Last week we attended a private viewing of the Babycastles Videogame Gallery featuring independent games developed by New York Muslims for Interaction. Babycastles is located a few short blocks from Union Square in Manhattan, and features “an exploration of the lived Muslim experience through the embedded narratives of independent, contemporary videogames.”
We were given a full tour of the recently opened gallery by volunteer Kirk Musngi who guided us through each of the four games on display whose stories ranged from daily life to the survival of war.
The first interactive art-piece we experience was Farsh by the Iranian born Mahdi Bahrami with music by Moslem Rasuli. Farsh is a game about rolling traditional Persian carpets with special attention paid to the mathematics of pattern-making, weaving and his Iranian cultural heritage. Kirk explained that Mahdi based the game off of watching his mother weaving patterns in carpets when he was a young boy.
Also on display from Mahdi is Engare, a game about the movement of objects with a large focus on traditional Islamic art styles and patterns. Much like his first game it is directly inspired by the art he grew up with back in Iran.
The coded art-piece قلب by Ramsey Nasser is on display showing the role of human culture written in Arabic coding. قلب is an attempt to develop coding tools and symbols not using Latin characters based on the English language but instead developing a localized Arabic system of coding. The code is streaming underneath and is displaying a simplified version of Pong as the program works in the background.
The forth game on display was the popular text adventure game A Dark Room originally released on web browser by Michael Townsend of Doublespeak Games, was ported to iOS with the help of Amir Rajan. A Dark Room draws direct inspiration from the minimalist gameplay of the Candy Box Series that is famed for hiding most of its gameplay behind layers of obfuscation. Amir assisted with the port and proudly displays the game on a wall mounted iPad at Babycastles.
Babycastles also features the work from the modding community that has modded existing videogames into new experiences that directly reflects their own. Grand Theft Auto: Indonesia is the modded version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and features the main character CJ praying during Salat, when all Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca. All of the original text featured in the game has been translated to Arabic for localization.
Finally on display is Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge as a non-interactive video loop a non-playable game. Babycastles’ description for the game reads as follows:
“We wanted to present a perspective on the lived Muslim experience that is honest and complete, rather than one that is aesthetically shallow. Unfortunately, oppression and violence pervades the Muslim world. The non-interactive presentation allows us to simultaneously acknowledge the game’s existence while refusing to condone its content or creation. The audience becomes passive viewers of the game creator’s perspective on the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese War.”
Kirk explained to us that Babycastles wants to create an atmosphere where the energy of videogames and their creators can mix with the energy of music and art. They gallery regularly host live music events every weekend in an efforts to combine the two New York City cultures together so they can grow and feed off each other. Fans of games, art, and music alike can enjoy the gallery at their leisure, but are encouraged to check for specific hours and events as they regularly change.
Babycastles Gallery is located at 137 W 14th St on the second floor with event listings through their Facebook and website.
The videogames featured in this article will be on display until August 31 of this year.
Brian Kale
@brianwkale
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