it's august! (🐟/📖/🌈/📚)

in which new soundscapes emerge, design processes both thoughtful and joyfully unhinged take shape, and the wonders of story in every form abide.

Aug 02, 2023

Flyer for EROSION/BURIAL/UPLIFT/REPEAT, with exhibition details in white text against a duotone background photo that's a close-up of a variety of abstracted ceramic creatures by Kaye Blankenship. Exhibition details are in the text that follows this image.

🐟 EROSION / BURIAL / UPLIFT / REPEAT - Waters of the Otherworld » If you're in the Portland area, you have just a few more days to catch this piece I collaborated on with interdisciplinary artist + dear friend Kaye Blankenship! All are welcome at the closing reception/celebration tomorrow, 8/3, and the exhibition as a whole will be open through Friday, 8/4. The piece is in the central atrium of the main PNCA building, and I highly recommend wandering the building to experience all of their cohort’s projects, too.

If you’re further afield and would like to check it out, never fear — please swing by Kaye’s website to experience a made-for-headphones version of the audio landscape I created for the piece!

3 images: 1 is the cover for the game OBLIVION, with the text "a game by dk makes" and "a reimagining of Sam Leigh's Anamnesis." The image behind the text is a plume of abstract, creepy pink smoke against an opaque, dark blue background. The second image is a sage grouse standing at attention and surrounded by bright, colorful emoji hearts. The last image is an illustration of a round window overlooking a simple cartoon night landscape, with the words "Window Seat" curving above the window.

📖 OBLIVION » Way back in January, I participated in the Anamnesis Jam, and about a month ago I finally published a dev log about how & why I turned it into my game OBLIVION! The jam challenge was to remix Sam Leigh’s tarot-based solo journaling game Anamnesis in some way, and I had a blast turning Anamnesis’ prompts & structure inside out to suit a new kind of story. Solo journaling games are such a neat branch of tabletop role-playing games, a low-stakes invitation for folks to spend some time with their own creativity, and working on this was a great, friendly introduction to a form I’m looking forward to exploring more in the coming months.

🌈 FLIRTIE BIRDIE BINGO » Last month, I also released an e x t r e m e l y silly game called FLIRTIE BIRDIE BINGO as part of the Bad TTRPGs Queer Block Party Jam! Inspired by the truly bonkers world of real-life bird flirting, all you need to play are a group of goofball humans, provided bingo sheets, and commitment to maximum silliness. (As is fitting for a bad games challenge, it is also completely un-playtested and wildly unbalanced! But it was really fun to make and I hope it brings you some joy!)

📚 WINDOW SEAT » I’ve been keeping an online record of books I loved or that sparked big questions for me for a while, but about a year ago, I started posting my thoughts about what I’ve been reading over at Window Seat. If you’re interested in some informal, intermittent reviews and recommendations, please come check it out — and if there’s anything you’ve been reading this summer that you can’t put down, I’d love to hear about it!

:) devan

~ dk makes ~

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