YOMECI (You, Me & the City) (2017 - ongoing) is a series of works that investigates the playful potential of listening and sounds.
Through the different forms it takes at different stages of the project, YOMECI explores listening and making sounds as a form of play – investigating how our sonic world can be harnessed creatively to construct new perceptions and interpretations.
YOMECI is about playing in sound, playing in place and playing together.
YOmeci ORCHESTRA (2023-current)
Developed for Urban Play School.
by Uyen Nguyen and supported by Dr Troy Innocent.
\ tldr: Playing together.
Yomeci Orchestra is an analog urban game where players invite each other into play. Commissioned for Urban Play School (RMIT) a public art game event during Melbourne International Games Week 2023, the game explores bodily and musical improvised collaboration as a form of social play. Yomeci Orchestra’s play space has two sides: ‘The Floor’ - a confetti of colourful tapes on the footpath, and ‘The Band’ - a range of musical toys laid out on the ground. Players of the two sides engage in an improvised and non-verbal exchange using their body or the instruments to correspond to each other. With no goals other than making each other feel heard using two seemingly mismatched languages of expression, players come up with their own game and constantly renew and adapt it in order to play with, to and for each other.
YOmeci CHILDREN’S GARDEN (2023)
Commissioned by Merri-bek City Council for Glenroy Community Hub’s library.
A permanent installation of a Yomeci playable track in the children’s garden of Glenroy Community Hub. We would love to be back again and again to play YomeciBand here! :)
Painted by Uyen Nguyen, Tien Tran, Yana Fidan, Eugenia Cynthia, Hannah Lin, Liz Wang, Cecile Robert, Matthew Riley and Phong Pham with warm support from Rita Hardy, Sonia McIntosh and the library staff.
YOmeci HOLE (2022-current)
Commissioned by Future Play Lab.
by Uyen Nguyen, Max Piantoni, Matthew Riley as YOMECI PLAY and Tien Tran. Sound design by Fynn Michlin.
\ tldr: Play a hole.
Yomeci Hole is an experimental outdoor arcade game commissioned by the Future Play Lab for the Clarendon Street Arcade (2021) and Play Capitol Arcade (2022) that explored how to reconnect people to public life post-pandemic through arcade gaming trails. In Yomeci Hole the player stands above a virtual hole in the ground using their feet to activate ground buttons (pressing, jumping, tapping etc), and encountering various inventive objects, creatures and entities as they go down. Resembling a grassy hill growing up from the footpath and fitted with lights and colourful foot-buttons, the design and infrastructure of Yomeci Hole invites people into a park-like recreational world, offering a respite within a busy urban locale. Some residents “tended to the hole”, picking up litter left on it and caring for it like a garden or reserve.
Yomeci Hole has been to:
City of Port Phillip — Clarendon Street Arcade (2022)
City of Melbourne — Play Capitol Arcade (2023)
YOmeciband (2021-current)
YomeciBand loves playing. Send us an email to bring it to your streets!
Initially commissioned by Playable City Melbourne for the Playful Parklet.
\ tldr: Play the street. (It is not microbots on the ground that make sound.)
Initially developed with Dr Troy Innocent at the Future Play Lab (RMIT) for a series of activations connected to an open-access and community-driven public parklet, YomeciBand invites passersby to walk and play with musical chalk creatures drawn on the footpath. Resembling a hopscotch game or obstacle course, the design, shape and position of these drawings suggest physical actions to the player; hopping, leaping, twisting, running etc. As players interact with the drawings, audio compositions and tunes are activated and everchanging, ‘following’ people’s traversal and movement. The technology of YomeciBand is deliberately unobtrusive and embedded in the surrounding urban infrastructure, inviting people into a serendipitous ‘otherworldly’ experience within a city street.
YomeciBand has been to:
City of Melbourne (Nov-Dec 2021, Melbourne Knowledge Week 2022)
City of Stonnington (Feb-Mar 2022)
City of Maribyrnong (Apr-May 2022)
St Polten, Austria (AudioMostly 2022 Conference). Awarded Best Music and Installation.
Merri-bek City (Glenroy Festival 2022, Yomeci Children Playground Launch 2023)
Whitehorse City (April 2023)
Check out our blog on instagram @yomeci.play for more updates, images and videos.
YOU ME SINGS (2021)
Commissioned by TarraWarra Museum of Art for Victoria Together and supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria
by Max Piantoni, Uyen Nguyen & Matthew Riley as YOMECIPLAY
— Play You Me Sings on Victoria Together here:
https://www.together.vic.gov.au/art/yomeciplay-you-me-sings
YOU, ME, THINGS (2020)
Commissioned by Experimenta Life Forms to tour Australia nationally from 2021 - 2023.
You, Me, Things is the latest in the YOMECI series and a collaboration between Uyen Nguyen, Matthew Riley who knows bush walks & fungi and Max Piantoni who knows trains & guitar pedals. Our team also has sound designer Roderick Price and engineer Duy Phuong Nguyen who likes ginger beer.
Read about You, Me, Things on Experimenta here and our in-development interview here.
Join us from afar through this You, Me, Things’ At Home Activity
Check out our blog on instagram @yomeci.play, and @experimenta_ for more updates.
YOMECILAND X BUNJIL PLACE (2019) -
Yomeciland is a playable sound responsive installation staged at Bunjil Place in September- October 2019, inviting audience to ‘breathe life’ to a virtual world and evolve an ecology by ‘feeding’ it their voice and sounds. Read about this work in YomeciLand x Bunjil Place: The sounding body as play.
Created at MAGI Studio with Dr Matthew Riley and Max Piantoni.
Sound design: Roderick Price. Engineer: Duy Phuong Nguyen
YOMECILAND (2018)
Yomeciland in 2018 is a prototyped location-based mobile game/ play experience that invites participants to walk Melbourne and listen to its world of urban sounds to play. Born at MAGI Studio and secretly needing funding.
Read about Yomeciland (2018) in ‘Yomeciland: Found sound as Play‘
YOu, me & the city (2017-2018)
Yomeci is a 2D animated web series featuring voices and sounds of Melbourne CBD, Australia.
Watch our favourite episodes here.