The Last Chinatown (working title): development documentation
Since 2018, this project has organically evolved in different ways as we learned more about these specific histories and integrated co-creation approaches. This page documents aspects of our progress and ongoing iterations.
This video documents the development and behind-the-scenes (note that the project's previous working title was “Lost Chinatowns”).
This iteration (2021) imagines a mobile app with three key features: 1) a branching narrative that is decided by the audience/players, 2) a simple call-and-response rhythm game mechanic, and 3) a movement mechanic that guides the player through original movement choreography.
This video excerpt (2022) shows 3D point cloud scans stitched together to create a scene in current downtown Santa Cruz, CA, at the site of the last Chinatown. These scans will be used to recreate the present-day environment for a virtual reality (VR) version of the project (which will not require the user/player to be on-site in Santa Cruz). The video also shows how we are using archival materials to recreate the main Chinatown street, China Lane. Finally, George Ow Jr., the last living member of the community with memories of living in the last Chinatown, shares memories about the ways that he remembers racial dynamics playing out in his youth.
Preliminary poetic experiment (2020) in placing a dancing body, filmed volumetrically, at the San Lorenzo River, which formed an important source of nourishment, play, and ultimately destruction for Santa Cruz’s last Chinatown. Volumetric data captured and processed with two Azure Kinects and Depthkit software.
Click here for Take Action Games’ in-progress Depthkit + ARKit Technical Document detailing some of our production tests and workflow since 2018.
Depthkit footage; moving viewpoint in real-time (2018).
Importing Depthkit and ARKit into Unity (2018).
Moving the model so that the axis is at the feet of the model (2018).
Volumetric video in real-space using ARKit (2018).