Foreign Reality Office: Field Agents is an alternate reality game (ARG) design project exploring the intersection of digital and real world. The project investigates how physical objects can mediate digital experiences.
Working at the intersection of game mechanics and real-world interaction, take narrative of the player to play as Field Agents, which systematically proposes a new paradigm for human-computer interaction that dissolves the boundary between physical and digital space.
The idea for the game came serendipitously while I was browsing Google Street View. I found a building that had been intentionally blurred. While I understand blurring faces or vehicle plates, in this case the entire building was obscured.
This gave me the idea to create a narrative about a place that possesses something otherworldly—something we cannot see in plain sight, yet can perceive in another reality, in this case through Google Street View.
The hardware components were designed to be modular and reconfigurable, allowing players to construct their own interaction vocabulary. Each device communicates wirelessly with a central hub running custom firmware.
