Oh Heck Yeah

Artist: Brian Corrigan and Justin Gitlin
Location: Denver, USA
Year of completion: 2014
Researcher: Jessica Fiala

OhHeckYeah’s interactive public video arcade demonstrates how video games can be used to increase our connections with and trust of strangers. Installed in downtown Denver, Colorado along Champa Street between 14th and 16th Streets, three different games intended to fuel collaboration and friendly competition took over Denver Theater District’s giant LED screens. For two nights a week from June 7–July 26, 2014, pedestrians gathered to try their skills out and have fun. Inflated yellow OhHeckYeah logos called attention to the gaming areas, where two people at a time could use their bodies to control animated characters in real time.

By transforming gaming technology into a collaborative event, OhHeckYeah helps build trust amongst strangers through the power of play. By reshaping the narrative of the streets of downtown Denver as well as the behavior of its pedestrians, OhHeckYeah creates opportunities for new social connections to be made.

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OhHeckYeah was officially founded as a public-benefit corporation in 2015. Their arcade traveled to Northeastern University in Boston in May, 2015, has been rented out for corporate retreats and conferences as well as shared with Denver libraries during youth STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) events. Similarly, all of their lines of code, music files, and graphics are shared on GitHub, an open source software sharing community. In this way, OhHeckYeah inspires others to learn about code and make their own games, thus transforming consumers into makers.

All copyright belongs to Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University.

Progress Agency