Hazuki Knit – Light Night @ FACT, Liverpool
Friday 18th May was Light Night in Liverpool – a city-wide event of performances, exhibitions, installations, and workshops. As part of FACT’s current exhibition ‘States of Play: Roleplay Reality’ (co-curated by the superb Lucy Sollitt), the gallery transformed their interstitial spaces into exhibition space for small studios and artists.
Earlier in the year, I’d been approached by Gemma May Latham about the possibility of game/craft crossover exhibition, as part of the PhD research exploring the ways in which digital interactions (from CAD to gaming) cross over with more traditional crafts (from knitting to woodwork).
Keen to continue exploring single mechanics of gameplay as a focus in gameplay, I put forward a QTE-centric game as a candidate; Hazuki was born. The game gives players simple on-screen prompts, which they must press quickly in order to increase their score. As with The Mashing, the mechanic is separated from narrative, yet remains oddly compelling. The twist with Hazuki Knit is that the pace of gameplay is entirely influenced by the speed at which the second player operates a knitting machine, leading to a varied mix of competitive and collaborative games, depending on the two players involved.
The roles of the two players flip common preconceptions of the two activities. Knitting becomes a relaxed, disengaged, repetitive motion (dragging the mechanical carriage from left to right) and gaming becomes an intricate, unpredictable experience, requiring accurate and fast moving finger finger coordination.
And let’s not forget that we were being productive all evening:
A wool-free BETA of Hazuki is playable here.