Counteractions: An ACT Thesis Screening
May 31
A Mystery for You, a game developed by Mrinalini Singha (SMACT ’24) and Haoheng Tang (Harvard GSD’ 24) won in the Student Games Competition category at ACM CHI’ 2024 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction.
In an age of rampant misinformation and AI, A Mystery for You combines LLM (large language model) generated sequential game-play with the affordances of a tactile, slow media console to inculcate an investigative mindset and more thoughtful consumption of news media. The player investigates various actors and evidence by inserting cartridge combinations into the game interface. Each move the player makes results in the generation and printing of a follow-up ‘news update,’ which they must use to make an informed verdict about the truth or falsehood of the news.
The sequential game-play and AI generation, allows for a penumbra of possibilities to evolve around every move made by a player. A shadow world is created, from where new updates come out slowly, creating an ever-changing landscape shaped by the prompt-engineering involved as well as their embedded algorithmic and model biases. A montage of an evolving ‘reality’ is unraveled and sensibility is gained through interaction with the device. This integration challenges our passive consumption of news media through dialectic interaction that goes beyond the screen. It demonstrates the potential of harnessing generative AI not just for creating content but for fostering a critical, reflective approach that is essential for navigating the complexities of the modern information landscape.
Mrinalini and Haoheng started this project as part of Marcelo Coelho’s Design Studio course on Interaction Intelligence with the aim of designing “Large Language Objects.” The game-play was informed by Mrinalini’s experience working on misinformation and media politics in India during her time at Alt News, the country’s leading fact-checking organization.
Their extended abstract paper contextualizes the game’s relevance in today’s media and politics, explores game-play mechanics, and critically reflects on incorporating AI generation tools for educational game play.
Mrinalini further discusses the political and aesthetic dimensions of A Mystery for You in her thesis, Disrupting Monocultural Tendencies through Multimodal Montage. Her thesis contends with the pervasive impact of monocultural tendencies as manifested in the political, cultural, and media landscapes of contemporary India, particularly focusing on the unfolding context of 2024. She posits art, particularly through the framework of ‘multi-modal montage,’ as an agent of political disruption for ‘redistributing the sensible.’ Tracing the evolution of montage from its early 20th-century origins in Soviet cinema to its contemporary forms, the thesis outlines the transition from montage defined by collision and conflict to the soft, spatial, and interactive practices.
