Samuel Clarice Mui

A multi-disciplinary creative & researcher with a focus in transmedia storytelling, game design, and worldbuilding. From roleplaying games, social media, performance, generative audiovisuals, and poetry, his interest lies in the power of interactive storytelling to capture and honour lived experience with an adaptive, research-based & context-specific, inter-media approach.

• CV

Exhibitions

2024
› This is why the whole remains open [...], Small Time Project - Exhibition Info
Work Exhibited: A Bowl of Noodles› This is why the whole remains open [...], Goldsmiths - Exhibition Info
Work Exhibited: Cosmopagan› elevenses, Ugly Duck - Exhibition Info
Works Exhibited: Multiagent Nonlinear Progression Algorithm, Horse Girl
Workshop Facilitated: Generative Storytelling & Ritual Making (slides)2023
› Simbiosis, Goldsmiths - Exhibition Info
Works Exhibited: Abundance I

Conferences & Events

2024
› Areas of Effect, Arebyte Gallery - Event Info
Panelist: Nameless Horrors! Creeping Flesh!
Works Exhibited/Presented: A Bowl of Noodles, Horse Girl, Superzeroes (in-development)2023
› Reimagining Relationality: ASPECT Conference & Program 2023, Virginia Tech
Work Presented: On Locality, Being, Fragmentedness, and Multilinearity (an early draft of decolonial fragmentologies for the deeply problematic)2022
› Big Bad Con, San Francisco - Event Info - Scholarship Recipient
Panelist: The TTRPG Freelancer's Toolbox
Works Presented: Horse Girl, Your Pain & You, Lumen Ryder Core (in-development)2021
› Session Zero Online - Event Info
Works Presented: Capitalites, Superzeroes (in-development)

Research

Interests: postcolonialism, identity, worldbuilding, character building, intertextual literary experimentation.


decolonial fragmentologies for the deeply problematic (2024, 6000~ words): dissertation, academic, postcolonial, autotheory.
A reflective exploration and critique of colonialist frameworks of being and otherness situated within my own lived experience. Here, I discuss the formation of the postcolonial subject as "fragmented", the pitfalls of both essentialist and relational thinking, and establishing "continuity in discontinuity" with theoretical grounding in indigenous approaches to philosophizing and Campagna's metaphysical conceptualization of prophet-as-position.Keywords: postcolonial embodiment, fragmented identity, southeast asia, prophetic culture, locality, indigenous philosophizing


A Bowl of Noodles: (2022) hypertext research essay, performance, interactive poem.
A branching hypertext poem-research essay where you explore the evolution of a family recipe across time and political boundaries. This work critiques notions of fixed authenticity and essentialism in foodways and postcolonial identity.Keywords: postcolonial foodways, southeast asian identity, alternity, multiplicity, hybridity, hypertext narratives, polyphony, historiographic metafiction

Fiction

Capitalites: The Rachel Tan Experience (2023):
A branching hypertext game where you tell the story of Rachel, a 26 year old singer-songwriter living in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, as she reflects on her life, failed relationships, faith, and asexuality while undergoing a COVID quarantine.Based on Capitalites: the urban asian roleplaying game.Content Warnings: references and explicit depictions of COVID, oral sex, vomit, wartime violence, acephobia, depression, misogyny, Christianity, coercion, sexual harassment, food, and situations that can be described as uncomfortable or panic-inducing.
Hot Lesbian Bondage Sex With Oiled-Up Japanese Cyborgs (2021, 1440~ words): A disabled cyborg rediscovers intimacy and bodily wholeness through kink.Content Warnings: explicit depictions of gore and BDSM.


Take Me To The Sky (2020, 2200~ words): An asexual person agonises on the nature of their sexuality as they engage in a night of passionate lovemaking with their partner.Content Warnings: explicit depictions of sex.

Capitalites: the urban asian roleplaying game (2020)

Capitalites is a coming-of-age, slice-of-life tabletop roleplaying game about a group of young adults living in the big city and figuring out who they are while trying to get their shit together.It uses a newbie-friendly, narrative-focused structure of play that focuses on collaboration and conversation - just like a TV Writers’ Room - to tell a story full of as much drama, romance, and tragedy as you please. If you’ve enjoyed games from the Belonging-Outside-Belonging and “Penned to Good Society” design families, you'll enjoy this one as well!Play the role of one of 22 unique Characters, each with their own fashion styles, insecurities, ambitions, flaws, and strengths (all inspired by real-life friends and enemies - mostly with their permission). Each one explores a different facet and dynamic in the great big chaotic world of young adulthood with their own special blends of spicy drama.Get the game here!

Developing Capitalites

Capitalites was developed primarily as a playful anthropological study of urban southeast asian youth cultures - namely, the communities that I grew up in and greatly formed my coming-of-age.This game was made in the context of asian representation and its surrounding discourses, operating as an explicitly autobiographical tabulation of the deeply complex types of people that would, more often than not, elude mainstream representation and exist outside of orientalist tropes.Each one of the game's 22 Character playbooks was based on at least one person I know in real life. A big part of this game's selling point and narrative methodology was then an in-depth exploration of the problematic, materialistic, and misogynistic characteristics us southeast asian youth possessed as a result of being raised in the deeply neoliberal, post-war world of a post-2000s southeast asia.One of my goals here was to demystify the southeast asian youth, revealing ourselves as outside of orientalist tropes and representing us as we chose to be represented - namely, trying my best to represent us as we are and giving space for players to explore our problematic truths outside of colonial, black-and-white moralistic modes of marginalized representation.As a result, what you get is a cacophonic ensemble of very "messed up" people locked in contradictory and self-conflicting modes of existence.For example, you can play as the Hot Chick, a universally attractive cisgender woman who "all the guys want to fuck and that all the girls wanna be". Trapped in the dynamics of her own looks, she grapples with establishing herself as a real, human person while surrounded by people with disingenuous motives.In contrast with the Hot Chick, the Material Buddha represents both the worst and best of southeast asian buddhist culture as they pursue both spiritual enlightenment and material abundance. Inside this contradiction emerges the complex revelation of how traditional Confucian values have been integrated into a post-economic boom, neoliberal cultural landscape - where financial smarts and self-centered achievement are (mis)balanced with self-righteous meekness and selfless duty towards others.Finally, the Queer is an exploration of queerness itself when living in a world where bigotry is expressed through both social and institutional violence. This playbook is significant in that by choosing to play them, you are committed to a difficult exploration of problematic queerness - where the "not-queer-enough" queer person battles bitterness and alienation as a result of being politically and financially restricted from ever living a happy life.Ultimately, Capitalites is designed to be a very intense game, but an intensity where the emotional depths are scored by moments of laughter and absurdity as players gaze at cringe-worthy reflections of themselves and their peers. Like the characters it lets you play, it exists in its own contradiction of paying respects to lived experience while playing disrespectfully with said lived experiences as if they were toys - maybe to find emotional cartharsis, maybe as a way to seek understanding as to how geopolitics affects our most intimate lives, or maybe as a way to understand ourselves in our deeply problematic but very human natures.Get the game here!

Horse Girl (2021)

Inspired by gruesome body horror works such as The Human Centipede Trilogy, Tusk, Equus, and Boxing Helena, Horse Girl is a solo journaling game in which you will document your surgical and mental transformation into a horse by the love of your life.Dedicated to all those who have had their lives irreparably ruined by the choices they made while under sound mind.Physically published by Leyline Press in 2023. Gameplay directly inspired by the The Wretched by Chris Bissette.Get the game here!

The Story

You are a woman in her late 20s. Life has not been kind to you, as much as you have tried to make things work. Your career was a mess, you were estranged from those who were supposed to love you, and you felt utterly lost in your life, not knowing who you were and what you were supposed to do.But things changed when you met Him: a handsome, intelligent young doctor who came into your life and saw the light in you where everyone else saw emptiness.Like you, He’s lived a lonely life. Deep beneath His confident personality and self-assured composure, you know that there’s a vulnerable, forlorn little boy who just wants to be loved. To love Him became your purpose. To truly live was to live with Him and for Him.As time went on, you fell deeper in love as you grew further and further away from your friends and family - to the point where they barely seemed to exist anymore. That’s okay though. No one’s ever made you feel the way He’s made you feel. With Him, you finally feel safe.So when He offers you a room in His mansion where the both of you can live together in bliss for the rest of your lives, you say “Yes!” - even if the sole condition is that you’ll be surgically and mentally transformed into a horse.An entirely new body and mind is such a small price to pay for a lifetime of peace and happiness, you think.Get the game here!

Your Pain and You (2021)

Your Pain & You is a collection of six annotated microgames about healing, family, and intimacy from 2018 to 2020.This project is a collection of my earliest and most personal game projects, each one designed to fit within a page. These microgames come from a time when I was exploring the use of playful rituals for engaging with the more difficult aspects of human life.Further explanation is provided in the annotations, where I link the creation and development of a microgame to a real life struggle or experience.Games included:
› Death Of a Hero - a game of grief and rememberance as you gather together to remember the life of a hero and come to terms with the complexities of their life and death.
› Alone With Your Ghost - a solo game about coming to terms with your past by way of exorcising a ghost.
› Wet Cigarette - a game for two where you play a couple on the final end of a breakup as they take turns to reveal painful secrets about their relationship to one another.
› Southern Skies - a game about a family dinner gone wrong as long buried emotions are finally expressed.
› This House - a game where you play a ghost possessing guests at their own funeral to seek forgiveness from their family members before passing onto the afterlife.
› I Am a Ghost - a self-reflective group game where you ask other players what they really think of you.Get the game here for free!

Multiagent Nonlinear Progression Algorithm (2024)

This five-minute performance implements human agents in an emergent complex adaptive generative system of behavioural algorithms as if they are nodes in a machine learning neural network. To do this, each participant is given one of the following prompts to interpret in any way they wish:> "Without speaking, act like you don't want to be here"
> "Without speaking, act like you're interested in what someone else is doing"
> "Without speaking, act like you want to be here but don't know what to do"
> "Without speaking, make it known to everyone else that you don't want to be here"
> "Without speaking, pretend that you know what you are doing here"
> "Without speaking, act like you're important"
> "Without speaking, act like you want something from someone else”.

Abundance I (2023)

(Use headphones for best experience)An interactive sonic sandbox where two players explore and generate an emergent soundscape which evolves through the sacred act of collaborative play and exploration.Co-Performer: Maria Gracia CebrecosVideographer: Thomas Rosser

Cosmopagan (2024)

Coauthored with Julia Fung
Don Juan describes the shape of the sorcerer’s soul as a giant egg of light, an assemblage of universal energy filaments. Through practice, they are able to perform perceptual shifts and alter the shape of their soul.To some metaphysicists, there are three energy filaments are known as the Zircon Nomad (whose death is the death of zircon), the Trickster Julius (who wishes to trap you in recursive linguistics), and the Technic Lord (who seeks to hold the realm of possibility in one hand).This is the story of what happens to the conscious soul in between phases of existence - in the interstitial space between the apocalypse of an old world and birth of a new one - as the Zircon Nomad engages in discourse with the Trickster Julius and Technic Lord to discuss the act of creation for the next world.Muppim & Huppim (Introductory Audio)

The Zircon Nomad

Wheel of Misfortune (2022)

This work was inspired by and developed as part of an artist study on the work of Sophy Hollington.Sophy Hollington is a UK-based illustrator and printmaker whose work features themes of folklore, alchemical symbology, and the occult but remixed a postmodern, “glam-punk twist”. Her interest in art first started when she was 5 years old and developed onwards from there. At one point, she was also a guitarist in an independent band but has long since stopped publicly performing as she prefers using music as a personal and private therapeutic tool.In broad strokes, Hollington’s body of work mainly takes the form of linocut prints which feature large swathes of black and white space highlighted by splashes of flat colours. The linocut print medium of her practice affords her work with an old-world-esque feel of roughness and “lived-in” texture as it allows the painstaking, time-consuming process of carving into linoleum to shine through. This process forces her to intensely consider every single aspect of her pieces before putting her blade to the material, taking into account everything from composition to the narrative of a particular piece.Indeed, a large aspect of her work dwells in her ability to tell an entire narrative within a single piece, a process which involves keen archival research into religious mediaeval obscura and near-forgotten spiritual practices. As a result, her art style takes on a morbidly childlike feel very much reminiscent of old, clothbound children’s books filled with ghosts, witches, monsters, elder gods, and a loose, mythological sense of grandeur, mystery, and whimsy.I consider Sophy Hollington to be one of my favourite artists because of her transplantation of the mystickal and esoteric into modern and contemporary aesthetics. As a spiritualist southeast asian queer person (an inherently liminal and paradoxically positionless position), I find myself considering more of my own relationship with the spiritual upon observing her work. I find this genre of art culturally significant as it beckons us, audience and artist alike, to mull more about how we ourselves can bring forth the intangible into tangibility and inspire the same primal feelings that drove our ancestors to ask what was beyond the confines of “reality” and conjure up elaborate mythologies which asked questions about humanity’s place amidst a magical universe.

Tranquility Pool

city of buf level 9.0 - holy purifier road

This work is a screen recording of a first-person roleplaying game titled City of Buf developed by Vietnamese-Taiwanese Pham Ti Hai Ut for Xbox, distributed and released by Silver Donkey (銀驢) studios in 2001. The game was left untranslated from its Chinese language release. In 2009, an emulated, albeit heavily compressed, version of the game found popularity amongst online subcultures dedicated to vintage video game preservation.This game later laid the groundwork for Hai Ut’s Bufuimi Woman which was being developed from 1999 to 2020, after which Hai Ut disappeared from the industry due to unknown reasons.

Reality ω

This work is a fake video game which explores worldbuilding through metafictional game worlds and interfaces. It is a work in a long lineage of ‘fake video games’, artworks which depict fictional video games but are presented and designed to look like they could exist [1]. These range from Apple Quest Monsters DX! which tells the story of a fictional world through a gaming strategy guide [2], to work of Molly Moon whose stylized tik tok shorts take on the appearance of early 90s full motion video graphics [3], to The Haematurge, a playbook for a nonexistent tabletop roleplaying game [4].Many significant artworks in this genre can be so convincing that people unaware of their fictitious nature can mistake them as ‘real games’.Through the usage of console gaming user interface (UI) elements (namely the shoulder and ABXY buttons of an Xbox controller), this work then similarly presents itself not just as something to be read but something which offers the sensation of playability and interactivity.This method is twofold, not only to add believability to the existence of this fictional game but also allows me to play with UI elements that would otherwise be hard to use, hard to learn, and unplayable in real life [5].

Figure 1: Cruelty Squad (2021). A modern release whose clunky and offensive design function as part of the game’s corporate biopunk dystopic world [6].

Figure 2: Fallout (1997). Similar to Cruelty Squad, the highly stylized, grungy interface for the game adds much to the imaginative worldbuilding processes that gives the game its signature feel [7].

Figure 3: Wizardry 8 (2001). This game’s interface might seem cluttered by modern sensibilities but it is important to note that each piece of UI presented has a specific function vital to its gameplay. It is through the learning of what each UI element does that the player learns how to navigate the world of the game [8].

Figure 5: The Last of Us (2013). As a point of comparison, note the absence of any UI elements to present a cinematic, hyper realistic feel - as is in line with the intention of the game [9].

Reality ξ

This work is a metafictional text that explores the relationship between interface, the presentation of interface, the language of video game conventions, and the fictioning potentiality of game worlds [10][11].We see this technique present in the ‘fictioning’ of museum displays where limited information on prehistoric animals requires an “imaginative collaboration” between the physical artefacts, museum space, museum guests, centuries of paleontological study, and the ‘unknown world’ of the prehistoric past [12, p. 315]. We can also trace this lineage of ‘fictioning’ back to maps such as the Tavola 1-60, a world map drawn in 1587 which includes speculative countries positioned in then-unexplored regions of the world complete with cultural notes as well as oceanic phenomenons created from anecdotes left by sailors [13].I would like to take this one step further within the context of fictional video games, wherein the fictioning process does not end with presentation of the work but in the imaginative space between the work and the viewer, actively playing with their expectations - allowing them to partake in the fictioning process as they imagine what the rest of the game would look like or what would happen if a certain button is pressed.

Reality κ

This work was made using Touchdesigner, Blender, Photoshop, and Illustrator.Touchdesigner was used in the compositing of the different elements and animation. The signature ‘wobble’ effect of compressed vintage game emulation was layered on top of the different elements through the use of noise and displacement. Animation was done using noise, sine, and time functions.Blender geometry nodes were used to generate the frames of the UI elements, mainly using variations of the ‘Instances on Points’ method.Finally, Photoshop and Illustrator were used to create the static UI elements. To give the illusion of three-dimensionality, I applied the Bevel filter.All in all, the techniques used in creating this project were fairly straightforward as I did not feel the need to try anything too technically complicated to recreate the low-poly, compressed style of the work. Rather, I focused on using the tools and methods available to me to tell a cohesive story - avoiding the trap of crafting a ‘tech demo’.

Figure 5: the circular spiked frame used in the top left corner.

Figure 6: the overall frame of the interface is composed of small ‘wheels’, a single curve of ‘vines’, and the frame itself. Each of the three elements was exported separately so I could assign different materials to them in touchdesigner.

Reality α

This work alone and the process of making it allowed for many provocations to arise in regards to my overall artistic practice of games and worldbuilding.I am left thinking about the implications of game design as a literary method, especially with the provocation of playability or the sensation of playability. The absence of a controller when presented in a gallery space also presents an interesting provocation as the ‘game space’ is functionally unplayable beyond participatory observation, forcing the viewer to ‘play the game’ by thinking about what it would be like to play the game. I feel this project has the potential to constitute a bigger research project.

Reality λ

Third-Party Assets used (licensed for use under Creative Commons):T. Koeniger, “Buddha - Four Faces - Download Free 3D model by T.Koeniger (@3D-hannover),” sketchfab.com, Jun. 14, 2021. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/buddha-four-faces-18405445c05e48fabbc915d69ae2ccc2 (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).CemCkrc, “FPS ARMS - PSX / PS1 STYLE by CemCkrc,” itch.io, Aug. 06, 2021. https://cemckrc.itch.io/fps-arms-psx-style (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).Arks, “XBOX Buttons by Arks💢,” itch.io, Sep. 06, 2020. https://arks.itch.io/xbox-buttons (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).A. Amir, “Low Poly 3D Models Packs by Ahmed Amir,” itch.io, Aug. 23, 2023. https://ahmedamir7.itch.io/low-poly-3d-models (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).

Reality ν: Bibliography

[1]
S. E. Wolf, “The Bizarre World of Fake Video Games,” www.youtube.com, Apr. 14, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8GnM5xD1k4&t=3015s (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).[2]
splendidland, “Apple Quest Monsters DX by splendidland,” itch.io, Aug. 24, 2018. https://splendidland.itch.io/apple-quest-monsters-dx (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).[3]
M. Moon, www.tiktok.com. https://www.tiktok.com/@mollymoonn2?lang=en (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).[4]
C. Bissette, “d36: Issue 1 by Chris Bissette,” itch.io, Jan. 21, 2022. https://loottheroom.itch.io/d36-issue-1 (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).[5]
Y. A. Sekhavat, M. J. Sisi, and S. Roohi, “Affective interaction: Using emotions as a user interface in games,” Multimedia tools and applications, vol. 80, no. 4, pp. 5225–5253, 2021, doi: 10.1007/s11042-020-10006-4.[6]
Consumer Softproducts, “cruelty squad,” Bing, Jan. 16, 2021. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/CrueltySquad/ (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).[7]
Interplay Inc., “Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game on Steam,” store.steampowered.com, Sep. 30, 1997. https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/38400/[8]
Sir-Tech Canada, “Wizardry 8 on Steam,” store.steampowered.com, Dec. 15, 2001. https://store.steampowered.com/app/245450/Wizardry8/ (accessed Apr. 27, 2024).[9]
Naughty Dog LLC and Iron Galaxy Studios, “The Last of UsTM Part I,” store.steampowered.com, Mar. 28, 2023. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888930/TheLastofUsPart_I/[10]
R. Imhof, Contemporary Metafiction. 1986.[11]
E. Paterson, T. Simpson-Williams, and W. Cordner, Once upon a pixel : storytelling and worldbuilding in video games. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2020.[12]
V. Burke and W. Tattersdill, “Science Fiction Worldbuilding in Museum Displays of Extinct Life,” Configurations (Baltimore, Md.), vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 313–340, 2022, doi: 10.1353/con.2022.0019.[13]
M. Urbano, “Tavola 1-60,” 1587.

To get in touch, please email [email protected].Samples of work available on request.