for all the guidance (and mom for
the costumes); to my family for their emotional and installation support. Thanks to
everyone who came last minute to help build the space and make it beautiful. Thanks to all
the playtesters, for being open hearted and for pointing this project where it needed to go.
Big thanks to my cohort. The best cohort. Amazed with you all.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. ii
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. iv
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… v
Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
1.1 Beginnings and Endings……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
1.2 But Why?…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
1.3 The Exploration……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
Chapter 2: Future-Facing Tools……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
2.1 Defining Success…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
2.2 Playtesting Blind……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
2.3 Designing Anticipation………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
2.4 Quick but Meaningful Choices…………………………………………………………………………………………..6
2.5 Sketching Physically……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8
Chapter 3: The Growth of the Thesis Question………………………………………………………………………………………14
3.1 Skull A………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 14
3.2 Moment A……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
3.3 Feel Love A…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 17
3.4 A Change of Place………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 19
3.5 Skull B……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 20
3.6 Moment B………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 20
3.7 Feel Love B……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
Chapter 4: Conclusion….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 25
iii

List of Figures
1 Physical Greyboxing…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9
2 Physical Modeling……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10
3 Digital Modeling………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
4 Drafting Plans……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 11
5 Building the Walls…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
6 Interaction Design in the Space………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 13
iv

Abstract
Earth and Ash is an Interactive Theatre Experience, developed for Christopher
Bowles' Interactive Media MFA Thesis. Interactive spaces, immersive theater, and small
scale themed experiences - though heavily inspired by long-established media - are still
young and budding art forms. This is an exploration of the development of a piece of art in a
medium without clearly defined terminology, let alone standard production practices: a
process of both gleaning and growing, collecting and inventing.
v

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Beginnings and Endings
It seems fitting to begin this thesis paper, my final piece of writing as an Interactive
Media MFA candidate, with the ending of another piece of writing: my Personal Statement,
the introductory essay from my application to this program. In the final paragraph of that
document, after citing a number of reasons why the Interactive Media program was perfect
for me, I wrapped with this: “Best of all, you’d give me the training I’d need to pursue my
dreams and all the things I’ve yet to dream up.” (Bowles 1)
This was key. It still is. “All the things I’ve yet to dream up.” I plan on spending the
rest of my life making art where there may not be much of a map. And I feel I’m now leaving
this program as a proud creative cartographer.
Earth & Ash, my thesis project, is a funeral for someone everyone has forgotten. It’s
an interactive theater-style piece that takes place in a fictional past, in a clearing in the
woods. Three players at a time are led by actor-guides through three stages of a ceremony:
a preparation, a ritual, and a memorial. And at the center of it all, thematically and
chronologically, is an unknown skull: all that remains of someone who once lived a life. It’s
the goal of the players and the guides to prepare and present a caring tribute to that
forgotten life – in lieu of stories and memories of the deceased, sharing and giving a bit of
themselves: their thoughts and feelings of death and life, of beginnings and endings.
1.2 But Why?
My goal my whole life has been to work in physical interactive spaces, even when I
didn’t know what to call them. Coming into this program, I knew my thesis project would be
in some way physical. There were a number of ideas of what that could be, usually
springing from some fun, technical challenge: combining gestural gloves and a sequence of
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careful choreography to produce a bit of magic; or combining 3-D headphone audio with
real-time spatial analysis of a player within a designed room, creating the illusion of sound
coming from silent props, establishing a reality for the player, and then shattering that
reality by bringing in sounds from something, or someone, not physically in the room.
But then, and I don’t really know where this came from, I had this image of a player
holding a human skull – it wasn’t a scary thing, it was calm and reassuring. Hmm. Well, what
the hell was I supposed to do with that? I didn’t know. It wasn’t really a game; there wasn’t
any apparent technology; a bit of theatrics, sure. Something about it, though, really stuck
with me, and I wanted to find out why.
After trying a few things, mocking up some playtests, it seemed the best way to tell
this story might be some kind of ritual.
To my surprise, my professors and classmates were all totally on board. More on
board than I was, actually. I wasn’t even sure this counted as interactive media (which is
another conversation for another day: defining media, defining interactivity), but their
enthusiasm and my curiosity of that image of the skull pushed me forward.
Then, I called my mom – told her about my idea for a death ritual. She was not
jazzed. This was exciting! She was the only person who gave me any push back. Interesting.
Why would my mom, who believes in an incredibly positive and beautiful afterlife, feel so
averse to death? I was finally on board with this death ritual project. There’s something
here.
1.3 The Exploration
I came into this program hoping to learn how to make new things: art and
interactivity I’d never seen before. I wanted to develop a creative process that could be, if
not a systemic pattern to follow, at least a kind of tool belt – a creative cartographer’s tool
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belt – for “all the things I’ve yet to dream up.” So I embarked into, more or less, the dark. An
unknown process, an unknown project, with only an image in my mind.
My thesis question, which I presented this time last year, was, not surprisingly,
vague. It also turned out to be surprisingly durable and prescient. This was the post I
strapped myself to during this cyclone of a year: “Can I bring players to a moment where
they hold a skull and feel love.”
Five words from this thesis question will stand as the structure for the rest of this
paper: Hold, Skull, Moment, and Feel Love.
“Hold” necessitates something physical: this had to be an immersive and interactive
space. With “Hold” I will explore the process of designing this thesis – and the process of
developing that process – highlighting a few future-facing tools that were once-new, now
well worn.
With “Skull,” “Moment,” and “Feel Love,” I will explore how I came to understand my
thesis question, the loving value of this piece, and the image of the skull that carried me
throughout. I’ve framed this section around the fulcrum of a November decision – a single
practical design constraint that brought everything into focus.
Nothing has refined me more as an artist than Earth & Ash – with all the new it
taught and the old it ingrained. Let’s get to it.
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Chapter 2: Future-Facing Tools
A few years back, I bought my friend a copy of David Byrne’s book How Music Works.
Before wrapping it, I flipped open the first chapter and saw a line that surprised me: “Thank
goodness… we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time we make something.” (Bryne 8)
“Don’t reinvent the wheel” had always felt a bit like an Icharus warning – don’t fly high, don’t
make new things, we’ve already got wheels, so cool it.
When my semester of Thesis Prep ended and my little team and I were suddenly
facing summer with no deadlines, no roadmap, no idea how to make a positive death ritual
– I suddenly got it. It was so obvious. “Don’t reinvent the wheel” isn’t something to be
grumbled towards no good busy bodies, it’s a compassionate direction: the more you can
learn from the past, the more room you’ll have to create beautiful new things. Steal
everything you can, fill the rest in with yourself
The process my team and I discovered is a mix of things old and new – things
gleaned from the past, reshaped by us, and hopefully something to pass on to others
(maybe someone reading this paper someday). I’ll keep the storytelling brief here (hit up
chapter 3 if you want a lot of that) – I’m focusing on where we arrived more than how we
got there, keeping the emphasis on the tools themselves.
They may seem simple and obvious: all the better. Those are my favorite discoveries.
Here are a few of the tools I will forever keep at my creative hip.
4

2.1 Defining Success
Designing, directing, and creating in general; it’s one choice after the next. It’s
adding, subtracting, rewriting, rearranging. There are thousands of unknowns. You need a
handful of knowns.
These knowns can include the feelings you want to evoke, the production
milestones you want to hit, the technical challenges you want to overcome, your team’s
quality of life, and so much more. Some of these “knowns” may be inherited – budget,
timeline, audience – some must come from within and be sturdy as hell.
Though my “knowns” always motivated the additive part of creation, they shone
strongest during subtractions. When it’s time to cut, hold strong to your goals, the core of
your project.
For interactive projects, like this, playtests are invaluable for evaluating your
success. And on a few occasions, my playtests helped me to redefine success or put a
name to a goal we hadn’t yet explicitly defined.
2.2 Playtesting Blind
Speaking of playtests, every time I’ve handed a project to a player, they’ve shown
me something I hadn’t seen before. At the beginning of this project, though, I avoided
playtests at all costs.
The problem was I was waiting for my project to be good first. If I draft a story,
sketch out a piece of music, or set up a character controller, I have a pretty good idea if it’s
working, whether or not it’s working in the way I intended: I’m not going to pass a character
controller to a player if it can’t already reach the platforms or change directions.
Eventually I realized, though, that my experience was something I’d never be able to
play myself. The only way to gauge if the project was working was through testing. And
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though I have developed a bit of an intuition now, of what may work, these interactive
spaces will always rely on heavy playtesting, especially in the dark.
2.3 Designing Anticipation
There was a time where every playtest we held, whether it was something we’d
worked on for weeks or something we threw together in a couple hours, hit a 7 out of 10.
(This is a data-less metric; what I mean is the playtests would all work pretty well, but we
kept falling just shy of something strong – felt like a 7 out of 10).
Of course there were a lot of factors here – one of which I address in Chapter 3 – but
one approach we took was based on the theme park preshow, a space that’s in-world, that
can be in itself entertaining, but, like in a musical phrase, is designed with forward motion in
mind.
Giving narrative space for anticipation doesn’t require a physically separate space,
but we did end up going that direction, allocating some of our incredibly limited space (10’ x
15’) to a preshow-type area. This is different from an inciting incident or rising action; a
preshow can include those things, but the main focus is someplace liminal, whether or not
that space is physical, that helps the participant enter the world and start imagining. It’s
giving them a cup before pouring them a drink.
2.4 Quick but Meaningful Choices
I’ll have to give an example for this one. For the Winter Show version of my
experience, I had this idea to have players build a collective memorial – each group would
add a piece. To test it, I brought in a poster board with a skull I’d drawn on it. Players
received a bit of paint and water as part of their journey through the ritual, connected to
their reflections, thoughts, and emotions.
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The concept was that players would paint this memorial (temporarily a poster), and
each color left behind would represent a person’s journey through the ritual (with all the
accompanying emotions), so all the colors would then represent a multitude of journeys,
feelings of community, shared experience, etc.
I could pack as much “meaning” as I wanted into it, but at the end of the day, I gave
players a brush and some paint and no other direction. They didn’t know what the hell to
paint. Squiggles maybe? A circle around an eye socket? Some stripes? An eyebrow? A
smiley face? Not only was it not achieving my high-falutin goals, the players ended up
feeling uncertain and confused. Overall, it just felt too kindergarten.
We redesigned the memorial with these goals in mind:
● Each player’s creations should be beautiful in its own right.
● Each player’s creation should be beautiful amongst the others.
● Each player should be able to point to the collective piece and say “that was
mine.”
● It should feel like a new experience, so they don’t fall back on automatic ideas
● The whole process should take no more than 5 minutes.
The skull poster became a bare tree, and each player would contribute a leaf. We
give each player a white cloth leaf which they place onto a small, angled, custom easel
which stabilizes the leaf. Instead of presenting 50 or so colors, we ask players to choose 2
colors from our 4 coordinated options – paint which we have shredded into a fine powder.
They follow our process of wetting the leaf first, then adding a bit of water to the one pile of
powdered paint at a time. The only other requirement is that they fill the leaf with color. And
since the leaf is already wetted, the colors easily diffuse – it only takes a few strokes to fill.
Essentially, there’s no way a player can fail at this task. We remove the confusion,
constrain the choices, and let them focus on making a beautiful thing and, more
7

importantly, what it represents for them. The colors all represent aspects of life that bring
us joy. All four players could choose yellow, which represents relationships, but they all
have different people in mind. Their yellow is still unique to them. And their yellow may pair
with lavender, while their neighbor’s pairs with fuschia.
This is the skill I’m most proud of developing during this thesis process, and the leaf
painting is just one example. I love this idea of empowering the player through something
simple on the surface, but complicated beneath. I’m hungry for more of this.
2.5 Sketching Physically
And if “quick and meaningful choice” design is my proudest skill, “sketching
physically” is my proudest production process discovery.
Every medium has its version of sketching. When I draw, I sketch with shapes and
gestures. When I write, I sketch with words, by drafting outlines or writing free form. When I
design sounds, I sketch with my voice, approximating the sound before searching through
libraries or recording my own. When I write music, I sketch with the piano and staff paper.
When I design digital games, I sketch in engine, using placeholder models and scripts. When
I design sets, I sketch with stage plots and quick models.
My instinct, when I got started designing my first interactive space, was, like with
set design, to start sketching with the space itself. Spoiler alert, I was pretty much right on
the money. The problem is, by starting with set design tactics, I made a few people worried
that I was putting the cart before the horse, I was spreading frosting before there was a
cake. The problem is, they were also pretty much right on the money.
It’s already a waste in digital games to design a bunch of beautiful assets too early
just to have directions change or levels cut. But I was working with physical pieces – for
me, it wouldn’t just be a waste of time, it would be a waste of a lot of money, too.
8

The funny thing is, once I finally got to designing the space, the reverse happened: I
ended up throwing out heaps of interactions. And designing with the space in mind also
helped me design much stronger interactions.
It helped us to separate the space into two mindsets or aspects: the interactive
space and the aesthetic (or immersive) space. Both are essential. Let me say that again.
Both are essential to designing these kinds of in-person experiences – we actually even
ended up grouping our design teams into these two areas of focus: the interactive space
and the immersive space. And though one aspect continually informs the other, starting
with the interactive space is when we really got moving.
Working this way reminded me of the way digital games gray box their levels.
Establishing the space’s energy and rhythm, making the space engaging.
FIGURE 1
Physical Greyboxing
We started with the space, walking around it, shifting the placement of screens,
taping the floor.
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FIGURE 2
Physical Modeling
FIGURE 3
Digital Modeling
10

From the physical greyboxing, we built physical and digital models. To experiment
with finer details.
FIGURE 4
Drafting Plans
From the models, we could plan out the specifics of the space, which I took to my
friend Kristen Coburn, who helped with the specifics of materials and construction.
11

FIGURE 5
Building the Walls
From all those plans, we were able to build the walls of the space. But there was a
fork in the road back at the greyboxing: it had simultaneously sparked this train – from
models, to drafting, to construction – and the design of new interactions!
12

FIGURE 6
Interaction Design in the Space
Working in our greybox space gave us a clear picture of the space and what we
could and could not include. To tighten the interactions, we developed a box (also sketched
out spatially) with compartments, just as a practicality, a place to store the props. But with
this box, we could act out each gesture step by step, learning the timing, discovering new
thematic ideas, reshaping how we told this story and how players would be central to it.
In large scale projects, in theme parks, for example, it would be impossible to mock
up the full space, which is where digital models and other previsualization tools come into
play. But even if every inch of a theme park is committed to immersion, not every inch is
focused on this level of interaction. Sketching spatially, performing it, mocking up these
areas of interaction, are absolutely valuable tools for designing those moments and
corners. And as I continue designing my own interactive spaces, I will begin here.
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Chapter 3: The Growth of the Thesis Question
As a reminder, the thesis question I presented to faculty at my Thesis Pitch was
“Can I bring players to a moment where they hold a skull and feel love.” It was a question I
was committed to, even though I didn’t quite understand it, yet. Though the journey has
been gradual, consisting of thousands of little ideas and constant decisions, there was a
single moment that sparked the beginning of a major transformation.
It’s something I’ve alluded to – this November decision. It almost feels like all the
work before was the snowfall and November started the avalanche. I’ll talk about thematic
growth of this project, before and after this fulcrum point, focusing on words pulled from
the thesis question: Skull, Moment, and Feel Love.
3.1 Skull A
The “Skull” is the central character and central thematic focus of Earth & Ash, and
our initial goal was to allow this universal symbol of death to represent, instead, a single life.
Developing over the summer, my team and I struggled with how to help players feel
a connection with the life of the owner of the skull. Pretty quickly, we agreed to cut any
reference to an afterlife, both for practical and thematic reasons.
● The practical: a meaningful, improvised conversation with an actor, playing
“the deceased,” would be nearly impossible to pull off in the right tone – and
even if we did pull it off, why would ask them about their life when the
afterlife is apparently real and we have someone on the line who can finally
answer one of life’s greatest mysteries?
● The thematic: people who believe in an afterlife, including my mom, still feel
discomfort around. We wanted our players to be able explore their thoughts
14

and emotions around death with the simple realities they may not often
address.
We still wanted to have a connection with this skull, though. Maybe the answer was
memories. My teammate Madi Garman never really got to meet her godmother, who died
when Madi was just six years old. But there were home videos. Madi felt like she got to
know her godmother by watching these little moments; in a way, she was creating new
memories with someone who already lived all of her own moments.
A few years back, my teammate Jordan Noble lost his best friend of more than
twenty years. Continuing this “home video” conversation, Jordan and I loved the idea that
death was more like the completion of a book – and even though their pages of their life are
bound and on the shelf, we can still revisit their book anytime, continually adding them to
the pages of our books of life.
3.2 Moment A
The “Moment” is the setting, the action, and the narrative. If a connection with the
skull is the central focus, this is all the work we have to do to sell that connection.
Starting with this idea of experiencing a memory or “home video” from the skull, we
had a lot of directions we could go.
Right away, I knew I wanted to create an immersive world different from our own – in
time, in look, in culture – a sort of abstracted place, a few steps from reality, where players
had permission to think in new ways. And being able to, in essence, summon a memory –
that was a bit of magic that didn’t belong in a modern world. Instead, we needed a world
where this “magic” is familiar; it’s a traditional piece of every funeral.
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If experiencing this memory was the climactic moment, maybe the ritual should be
composed of the precise steps needed to correctly access the memories of the dead. In
this world, standard rituals would center on remembering, reflecting, and recounting. With
ours, the players not knowing a thing about the life of the skull’s owner, we would replace
those sections of reflection with other thoughts and feelings from the players themselves.
Thinking of the form, it would be nice to experience the memory, to see it materialize
and solidify for a moment. We would need an embedded screen or a projected image for
that. And to pull that off, the space would have to have a decent amount of light control,
potentially where we could have a complete, momentary blackout.
And what kind of memory or memories would we show? If it’s truly home video style,
maybe we chose those small and quiet moments, the lullabye from a parent, laughing with
a friend, making food – little things that, as they happen, seem forgettable, but looking
back, especially when the subject has passed on, become invaluable. Moments like these
deserve quiet, free from sonic distractions.
Something about a low-lit space, calm and quiet, away from distractions, feels safe.
And in addition to freedom to reimagine that comes from a new, strange world, there’s
freedom also in feeling safe, comfortable – the things you share will be heard and treated
with care.
Here are a few questions that still lingered, though:
● Is a single memory enough to connect you to this unknown person?
(Especially if the memory is decidedly universal.)
● How do we showcase this memory in a powerful way? Clear images,
shadows, voices?
● Once players see the memory, or selection of memories, how do they then
pay a fitting tribute?
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3.3 Feel Love A
The word pairing “Feel Love” represents the impact we wanted our experience to
have on the players.
If we wanted players to arrive at a positive place with the skull, we could start with
the contrast. We could place the skull in the earth, and players would begin by uncovering
it, getting their hands (literally) dirty. It wasn’t a shock tactic – it was a simple, calm action –
but there was something visceral about seeing the skull uncovered. Then, after the players’
went through their ritual journey, they would carefully return the skull to the earth, almost
like tucking someone into bed. By bookending the experience with the earth, our idea was
that the players would notice this contrast, realizing how their view of the skull had
changed since the beginning.
But we still didn’t have answers to how to execute the memory. We focused our
attention, instead, on the setup to this moment: the interactions, the steps of the ritual.
Even though our entire narrative was building to that memory experience, the narrative
was really only there to give players a time and space to reflect and reevaluate their
thoughts on death. And while playtesting, we were achieving that goal (the space and time)
without the narrative climax.
The skull started becoming this out of place thing. We made a big show of
introducing it, then we got to talking all together, performing as a group, reaching some
beautiful moments, and then we’d reintroduce the skull that we’d basically forgotten all
about – sure, when we returned to the earth, people didn’t feel spooked, but they definitely
didn’t feel love.
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Looking back (writing about it now) it seems painfully obvious the memory should
have been cut much sooner. I didn’t cut it for a couple main reasons:
● We loved the idea of the home video. Death couldn’t stop us from keeping the
people we love as a part of our lives. We could feel a connection to a stranger
through watching a simple, universal moment of humanity. It could remind us
that every little moment was worth cherishing, especially with friends and
family still with us.
● I was worried that without this moment, without the multimedia part of my
project, maybe it wouldn’t be considered interactive media anymore. Sure,
the whole piece was purely interactive, but did it also qualify as media?
That second bullet point really consumed me. I kept trying to incorporate weird
interactives, complicated structures, with lots of activity and business for the players, and
rather than adding to our core goals, they were distracting. I eventually got so frustrated
with all this flash that I put it away for a couple weeks, and I went back to talking with
people: no narrative, no world, no props, no soundtrack – just people sitting around a table.
I realized immediately that people weren’t averse to the subject, people were eager
to talk about death. It seemed to be on everyone’s minds, but they didn’t really get a chance
to talk about it, to share their already rich and complex feelings. I mean, of course – of
course that’s the case. This had all become too complicated. I still wanted the skull, still
loved the world, and we still had a backlog of interesting interactions to use, but these
interactions, no matter their complexity, had always come back to the same results – again,
because the all of the other details of the interactions were never as important as their
invitation for players to share.
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3.4 A Change of Place
In November 2023, I still didn’t have a location locked for the project, but I’d started
getting attached to the Game Innovation Lab (GIL), where I’d been running all of my
playtests. I asked my thesis class professors, Laird Malamed and Martzi Campos, if I could
just plan on using the GIL for my final project as well. They didn’t say no, exactly, but they
did say that if I didn’t host my project in a sound stage with all the other projects, no one
would play it. Sam Roberts, my thesis chair, confirmed this. Expo guests don’t play what
they can’t see in front of them.
This threw an already complicated project into more complications. Even the
choices I thought I had locked down were now all, suddenly, back on the examination table
with the other big questions. Changing venues was no arbitrary choice – our location was
integral, woven throughout the entire project (it was an immersive experience, after all). If
we changed venues now, would anything else even hold together?
Here’s where I really got to put “defining success” into practice. Like the time I was
mixing a modern dance show with a live jazz band and finally internalized high pass filters
(don’t worry about it), this was the moment I’d always remember, when I finally internalized
this concept of “defining success.”
I took a breath, slowed down, stepped back from the trees, and took a good look at
the forest. What really mattered? It was people: bringing people together, giving people a
chance to feel some comfort. And I knew this project would only have a two day run then
be gone forever – I wanted people to see it.
So we made the choice to change venues. Even though this seemed to toss all of
our hard work up in the air, we would find a way to redirect it, holding on to our goals – not
so much compromising as reshaping them in a way that made us proud. It felt like a wobble
19

we’d recover from. I had no idea, though, how quickly and powerfully this choice would
move our project from bud to blossom.
3.5 Skull B
By moving onto the expo floor with everyone else, we’d lose full control of lighting
(no blackouts, though we could get the show fairly dim) – we’d also lose any chance for
complete silence. This would really hurt the “home video” memory. Maybe we could dim the
space enough to pull off the visuals, but the quiet, intimate audio would have to compete
with all the happy chatter at all the other game stations.
We already didn’t have an answer to how we’d present this moment. There were tech
barriers and thematic uncertainty. What would happen if we cut the memory altogether?
This would make the skull altogether and forever unknown.
Something clicked. New questions developed:
● How much do you need to know about a person to love them?
● Does a person’s life matter if we don’t know the details?
● What is the value, if there is any, in honoring a stranger?
3.6 Moment B
Following our exposition space gave us a lot of reasons to rethink our narrative
space, the tent in the woods. The feelings of isolation and privacy that we were aiming for
with the tent wouldn’t feel the same in a crowded room of enthusiastic players. By cutting
magic from the experience, no longer evoking the memory, we were no longer restricted to
this ritual being a one-time event. Also, around that time, I had visited IndieCade’s Night
Games, which reminded me how our own USC Games Expo last year felt – there was this
energy of pure fun, everyone excited to try everything. In addition to shooting for higher
capacity, something about the energy felt right.
20

What if we played into that tone? What if we met Expo where it stood? Since my
thesis would only ever be performed here on campus, in person, why not play into its
natural environment and set the narrative within a festival of its own?
Instead of a 20 minute ritual, Earth & Ash became a 5 hour celebration. We would
still invite players, in groups of 3, to perform elements of a ritual, every 20 minutes or so,
but when they were done, the world wouldn’t reset, it would keep going. Players, rather
than trying to craft and perform an all-encompassing tribute of a life (with hardly any
information to go on) would instead give just a piece of a larger ceremony. And each
player’s piece would add to the others.
We weren’t asking for something “correct,” some perfect ritual, we weren’t asking for
something complete, we were asking for some true thing from the players. Their emotions,
thoughts, and perspectives were valuable on their own, and even though players wouldn’t
know what other players shared in other sessions, this piece by piece structure established
a community experience, a feeling of connection rather than isolation.
Similarly, the role of the guide shed its isolation. We had written the ritual guide as
someone who traveled alone from village to village in order to account for why players,
from a small village, wouldn’t already know them. But what if they weren’t all from the same
village?
The this is what the narrative became: someone, traveling, caught in a storm, found
this skull while sheltering from the rain. When he returned to his village, he delivered the
skull to the village’s guide (my character) who puzzled over what to do – there was no
precedent for this, but he felt a responsibility to hold a ceremony. He gathered guides from
other nearby villages and together they crafted a bespoke ritual for this skull’s owner,
inviting all the villages around to participate. In a semi-meta way, these guides were
tackling the same design challenge we were.
21

3.7 Feel Love B
When I pitched my thesis question, loving a skull was the end goal. By humanizing
this skull, we transformed the significance of this icon of death – if the skull wasn’t some
disquieting thing, the thing it represented wouldn’t be either.
What I realized, from this design process, was that feeling love for this skull wasn’t
an ending, it was an opening. If players could find a reason to feel compassion, empathy, or
even love towards a skull, towards someone they know nothing about – well, think of all the
people in the world that fit that criteria.
My advisor Joe Garlington and I discussed this idea. What is it to know somebody?
He even wondered how much the people who know us best really know us completely.
Maybe it’s true that we can’t ever truly know a person. Maybe everyone is a little unknown.
Yet we still love.
Love – that’s something I’ve threaded throughout this paper, it’s the final word of my
thesis question, but it’s something I’ve yet define. What’s the old sitcom cliché, at least for
the romantic side of love? “You’ll know it when you feel it.”
Though I have designed Earth & Ash through pondering, discussing, researching,
collecting, drawing, building, testing, and a bit of brute force, a lot of my decisions have
come down to “you’ll know it when you feel it.”
During Fall Semester, as a part of Thesis class, my professor Laird Malamed and
classmates Marielle Brady and Nitesh Sridhar helped me playtest a water mechanic I was
developing. When the test ended, while we were talking through feedback, Laird said how,
even though he’d been in class with us all of this semester and throught Thesis Prep in the
22

spring, he felt, after this experience, so much more connected to Marielle and Nitesh (and
me, but particularly them.)
People so often feel isolated. I feel isolated more often than not. And from my
experience while developing this project, this isolation can be particularly strong when it
comes to experiences around death. Nothing is more personal than someone’s experience
with death – yet simultaneously, and equally as true, there is absolutely nothing more
universal than death. It has the potential to be one of the most unifying things; often it’s
one of the most isolating.
The skull, the center of this project, at the end of the day, it’s something I bought off
of etsy. The world my team and I created, it’s a fun little fiction as well. But the people, the
players, they’re real. And their emotions are true. And when they’ve come together, they’ve
left feeling less alone, a little more connected.
Love is something I can’t completely define, but if love can sometimes mean the
opposite of “alone,” of feeling isolated and unknown, then that’s the kind of love I’m seeking
in this project. It’s the kind of love I’ve seen, and felt, in nearly every playtest.
23

Chapter 4: Conclusion
Can I bring players to a moment where they hold a skull and feel love? The skull’s
identity, the moment, the feeling of love, they all evolved to an extent I would never have
imagined a year ago. But “players” – my image of the players was consistent.
There was a time during the final days of my undergraduate program where I, feeling
overloaded with assignments and projects, raised my eyes from the sidewalk to the fellow
faces walking by. Some were light, some were feeling the music in their ears, but some
looked weighed down and hurting. And there wasn’t anything I could do. It takes a lot of
time and attention to develop a friendship close enough and strong enough that someone
trusts you enough to comfort them when things go south. But if I create art, maybe if it’s
good enough, it could comfort total strangers.
I didn’t expect to address this so literally; I also never expected to design a death
ritual. I’m glad I did. Earth & Ash is right in line with what I’ve always hoped to create. And
as imperfect as it was, it still, to me, succeeded. There’s some comfort there, too, some
confidence that I can create things that mean something to people.
Earth & Ash also nailed every goal I had coming into this program. Combined with
the incredible instruction I received from outstanding professors and the collaboration of
my classmates, I was able to develop a creative process that will be foundational to all of
my future projects.
What will those projects be? We’ll see. It could be anything now, couldn’t it?
24

Bibliography
Bowles, Christopher. “The Personal Statement.” 2020. University of Southern California,
unpublished essay.
Byrne, David. How Music Works. Random House Digital, 2017.
25

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bowles, Christopher Bryan (author)

Core Title Earth and ash: inventing (not reinventing) within interactive spaces

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 05/21/2024

Defense Date 05/17/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art,ASH,Ceremony,collaborate,collaboration,collaborator,community ritual,creative directing,creative direction,creative director,creative process,Dead,Death,death rituals,design,designer,Earth,earth and ash,elements,fear of death,game design,games,IMGD,immersive theatre,interactive,interactive media,interactive theatre,interactive writing,interactivity,inventing,LARP,leading,Life,Love,love of life,MFA thesis,Nature,new media,OAI-PMH Harvest,participation,performance,player choice,reinventing,rpg,Skull,team,Theatre,themed entertainment,Thesis,unknown

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bilson, Danny (committee chair), Garlington, Joe (committee member), Nealen, Andy (committee member), Roberts, Sam (committee member), Russworm, TreaAndrea (committee member)

Creator Email cbbowles@usc.edu,chris.b.interactive@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113950051

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Legacy Identifier etd-BowlesChri-12970

Document Type Thesis

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Rights Bowles, Christopher Bryan

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