Over the last ten years i have been evolving a paper-based game which brings people together to explore themes of decision-making, ownership, communication, boundaries, information and belief. The wider themes are of power and control on all scales from the individuals internal dialog with the world and domestic relationships, to international politics, human rights and war.
As an artist I find that the game has sustained interest because it generates ‘map’ like portraits of an instance in time where interactions between people and the choices they have collectively chosen to make are fixed into a unique image. Each time the game is played it reveals much not only about the individual personalities and ways of thinking of each person who plays, but more importantly, it reveals underlying behaviours, values and beliefs as unconscious habits are difficult to hide.
I align myself with the open source movement and creative commons, choosing to release my work and watch it go – enjoying the buzz around the discovery and growth of community activity around ideas, tools and games which are picked up get used, evolved and gain kudos, as currency.
I intend to create an open source web platform which will collect together the various components of the game so that it can facilitate the distribution, playing and documentation of the game. The main objectives of this module would then be to:
- Connect with the open source arts and games communities
- Develop an open source web platform for the game
- Create a random rules generator that track it’s own creation and play history
- Facilitate documenting and sharing game maps and stories by players
