Playing with Reality

There was an article on Salon.com yesterday that tickled the edges of my intuition a little. It was one of those things that I wasn’t sure about the applications to the arts but seemed to bear watching and considering.

The article was about a woman who develops Alternate Reality Games where they propose “What if” scenarios and use the combined brain power of participants to play the situations to help predict what might happen. In a “World without Oil” scenario, not only did people talk about where they would acquire resources and how they would go about their lives, “document[ing] their imagined scenarios in blogs, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and podcasts,” some people actually took action and planted gardens and converted their vehicles to run on bio-diesel.

The concept was used to hype the release of a Microsoft game and political action groups have made appeals to members/readers to help sift through large government documents. Darker applications have occurred to some who have begun exploring how the structure could be used to manipulate the public or use large groups for surveillance activities.

On a less somber note, the article mention flash buying mobs that have formed where 100 people will show up at a store and commit to buying products if they are given deep discounts. I know a lot of arts organizations who would readily extend discounts if that many people would pop up at their door.

While the temptation to use this sort of thing to manipulate the public may be great, I was thinking of something along the lines of leveraging collective brain power to discover how altering practices may make attending performances and exhibits more enticing. How to do it effectively rather than as a hi-tech survey, I don’t know.

Partnering with a company so they will include your organization in one of these souped up scavenger hunts is probably also counterproductive. No matter how entrancing a performance or gallery show is, the participants’ attention will be on gathering information. God forbid they decide they have gotten what they need in the middle of a performance and then head for the doors.

It would be fascinating to see if some sort of performance work or even a theatre facility could be created in this manner. I am not talking about creation by committee, which tends to generate awful results, but rather tapping into the collective knowledge to do research on a time period or on architectural features that work. I imagine people sending video and pictures of weaponry and costumes to a creative team. Or perhaps they send images of hallways, door knobs and light switch placements that work well in buildings.

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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