Information
Blast Theory >
»Day of the Figurines«, 2006 - 2006
Co-Workers & Funding:
Arts Council of Englandhttp://iperg.sics.se/index.html
Technology
Descriptions & Essays
Day of the Figurines is funded by the European Commission's IST Programme. It is part of the 'City as Theatre' workpackage of the IPerG project, a large European consortium led by Blast Theory, SICS - Swedish Institute of Computer Science, HUMLE and ICE Laboratories (coordinating partner), the Interactive Institute, Play Studio & Zero Game Studio, the University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory, Nokia Research, the University of Nottingham, Mixed Reality Lab, Fraunhofer Institute, FIT, Sony NetServices and Gotland University. The team's scientific co-ordinator is Steve Benford. The co-ordinator is Annika Waern.
IPerG investigates pervasive games, i.e., games that take place in and are interwoven with our everyday life. Ubiquitous, ambiguous and yet immersive and engaging, pervasive games inspire a new way of playing and acting within a game.
'Pervasive gaming integrates the technical approaches of computer gaming with emerging interface, wireless and positioning technologies to create game experiences that combine both virtual and physical game elements' (IPerG).
'Pervasive games are a broad class of games lacking a strict definition but generally based upon the integration of technologies with physical game experiences. For a pervasive game, the physical world has a greater impact upon game experience than in the case of conventional computer or console games (...)' (Lindley, 2005: 1)
By creating complex and hybrid interfaces, pervasive games operate at the level of mixed reality, both augmenting and contaminating the real with the virtual, life with game, form with chaos.
'pervasive games are no longer confined to the virtual domain of the computer, but integrate the physical and social aspects of the real world' (Magerkurth et al, 2005: 2)
Pervasive games aim to directly exploit the richness of the physical world as a resource for play by interweaving digital media with our everyday experience. Sensors capture information about a players current context, including their location, and this is used to deliver them a gaming experience that changes according to where they are, what they are doing, and potentially, even how they are feeling. (Capra et al, 2005: 89)
The pervasive game player, who can chose to enter and leave a game, is uncertain about the ontology of what they see and experience. Caught in a parallel and yet fully believable existence, they operate in dialectical tension between their lives and the game.
'Pervasive games are new game experiences that are tightly interwoven with our everyday lives through the items, devices and people that surround us and the places that we inhabit'. (IPerG)
Pervasive games are of profound significance, not only artistically and technologically, but also socially and epistemologically. In pervasive games how do we know that what we know is true? how do we know that we know? and indeed how do we negotiate what we know with what we are in?
'Traditional telecoms and media businesses face a tremendous challenge from such games.' (IPerG)
IPerG are planning the following showcases: Crossmedia, Socially Adaptable Games, Massively Multiplayer Reaching Out Enhanced Reality Live Role-Playing, City as Theatre, Transreality Gaming and Telling Stories from Pervasive Games.
Day of the Figurines intends to investigate games 'as interactive art experiences that take place on the streets of a city as well as on-line' (IPerG)
The piece explores notions of site, mixed reality, presence and social presence, augmentation, fragmentation, plot, control, ambiguity, pervasiveness, encounter, social play, text and (re-)mediation. It is slow (3 days in Barcelona, 24 at its world premiere in Berlin in the Autumn of 2006), and pervasive, 'in the form of a massively-multiplayer boardgame that is played using mobile phones via the medium of text messaging'. (IPerG).
(source: http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/627)
Literature
Exhibitions & Events