Abrahamic Aleppo: Coffee and Puppets

Abrahamic Aleppo highlights culture and arts through a narrative, interactive experience. Players take on the role of a young child tasked with helping their family to host a traditional garden party in 1928. During the experience, the player explores key locations such as a coffee house, a marketplace, an affluent private home, the Baron Hotel, and the local neighborhood. While playing, they engage in cultural crafts such as soap making, puppetry, and tarab, while interacting with fictional characters whose stories highlight the city through an Abrahamic lens.   

The goals for the experience are to:

Understand the rich, multicultural history of coexistence in Aleppo

Respect the diverse stories from hundreds of years of immigration to Aleppo

Why Aleppo? 

Aleppo, Syria, is one of the most historic and pluralistic cities in the world, going back hundreds of years with Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together.  Our project team, comprised of many faiths and cultural backgrounds, explores human rights and humanities themes through interactive narratives. We selected the city not only for its history but also because of the incredible people of Aleppo within the city and in the diaspora whom we have spoken with over the years.  

Why make this game?

Video games are an amazing storytelling medium capable of exciting players all over the world. Targeting both gamers and the public, we hope to share knowledge of a time when people in a pluralistic society could work together despite their differences. Engaging people from the city and throughout the greater diaspora, we aim to craft a narrative that celebrates the culture of the city through the eyes of everyday people and potentially aid in future reconstruction efforts. This project also supports the Digital Media & Design Department research efforts to communicate humanities themes to a general audience. 

 

 Our Creative Process

Through the creative process, we find it essential to collaborate with experts from a diverse body of knowledge. Games require many people to create, and by collaborating with storytellers and scholars from Aleppo in an all-day design charrette, the team is working to include stories from many perspectives. Games are an incredible medium capable of capturing this interplay through self-guided exploration and interacting with cultural arts.  For instance, one of our collaborators discovered the largest known collection of Karagöz Shadow Puppets, which belonged to her great-great-grandfather, an Armenian puppeteer who moved to Aleppo during the Armenian genocide. You’ll be able to see, interact, and create your own shadow puppets in the experience with specific information to ground these artifacts with thoroughly referenced research.  

What about Aleppo in its current state? 

Currently the people of Aleppo are under enormous strain after the civil war and earthquakes have destroyed much of the city. In fact, there are several existing VR projects that focus specifically on this destruction. Our goal is to remind everyone that beneath the rubble exists one of the most amazing and ancient cities in the world, one full of rich, multicultural stories. 

Computer Requirements

Our current build has only been tested on Oculus Quest and HTC Vive.  

Attributions

Our team comprises current student game developers in the Digital Media and Design Department at the University of Connecticut. https://dmd.uconn.edu/major/concentrations/game-design/   

  • Kenneth Thompson, Assistant Professor in Residence – Project Director 
  • Heather Elliott-Famularo, Professor & Dept. Head 
  • Danial Ezzati, MFA (Master of Fine Arts) 
  • Tariq Rakha, MFA  
  • Christian Romero, MFA 
  • Maria Shurupova, MFA  
  • Marlee Susca, BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) 

UConn Faculty/Staff Advisors 

 

External Advisors 

 

Puppets are a part of the handmade Karagöz shadow puppets of Abkar Knadjian, salvaged from Aleppo by his great-great granddaughter Sona Tatoyan.  

Our work would not be possible without our advisory board and support from funding from the University of Connecticut Global Affairs and the Lavant Foundation