See also Shadowpox: Edition at https://shadowpox.org/game/ Shadowpox is a participatory storyworld that imagines the emergence of a vaccine-preventable disease composed of viral shadows. Part fact, part science fantasy, the mixed-reality installation Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic combines real-world statistical data with motion-tracking digital effects. The game makes visible what is u
sually invisible to us: how our immunization decisions affect not just our personal health, but the health of other people in our community… and vice versa. The installation is part of , an evidence-based exhibition about the constructive role that art can play in public discourse around life-saving vaccines. At the McMaster Museum of Art from September to December 2021:
https://museum.mcmaster.ca/exhibition/immune-nations/
In April 2020, the team adapted the game to an online version encouraging physical distancing to “flatten the curve” in the early, pre-vaccine phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. To play Shadowpox: Edition, please visit shadowpox.org/game. These games are part of a larger project, a “citizen science fiction” storyworld co-created with young people on three continents, which forms Alison Humphrey’s doctoral research in media arts at York University. The first Shadowpox laboratory in 2016 developed the storyworld and visual effects at the UK’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. A 2018 collaboration with Debajehmujig Storytellers on Manitoulin Island workshopped the six-scene story structure Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm, which was further refined in 2019 with the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in South Africa. In the spring of 2021, this story structure formed the core of a “courseplay” taught at York University. In Digital Culture: Science & Fiction undergraduates imagined acquired immunity through a superhero metaphor, creating their own characters as volunteers in a vaccine trial in the depths of a shadowpox pandemic, who must grapple with issues of informed consent, misinformation, hesitancy, denialism, and trust. Community immunity (when enough of a population has been immunized to prevent the spread of a contagious disease) is achieved not by a single hero, but by the dragon-slaying courage of hundreds of thousands. The Shadowpox project’s participatory storytelling structure and mixed reality visual effects enable its participants to generate new insights into one of the thorniest political dilemmas of public health: voluntary participation in the collective good. For more information, please visit www.shadowpox.org.
