2013 Snapshot Event Games

To help focus your time and hone your digital skills, we’ve created a series of games to play with the photos. See below for further instructions and resources:

• Scavenger Hunt
• Exquisite Corpse
• Photomontage
• Reading with and against the grain
• Composite Photographic History

Note: You can find all Snapshot Day photos in the Snapshot Gallery.

 

Scavenger Hunt (1-4 people)

The more you look for, the more you see. Search the photos in the exhibit for the items below, choosing either to…

1. find as many instances (10 or more) as you can of one item; or
2. find as many of the items (10 or more) as you can, even if only once.

Create a Prezi, PowerPoint, or iMovie collage of the items you’ve found, being sure to tell us what we’re looking at.

Trains/cars/trucks/buses • stairs • cats • food • artwork • water • parks • faces • signs • graffiti • graves • construction • feet/body parts • musical instruments • beverages • clocks • lines converging to a vanishing point • pictures in pictures • references to a movie/TV show/brand • mailboxes • flags • images with four or more colors of the rainbow (roygbiv) • images with two or fewer colors of the rainbow • right angles • isosceles/equilateral/scalene triangles • garbage cans • circles • reflections • text that tells you what to do • text that asks you a question • images that repeat a form/shape three or more times • some other motif that YOU find!

Exquisite Corpse (5-7 people)

This is a collaborative surrealist writing game. Every member of the group should perform steps 1-4 below, so you end up with as many poems or stories as there are group members:

1. On a piece of paper that can be folded, write the first 2-3 lines of a story or poem inspired by one of the images in the exhibit. Stop when you reach the end of the 2nd or 3rd line — even if that means stopping in the middle of a sentence.
2. Fold over the paper so that only the last line is showing, and pass it to the next person in your group.
3. On the paper you’ve received, extend the story/poem by 1 or 2 lines, again stopping at the end of the line, and again fold the paper so that only the last line is showing.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until everyone has contributed to every poem/story.
   Reveal, read back, and revel in the madness! Then work together on steps 5-6 to create a multimedia masterpiece:
5. As a group, choose your favorite story/poem and illustrate it with photos from the exhibit — choose around 2 photos each, plus the initial photo.
6. Use iMovie to pull your images together into a short video, with the exquisite corpse as either a voiceover or text captions (or both).

Photomontage (4-6 people, in pairs)

Remember the “photos” of the Statue of Liberty drowning in Hurricane Sandy’s waves? The shark swimming up the West Side Highway? Here, you’ll digitally construct a composite scene you would not find anywhere in New York.

1. Gather Materials: Each member, select 2 images from the exhibit; you will extract elements/objects from these create a digital a collage.
2. Use Gimp to assemble your montage: Working alone or in pairs, create your montage using elements/portions from the selected photos. Add each photo in as a new layer. Manipulate the layers by changing colors, adding textures, repetition, cropping, filters, etc. Go wild!
3. Mix it up: The final photomontage must use at least one aspect of at least one image from each group member. Aim for surprise and absurdity!
4. Title it / Caption it: Title your photomontage and/or write a sentence describing your creative new work.
5. Collect, Curate, Post! As a group, post all of your photomontages and title your collection.

Reading with and against the grain (1-3 people)

Museum curators often strive to craft a coherent experience — a narrative — as visitors move through the exhibit. Visitors can either immerse themselves in this narrative or resist it, finding their own. For this game, choose one of the options below, along with your own selection of medium (video, audio, text, or a combination). In all cases, remember that any critique should be generous.

1. Reading with: the reviewer. Imagine you are art critics for The New York Times, assigned to cover this year’s Macaulay Snapshot event. Look over some examples of art reviews for inspiration (Review 1, Review 2, Review 3) and craft your own review of the exhibit. Questions to consider include: What do you see? How do the photographs speak to one another? What is the story the exhibit tells you? What prior knowledge and/or experience has shaped your interactions with the pieces? Did any of your previous conceptions shift in response to this exhibit?
2. Reading against: the auteur. Assemble images or video taken at the exhibit into an enactment of one narrative that you find within it. You may wish to simply re-curate the images into an alternate art gallery, or instead to be creative with genre (e.g. love story, sci fi thriller, political manifesto, etc).

Composite Photographic History (1-3 people)

Using these photographs as a model, find historical relevance within the personal photographs–how do these particular photographs and their personal POVs relate to historical change or a greater historical narrative?

1. Search out photographs in the show that can be compared with photographs of New York’s past, with an eye toward an analysis of their differences, and their meaning(s).
   • Note: You might look for historic photos of NYC in The Library of Congress, The New York City Municipal Archives, The New York Public LIbrary. Be sure to copy down important citation info.
2. Use PowerPoint or another program to compare the photographs visually, while perhaps adding text or audio to give the comparison a narrative. Be sure to cite your image sources!