Constant Earthquake in Micropolis
About
Constant Earthquake in Micropolis is a hack on the original city building simulation Micropolis (the GPL release of Sim City).
In the original game, the player is presented with the open-ended challenge of constructing a perfect city, working within a computer-generated sandbox environment and with limited economic resources. In order to maintain a sufficient level of organisation in their city, the player must think of it as a "cybernetic system" whose constituent elements are mutually affective. Misjudged tax rates, housing costs, pollution, and natural disasters all threaten to tip the system out of balance.
In this hacked version, there is a constant earthquake, greatly increasing the level of entropy within the system. The more the user builds, the more disorganised the system becomes: fires break out, explosions destroy power plants, and buildings are reduced to rubble. The system attains a state of equilibrium only when financial resources are drained to zero and all the buildings are completely destroyed.
The work is a subversive joke on the mechanics of Micropolis. It renders the loose objectives of the game to be impossible, collapsing the player's input almost immediately. In a wider sense, it comments on the "cybernetic view" of society: that we can reliably automate and control the level of order within a social system using cybernetic theory in order achieve a state of equilibrium.
The piece can be both played as a game (released as a distribution of Micropolis under the GPL), or as a video loop documenting a performative attempt of constructing a city in a constant state of collapse.
Video
A demo performance of the piece, played until available funds are $0, is available here.