Scarce City
Rainshadow Studios
January 11 to March 30, 2025
Lead creator and Scenographer: Elizabeth Mak. Lead Engineer: Leong Kei Sheng. Game Designer: Leanne Tan.
Co-creator: Shawn Low. Composer and Sound Designer: Jevon Chandra. Photographer: Crispian Chan.
scarce-city.rainshadowstudios.org
“The project exemplifies how art can be a vessel for meaningful environmental advocacy... every element of the experience reflects a dedication to pushing boundaries.”
“Scarce City”, an interdisciplinary participatory artwork that merges games, immersive theatre, and interactive technology to reflect on scarcity in the context of climate change. I led the creation of “Scarce City” under the umbrella of my climate arts non-profit, Rainshadow Studios. It took us 3 years and a team of 60+ artists, engineers, educators, and facilitators to pull it off.
This experimental work invites groups of no more than 20 participants to navigate a resource management game within an immersive rocky landscape 3D-printed from 200kg of recycled rPET filament. Through body-tracking technology, participants negotiate attitudes to resources, revealing their underlying assumptions about competition, collaboration, and the definitions of winning and success.
Drawing on Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics theory, “Scarce City” challenges dominant narratives that underpin contemporary economic and environmental decision-making. By asking what is enough? and examining the psychosocial mechanisms behind overconsumption, inequity, and climate inaction, the work situates audiences within an embodied microcosm of our shared ecological crisis. This artwork/interactive installation/immersive theater also extends beyond play, culminating in facilitated post-game discussions where participants critically examine the relationship between their in-game behaviours and their broader socio-political, economic, and environmental implications.
“The singularity of the concept is admirable. Scarce City shines in the simplicity of its staging and aesthetics.”
