Speaking
through 
Video game tells the stories of displaced children
by Kevin Duncan
In a fictional town in Colombia, a young boy named Juan meets 11-year-old Pablo, who begins to tell the story of his everyday life. Shockingly, Pablo explains in detail how he gets up at 6 a.m. every day to help make “the dust, the merchandise, the final product” — cocaine. As the main character in a new video game called Little Voices, Juan’s mission is to listen to four other equally disturbing stories, each animated based on drawings by and interviews with real-life children displaced by the Colombian Civil War.
Colombian artist Jairo Eduardo Carrillo created the Little Voices game during a 10-week residency at the Centre’s Banff New Media Institute. Currently on faculty at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Carrillo works closely with displaced children to express their experiences through storytelling and computer animation.
“If you think about it, a child who sees his father working on his car in the garage is going to know about cars. Most of these kids don’t have parents so they see worse things,” says Carrillo.
Within the game, Juan is directed by players to approach identified children between five and 13 years old. A video using each child’s drawings is then played with a voiceover of that specific boy or girl telling their tale.
“As you can imagine, war is horrible and what is seen by these kids is horrible,” Carrillo says. “In Colombia, like here, people are shocked to hear these stories because they think they don’t exist.”
Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world, according to a report by the United Nations refugee agency. Of the three million displaced, 53 per cent are children or single mothers. “These children face prejudice because they are displaced. The game is educational and says that being displaced is not a bad thing — it happens,” Carrillo says.
The video game is based on Carrillo’s 2003 animated documentary of the same name. Winner of eight international prizes, the film showcased three stories from workshops held with displaced children, digitally animated using 2D and 3D technology.
“I talked to the kids and I asked them to draw why they were here. After that I asked them to explain the drawings,” Carrillo says. “The interviews show how they perceive their reality.”
“There is a certain poignancy in the Little Voices project, that can be found in the intimate self-portraits drawn by the young people of Bogota recontextualized into a large-scale animated world that is both compelling and deeply disturbing,” says BNMI director Susan Kennard. “Carrillo draws our attention to this juxtaposition through a representation of place that is both real and unreal.”
Carrillo says he hopes to return to Banff to remaster the game for use in the Centre’s Advanced Research Technologies (A.R.T.) Laboratory immersive virtual reality environment. “This place is great. There is time to work on your own thing. It’s like a unique paradise — a dream come true. You collaborate, build connections, and make friends.”
Carrillo’s residency was supported by an international agreement between the Centre and the Columbian government. Pleased with the success of the program, the Columbian government doubled its support in 2008, sending a second artist to work at the Centre.
Prior to the Little Voices project, Carrillo lectured at universities in England for seven years and collaborated with the London Symphony Orchestra to produce the digital interactive animation 3D Music. He has co-directed two feature films nationally distributed in Colombia, Dead With Fear and God Brings Them Together and They Separate. Carrillo is currently working on a feature film based on Little Voices to be released this year.
In-game images from Little Voices. Above: Jairo Eduardo Carrillo describes the genesis of the game at a Banff Centre presentation.
