EtherAxis

28th November & 5th December 2021. Sickhouse, Enschede. The Overkill Festival

About

EtherAxis is an interactive game installation and reflection tool aiming to challenge the inner paradigms that shape our perception of realities. The physical relic that forms the base for this game shape-shifts in different contexts. ‍ The structure of the gameboard emphasises four main axes, each connected to multiple ancient symbols of alchemy, hacked to uncover their original meanings. In this constellation of four interlaced geographic grids, the dreamer wanders through bridging fields on a spatiotemporal axis. Throughout the Overkill, EtherAxis lures you into the streets to find its messages hidden in plain sight, stepping over to the worlds floating in the ether.

EtherAxis is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Camilo García A., Emilia Tapprest, Erik Peters, Federico Poni, Louisa Teichmann & Victor Evink, as part of the Hamburger Community of Live & Art trajectory of Roodkapje, with performances by Queer Arcana.

Introduction

EtherAxis Game board, photographed by Emilia Tapprest

Game Narrative

The Device

Protagonists

Agents of Chaos

Chapter 1: Arrival

Gameplay in stages: total time per group: 1 1/2 h

Sickhouse: 25 mins Character building based on the players digital possession. Players show their phones in order to receive character card and matching props. characters get assigned 1 of 4 character types.

Chapter 2: Take a Leap in the Dark

City: 45 mins They go into the city in order to find the bridgepoints and learn about the different worlds. The training space is the main space with a performance hinting on the crossover of mulitple spaces in the same building.

4 Locations, 4 Lessons, 4 numbers. Smart Shop + Trader Lesson Training Station + Mover Lesson Bike Parking + Navigator Lesson Mushroom + Scientist Lesson

Chapter 3: Return

Sickhouse: 20 mins They come back with collected code which unlocks modular poem in the end. Collective world reading based on poem.

pre-game

Visual Language and Communication Methods

Symbols cosmology

1. More than human: {silicon+water} + {crucible} {sublimation} / amorphous structure silician SYLICIO

2. Coexistence: {melting/digesting} + {amalgamation} + {covalent bonds}COVALE

3. XENO: New Elements : {imagination} + {imagination}* + {imagination}**

4. (~) Mercury Queer : {Mercury} + {tangible} + {intangible} + {salt} + {sulfur} + {*the spectrum in between both states*}

Play Tests

in-game

Documentation of actual Gameplay.

post-game

Analysis

Bibliography

Books

This is not a Game ~ Dave Szulborski

The Case Against Reality ~ Donald Hoffman

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism ~ Shoshana Zuboff

Space Time Play http://www.spacetimeplay.org/

Tactical Tech https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/inside-the-influence-industry/

Articles

http://aaaan.net/blast-theory-2/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_game

https://www.playtoearn.online/category/blockchain-gaming/

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/geofencing

Games

Blast Theory: Can you see me now? 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_You_See_Me_Now%3F

Tomo Kihara: Escape the Smart City, 2018.

Roos Groothuizen: I want to delete it all, but not now. 2021.