A Hindu origin story, an interactive card reading and data privacy
Alina Constantin + Varun Saxena
Class: Project Studio - 2020
Instructor:
A card reading in 3 chapters, Ganesha’s Terms translates the obscurity of what happens with our data online through moments in the epic drama of the birth of the god Ganesha.
Players collect cards and sentences of an incomplete narrative, going back and forth from an escalating war between lovers from the Hindu pantheon, to modern day conflicts of interest between online users and the companies whose services we use. This proof of concept was designed as playable research between 3 friends at NYU’s Game Center and Parsons-The New School, to explore the power relations embedded in our informational technologies through the emotional lens of an ancient story with conceptual parallels, in the hope of generating more personal interpretations.
“Ganesha’s Terms” was created and selected as a part of NYC Media Lab’s – Consumer Reports Data Challenge – a video presentation of the result can be seen here
