The sculptural component of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables invites viewers to visualize the impact of the pandemic in a more literal sense: what would our social spaces look like if we had simply stood and abandoned them back in 2019?
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
When COVID-19 forced sweeping isolation and stalled social gatherings, Dungeons and Dragons players were quick to move their games online. But while advances in digital tabletop gaming, including Roll20 and DnDBeyond, made key components of the game screen-friendly, the transition was anything but seamless. Long-running campaigns were paused, reformatted, or abandoned entirely. Many players struggled with their newfound isolation and the rapidly changing landscape of the game they loved. For some, the game table came to exist as a painful reminder of all the treasured social spaces that COVID-19 had taken away.
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables is a two-part installation which leverages the physical game pieces of Dungeons and Dragons to visualize the emotional toll of COVID-19 in social spaces. Informed by a series of interviews with D&D players, the exhibition features game pieces which have each been altered or repurposed to represent a specific emotional burden experienced by players over the past two years.
As it stands, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables is an exploration of the connection between players and game pieces, a monument to the social spaces lost to COVID-19, and an invitation for players and non-players alike to begin building a language for understanding the impact of the pandemic on the spaces where we gather.
Note: Empty Chairs at Empty Tables was created as part of the Graphic Design Master’s of Arts (GDMA) program at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is a noncommercial, educational project.
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, on display at the Maryland Institute College of Art Fox 3 Gallery. Photograph by Eric Benoit.
INSTALLATION
“It forced us to figure out how to stay together.”
Photograph by Eric Benoit
The sculptural component of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables is the result of months of exploration of materials and ways of making, including 3D printing, poured resin, and painting and landscaping techniques borrowed from the crafts of diorama and model train layouts.
Over 250 hours of FDM 3D printing went into the centerpiece dungeon scene, which showcases models created by TTRPG community artists Devin Jones (OpenForge Stone Series and Ruined Series, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0), Arian Croft (Daring Delvers: Support Free Adventurers, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), and Mazer Rakhum (Dark Lich Apostle REDUX, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). For better visibility in the gallery, each model was scaled up to 150% of its original size.
Photograph by Eric Benoit.
Additional set dressing added to the illusion of a game abandoned at the beginning of the pandemic: character sheets were yellowed and wrinkled, pencils left strewn about between notes, and dice — hand-poured resin — contained the beginnings of mossy overgrowth.
INSTALLATION GALLERY
Photographs by Eric Benoit. Click to expand.
POSTER SERIES
Six 18x24” posters accompany the sculpture, each exploring a facet of players’ experiences navigating Dungeons and Dragons during COVID-19. The theme of each poster reflects a recurring sentiment raised by most — or all — of six long-term D&D players interviewed at the beginning of the project: adaptation, burnout, fragmentation, degradation, growth, and loss.
Each poster features a material exploration of the theme at hand, photographed by Eric Benoit. The quotes on the posters were taken directly from player interviews.
Thesis Book
A reflection on and celebration of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, this book documents the design and development process with an emphasis on the research behind the installation. The book’s 104 pages of content balance writing, process photos, and design specimens to tell the story of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.
The final, printed book measures 8x10” and is printed on Mowhawk SuperFine eggshell paper.