On March 29th, I will be traveling to Kyoto to take part in the first Playtest Kyoto event as a contributing artist. Playtest Kyoto is a three-day event for experimental games and play in urban spaces. This will be the first ever urban play festival in Japan!

I will be premiering Urban Lens, a web app I made in collaboration with the talented artist The Nomi. Urban Lens, at its core, is a playful mindfulness activity. It encourages you to slow down and notice the textures, materials, and patterns of the urban environment. Together, we'll use Kyoto as a canvas to design clothing patterns for characters. Urban Lens will also have a companion digital game which will compile all the shots taken during the festival and put them in mini urban enviroment to explore.

I'm really excited to see how people will notice the world around them, and I can't wait to view all the colorful designs people capture. This will be my first time travelling to Kyoto. I will be arriving a few days early. If the weather is good I will be walking from Kyoto to Osaka which is about 10 hours away by foot. It's a good chance for me to test out the app more and explore the city.

Check out some of the games made by the other contributing artists below

W ZACK W is an artist-researcher based in Kyoto, Japan. Currently writing dissertation on yōkai karuta at Kyoto Seika University.
itch.io - https://wzackw.itch.io/

Joanna is a creative technologist and multimedia artist with a background in game design. Her practice spans across interactive virtual environments/CGI, audiovisual live performances and installations. She is interested in making interactive works which invite the public to explore the connections between humans, public spaces, and profound societal questions.
itch.io - https://jyolyu.itch.io/

Tomo Kihara is a media artist and a game designer that develops experimental games and installations that draw out unexplored questions from people through play. After graduating from Keio University, he completed his master's in Interaction Design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He has since worked on projects focusing on the social impact of AI with institutions such as Waag Futurelab in Amsterdam and the Mozilla Foundation in the USA. His recent works have been nominated for the Ars Electronica STARTS PRIZE (Linz, 2021) and exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London, 2022).

Kaho Abe is a Media Artist and Game Designer from NYC, currently based in Tokyo, interested in improving social and personal experiences through the use of technology, wearables and games. She creates and build playful experiences with novel, experimental interfaces for the physical world, with the hope to connect people.