I am a Rotterdam based digital artist working with themes around gaming and the effect of new technologies on the player's perception of reality. By analyzing gameplay methods and implementing them into RL settings, I am creating scenarios in which the viewer turns into the protagonist of an interactive fictional narrative.
Modding the Mirror World - Modding the Mirror World is a cybernetic exhibition addressing the increasing reach of networked devices in public space and the resulting effects on privacy and freedom of movement. Programme maker, Louisa Teichmann, envisions a potential near-future in which the municipality of Rotterdam collaborates with a gamified smart travel app to choreograph and track every citizen's paths within the city. The storyworld of the exhibition becomes playable through the role-playing sessions of Eixogen.
With work by: Amos Peled, Lawrence McGuire, Sophie Allerding, vo ezn, Werner van der Zwan.
The exhibition was on display from 15 September until 12 November 2023 in Showroom MaMA.
Modding the Mirror World is made possible by: Gemeente Rotterdam, Stichting Volkskracht, Mondriaan Fonds and Nieuwe Instituut.
Image credit: Tomas Mutsaers.
Eixogen - Welcome to Eixogen, an experiment in collectively exploring and imagining the city of the future in the context of emerging smart city technology. Smart cities represent the future, offering significant advancements in efficiency and quality of life within urban areas. The recording and processing of data, such as traffic patterns, sounds, air quality, and consumer behavior, enable improvements and optimizations in traffic flow, reduced air pollution, crime prevention, mobility enhancements, and energy conservation. Many cities, including Rotterdam, are actively pursuing this transformative journey.
However, the collection and processing of data also raise complex social and ethical issues that impact how we live, work, and interact socially. The substantial amount of data recorded and processed poses technical challenges, often delegated to private companies for management. Questions regarding privacy, equality, and sustainability arise. Who determines which data is relevant, and whose interests are considered in the processing of this data?
The collection and archiving of this data represent a form of the city's inhabitants' history. Yet, by what criteria is this history written, and what is excluded, overshadowed, or unheard in these records?
Over the course of a six-week experimental RPG, we invite you to delve into these questions together and participate in envisioning a city of the future.
The website https://eixo.codes is a simulation of a city travel app, typically used for analyzing and organizing the movements of a city's residents. In our fictional scenario, we aim to repurpose these often consumption-oriented apps to facilitate a city exploration experience that shifts from a focus on efficiency, profit, and goal-oriented behavior to one centered around randomness, wonder, and mindfulness. This approach allows us to generate data about citizens based on their emotions, dreams, and personal desires.
Game design by Sophie Allerding and Louisa Teichmann. Code by Louisa Teichmann, vo ezn and Joseph Knierzinger.
Supported by MaMA in 2023.
EARTHRISE × Zhouwéi Network - Something is rising in the midst of the city surrounding us. In between the many microcosms of the infinitely unfinished city of Rotterdam, three potential futures are emerging in the nebulous atmosphere—a city mirroring a constant construction site that opens up doorways to realities close enough to sense. These are the realities of the year 2041.
In a game of chance, players are led to a series of geographical locations, attempting to unlock artifacts of the societies of Zhouwéi Network. In the form of an ephemeral soundscape, EARTHRISE infiltrates your perception of the changing sceneries you find yourself in as you follow the directions of the game makers. As you surrender to the game, your destined path will unravel before you. Do you feel at home in your own reality? What about the one you are moving towards?
EARTHRISE × Zhouwéi Network is a location-based game I co-created and produced as part of my residency at Roodkapje in 2021. As an extension of my research into geocaching as a game tool, I set up a collaboration between MaMA and Roodkapje, inviting the research duo Liminal Vision to co-imagine this hybrid format in relation to their work Zhouwéi Network. In this inspiring effort, we opened up portals in different locations in Rotterdam, where stories from characters of Zhouwéi Network could be found, iterating life in the future on the various locations based on three potential future societies. For this project, I imagined an alphabet in which symbols correspond to syllables, which can be read by players into code words, using an in-game dictionary. The alphabet was designed by Camilo Garcia Aycardi, based on the aesthetics of the three different societies of Zhouwéi Network.
The code of the web game https://earthrise.zhouwei.network/ was implemented by Federico Poni.
Liminal Vision is a creative collaboration between Victor Evink (s x m b r a) and Emilia Tapprest (nvisible.studio). Their project Zhouwéi Network is currently showcased at Zero Emissions by 2099, in MAMA, curated by Mary Ponomareva.
With contributions by Gill Baldwin and Erik Peters. Produced by Louisa Teichmann in collaboration with Mary Ponomareva and Roodkapje as part of their “Agency and Machine” program.
EtherAxis - ‘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.
The first iteration of the game board was built for the exhibition ‘From Then To Here’ by Erik Peters At Roodkapje. In this second iteration, EtherAxis found a new context within the surroundings of The Overkill Festival in Enschede.
EtherAxis is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Camilo García A., Emilia Tapprest, Erik Peters, Federico Poni, Louisa Teichmann and Victor Evink, during the Hamburger Community of Live and Art trajectory of Roodkapje.
Radio, what’s new? - Tune into 868MHz, a hyper location-based, personalized radio broadcast speaking straight at you through your handy dandy handheld device. In our smart city, there's really no need for linear stories, generic jokes or excess information. Instead, we've seamlessly integrated our fragmented radio station into the cityscape, so you'd better be quick on your feet to catch those fleeting signals. 868MHz is embarking on a journey with its listeners, leading them on an immersive audio-based treasure hunt in the dark. Players are equipped with a handheld audio device to navigate their surroundings, discover story tags, and tackle puzzles, all in the pursuit of uncovering the answers and, of course, scoring big.
Radio, What's New" is a gamified audio tour that utilizes NFC tags in public spaces. The handheld device comprises an NFC reader module, Arduino, speaker, and power bank, allowing users to receive location-specific clues and narratives when encountering each tag.
This project was realized in support of Tetem in 2023.
868 MHz - 868 MHz is a hybrid reality game running on the same standardized frequency as the LoRa gateways of The Things Network.
Rotterdam is one of many cities world-wide in the process of building an Urban Data Platform (UDP), a sort of mirror world of real-time data collected in public space via smart devices. A major facilitator of this development is The Things Network, a global IoT Network connecting thousands of sensors through long range radio transmission. From lampposts to advertisement screens, sourced information is not only collected, but can be processed and fed back into the city streets to adjust spaces and manipulate citizens' movement through them. 868 MHz suggests a player's mod of this framework of scattered, hidden devices feeding into one central server.
