Oral History

“I think it really resonated with people, plus Animal Crossing was still very popular at the time. So it was something new that people hadn’t really seen before using Animal Crossing in that kind of way. So I think it really resonated with people in the end. Animal Crossing is a very wholesome kind of community, so it was a very wholesome reveal, a wholesome thing that people really resonated with. And I’m not sure how well versed you are with the stigma revolving around gender reveals as well, but we wanted to do it in a way that was not offensive to anyone. Because the whole thing about gender reveals is that, what if you’re placing too much emphasis on the sex of your child when they’re born? What if later in life they don’t really want to resonate, they don’t identify with that sex anymore? And now you have this big reveal and it has to live with them forever. So we did it in a way just as so that, “Hey, this is what we’re having,” we really wanted to do it towards our community by, “Hey, this is what we’re having, we’re having a little girl. But of course, if ever later in life she decides she wants to identify as something else, we’re obviously going to support her in that way.”

“We had [Taniesha Bracken] joining in from the US, and her character came to our island. And we talked about her petition and about racial representation in video games. And that was really fun. And we had all the people from the games world who had never really performed before. We had people who had performed before but not in a virtual setting or in a video game setting, and everyone was just trying. And it was just this beautiful thing of our audiences, who were on the smaller side but some were very dedicated, joining in and just getting to interact with all of these artists and all of these other people in a way that they may not necessarily have done on their own accord…We had two people who did a talk about marine biology and environmentalism, and their entire family and relatives from the Maldives and Sri Lanka came to watch. We had this big wave of people. Yeah. But it was this beautiful thing where people who connected to the idea of the Fringe Festival for one factor, whether they like Animal Crossing or they like Melbourne Fringe or they like performance arts or they’re curious about technology, they found one link and they got in. And they got to share with all of these other people and appreciate all the other elements of this and gain more audiences, gain more appreciation, and gain new friends.”

“(…) I like designing to restrictions, that was part of the appeal of doing the project at all, I guess. Because the way Animal Crossing handles indoor space is very different to how it handles outdoor space. So when you’re outdoors on someone’s island, if you visit somebody else’s islands in Animal Crossing, you can hack at their trees and take their fruit and you can move some things, you can engage with it more. You can fish this, that and the other. You can talk to villagers. If you go indoors in Animal Crossing, the interaction becomes quite different. You can’t move anything, you can’t pick up objects in the same way. You can walk through some objects, but not others. You can also quite importantly spin the camera around which you can’t do outdoors. And also, you can’t make the rooms bigger, the lighting is a bit awkward. The lighting in the room depends on whether the wallpaper has got windows on it or not partially. And you can shut the curtains on certain wallpapers I think, I don’t think I’m making that up. So when I was building the Good Night exhibition, I had to use walls that had no windows on them because otherwise if you visited in the daytime, the ambience would be completely different. So I think there was a wallpaper that I wanted to use for the room with all the clocks but I couldn’t because it’s got windows in it. You’re like, “Okay, fine.” So there’s all sorts of stuff like that, I guess.”

“(…) There was a rush to try to get something positive out there in terms of events. And so obviously, with Animal Crossing just out and it being a sales phenomenon, and we’re seeing everybody on our Switch friend lists has picked up the game, that seemed a natural thing to lean towards. Particularly, because of the sort of game that is, it’s very communication focused. It’s built upon the concept of sharing things with other players, whether that be in for items, tips. I mean, you can’t really do that much in the game in terms of completing your collection or expanding your possibilities for what you can do on your island without exchanging with other people. (…) But then suddenly being locked down and not being able to see your friends and being quite limited in their respect and to have these events occur, perhaps maybe made them feel a little bit more special, because it was one of the positives that you’ve still got to experience. And you also recognize that people who set them up and the people that are participating are also going through hard times, but they’ve put in the effort to design this and to run it and to participate in it. And I don’t think that would have been there without the lockdown and the pandemic. So I think they did see it as a bit special, unique, and in that sense.”