A
As It Fades
Navn
Josefine Henriette Kronhøj
Uddannelsesgrad
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Design
Institut
Design og Visuel Interaktion
Program
Visual Game and Media Design
År
2025
As It Fades is an interactive visual experience, situated in the space between slow gaming and visual storytelling. Mechanics and choices are present, but these aren’t meant to test or challenge the player, instead they encourage observation, reflection, and mindfulness.
The concept of mono no aware — the quiet beauty of impermanence — offers a poetic contrast to modern tendencies toward preservation and permanence. In a time where digital storage expands endlessly, environments vanish due to climate change, and games reward hoarding and completionism, the idea of simply noticing and letting go can feel radical. This project explores how visual and interactive experiences can encourage reflection on change, ephemerality, and emotional presence.
Inspired by games such as GRIS, Flower, and Breathe, this work invites the player into a soft, shifting world. There are no traditional objectives — instead, players encounter fleeting visual moments that are not meant to be held, but noticed. Hand-painted watercolour and gouache textures are layered with digital elements, bridging traditional and contemporary media. Through gentle transitions, dissolving environments, and symbolic imagery, the experience becomes a meditative space for emotional reflection, shaped by the player’s quiet attention.
Observables are the moments that connect the player with the world. They are objects in the environment that each carry emotional or philosophical connotations. Painted in gouache with particular attention to light and depth of field, and enhanced digitally, they simulate the intense and narrow attention we associate with awe or deep focus—inviting viewers to pause, notice, and connect with the world around them.
Hand-painted environmental elements gradually shift throughout the experience to reflect the current season. Each version is digitally adjusted to evoke subtle changes in color, tone, and light. Some transitions happen while visible—such as grass deepening or sunlight emerging —while others change off-screen, reinforcing a quiet sense of time passing, even when unnoticed. This project uses analogue watercolour and gouache for their unique tactile qualities and emotional resonance. The texture of paper grain, brush strokes, and pigment pooling creates a human, handcrafted feel, inviting closer, more mindful and intimate viewing. By embracing the natural variations and imperfections of watercolour and gouache, the project gains a layered visual richness hard to mimic in digital works, grounding the emotional journey in a physical, tactile medium that complements the themes of subtlety, reflection, and change.
The emotional journey of this experience echoes several psychological and narrative models. From Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s model of grief comes the movement through resistance and loss toward acceptance. Structurally, it mirrors the Hero’s Journey: a movement from harmony through struggle to transformed understanding. And from Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, it draws the evolving relationship between perception and understanding—where observation, assimilation, and accommodation guide the player from simple interaction to mature reflection.
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Det Kongelige Akademi understøtter FN’s verdensmål
Siden 2017 har Det Kongelige Akademi arbejdet med FN’s verdensmål. Det afspejler sig i forskning, undervisning og afgangsprojekter. Dette projekt har forholdt sig til følgende FN-mål
