/imagine:salmon

Inspired by the viral AI-generated meme depicting raw salmon sashimi—rather than live fish—swimming upstream, this project is built upon an absurd and darkly comedic Speculative Design framework. In this piece, the player's digital avatar is not a traditional humanoid, but a slice of salmon sashimi.

This sashimi acts as a poignant metaphor for the individual's condition under the algorithmic gaze and hyper-consumerism—a piece of "digital flesh" plated and waiting to be selected and consumed. The project deliberately explores the aesthetics of "erroneous data": the salmon is essentially an awakened cluster of erroneous AI data possessing a survival instinct. It exhibits human-like struggling dynamics while trapped in the physical shell of food. This serves not only as an absurd metaphor for Bodily Autonomy, but also as a sharp interrogation of the boundaries between subjectivity and objectification in a techno-centric society.

The game mechanics center on an asymmetrical survival experience driven by fatalism. The player controls the sashimi, dodging a pair of giant, procedurally animated chopsticks powered by pseudo-random targeting algorithms.

Upon losing, the game triggers a cinematic "execution" sequence where the chopsticks deliver the sashimi directly into a child's mouth via a calculated parabolic trajectory. This mechanic of "struggling to survive only to be inevitably consumed" perfectly echoes the project's absurd and predetermined nature.

Technically, I utilized AI flexibly as both a programming co-pilot and an artistic medium. Beyond rapidly prototyping surreal 3D assets—which I then manually restructured to fix topology and pivot offsets for the Unity physics engine—I used Gemini to choreograph complex underlying scripts, such as the sine-wave parabolic algorithms and dynamic bone constraints for the final cinematic.

Furthermore, during the OptiTrack motion capture retargeting process, I intentionally retained data jitters and glitches; rather than technical flaws, these "AI recognition errors" were repurposed as a unique glitch aesthetic, manifesting the physical spasms of erroneous data struggling within the digital void.