links for 2009-04-17

Dan Hon rants about in which ways ARGs could be improved. I agree with a lot of this, but the ludol­o­gist in me squirms at the empha­sis on sto­ry­telling. I’m not dis­put­ing that games tell sto­ries, but I am won­der­ing if it is their ulti­mate purpose.

Video of an awe­some instal­la­tion by Pablo Val­bue­na for TodaysArt 2008. Pro­jec­tions on the city hall of The Hague that cre­ate the illu­sion of the build­ing’s façade trans­form­ing. Imag­ine this were real…

Tij­men Schep on the ten­den­cy of peo­ple involved with loca­tive stuff to flirt with the Sit­u­a­tion­ist her­itage: “So, we have two options. Either we stop pre­tend­ing the sit­u­a­tion­ists are our fore­fa­thers, or we actu­al­ly do see them as our fore­fa­thers, and start using com­put­ing to dis­rupt instead of stream­line soci­ety.” Per­haps “dis­rupt” is putting it too strong­ly. I would go with “sub­vert”. Sub­ver­sive­ly chang­ing peo­ple’s views on pub­lic life, pub­lic space and pub­lic iden­ti­ty. Not by destroy­ing the cur­rent one, but by shift­ing it into new territory.

Won­der­ful bit of tech­nol­o­gy-medi­at­ed play­ful­ness in urban space. It would­n’t take much to turn this into a cool game. I would also love to try this in my home-town and com­pare the results with Kacie (this pro­jec­t’s initiator).