Umarangi Generation #1

I aim my camera at the soldier’s face. They’re stone-faced. Posting in front of a cardboard shanty. A sharpie’s been used to write on the wall. Rain drizzles down. This makeshift shelter is just one corner of a UN outpost. The solar panels have been fit into every nook and cranny of this place. I question if they work--the rain is, of course, coming from cloudy skies. But from where I’m standing, shoulder to shoulder with the soldier, we can’t see the panels behind the cardboard walls. I take my shot.

This is Umurangi Generation, a first-person photography game just released this month. In this game, I’m a freelance photographer exploring a sunkissed roof, a black and neon back alley, or now, a UN camp. The only object on my body is a film camera with interchangeable lenses. As soon as I point and shoot, the photo I just took stays on screen. I can edit it--a series of sliders to change the exposure or saturation pops up. Once I save my changes, the photo plops into my saved roll. And I can’t discard any shot.

Umarangi is a surprisingly face-paced game. My own real-world dabbles in photography have been meant as a ‘break’ from my usual creativity. An excuse to take a walk and explore the world around me with my iPhone camera. But in this game, the clock is constantly ticking. I have to fulfill ten photo ‘bounties’ in ten minutes. A photography scavenger hunt that has me running a mile a minute to frame whatever the bounty requires. And the more I take the better--I get paid for each one.  

Umarangi understands how photography fits into our social media habits. Taking a photo and leaving it on screen for photo manipulation scratches the same itch that Instagram or Snapchat does--the moment I just lived is immediately posted. But as Umurangi removes the option to discard a shot, saying ‘no’ to your whims is forbidden. Everything you shoot will be left in your final roll. Error is rewarded and editing is encouraged. 

What I didn’t expect from playing this game is to calm my anxiety. That my fulfillment from Umarangi is being exposed in the creation process and being okay with that. 

I make art daily, and while I’m fine with friends or strangers seeing my initial process--it’s obvious that my sketches and notes are preliminary--I shudder to think of them hanging about as I edit and refine. That in-between state can derail me. Of everything being *almost* in its place but with final touches making or breaking the product. If I’m 80% finished, I don’t want to hear what’s wrong. My least favorite place might be editing next to a person.

But Umarangi’s pace and choice to merge modern technology of instant editing, with the film medium’s limitations of immediate discarding, puts me in a spot I never thought I would be in. Standing by a person and letting them peer over my shoulder from start to finish.