A collaboration between Architecture students from University College Dublin (UCD), Masters students from National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and Dublin City Council (DCC) has proposed staging an intervention in the Grafton Street Area. One of the proposals has suggested that some sort of game play should occur on the streets....
Such a response was borne out of feelings that the area needed to contain an event, which drew attention away from the commercial aspects of the area. We want people to think about the area in a different way, both in a real and metaphorical way. The street is laden with so much history, but we tend to forget this when bamboozled by the bright lights of the multi-national chains.
Another element that crept into our ideas, why do people act the way they do in certain social settings?
These thoughts led us down a rabbit hole of ideas and theories that we have found in publications from all over the world and through the centuries. Here is a taste of some of the work we have been reading in preparation for our game plan
In response to a discussion on the nature and future of the Grafton street area, Dublin.
On Exactitude in Science
........" In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province
occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those
Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose
size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were
not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless,
and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In
the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars;
in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. "
JA Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes ( Travels of Wise Men ), Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658.
"Thinking is just advanced pattern matching. Human beings are memory-prediction machines. "
Jeff Hawkins
'We as a species are defined by our capacity for prediction. We record our experiences, abstract them and use those abstractions as a means to anticipate future events. For example in watching those around us age and die we predict our own death. In order to realise this which appears a most obvious conclusion. We must first must undertake to build a abstract world inhabited with computable theory, Concepts such as time, chaos and Entropy are all needed to understand death but are themselves merely symbols or abstractions, units in a theorem, Analogs based on experiential phenomena.
We construct therefore an abstract reality in tandem with our experience of the world. A simulation, The simulation is under written with a goal a reason for its being at it most basic the simulation and its ability to anticipate future events gives us a distinct evolutionary advantage. The simulation however is not perfect its limitation lies in the capacity of the individual to act. Because the construct evolves and becomes more complex as more and more experience is gathered and interpolated, and because this is desirable. As the more complete the construct is the more accurate it predication's will be. It becomes increasingly more difficult for a individual consciousness to understand the entire abstracted reality. So in order that simulation be usable and effective specialisation occurs. The individual units that make up the collective entity begin to take the simulation as reality and create further simulations based upon it.
This has has two major drawbacks firstly inaccuracy - everyone is aware of what occurs when one make an analogy of an analog and secondly by losing association with the initial simulation the reason for creating it in the first place becomes obscured.This has very real consequences for when imperatives change the complexity of our construct analogy inhibits its realignment. This can seen in many ways for example over the last 50 years our burgeoning population has to led to a great strain on the environment to the point where the expansive policy upon which our economic system is based is proving to be self destructive. Not in society's best interest in this case an obvious re -writing of the rules that govern that construct is needed. However due to the complexity's and intricacy's of that construct and Because the individual units that make up the simulation no longer understand it in it totality. There is no individual responsibility.
Proposal
Through our game we propose a further simulation. A demonstration that shows that the rules and concepts which we have created are merely that they are not reality's. They are systems we use in order to understand and predict. The games we play as children are testing grounds we learn how to implement abstract concepts in order to achieve goals. And fundamentally but critically it is the goals that are important not the rules. We want to challenge peoples preconceptions ask them to look at the larger problems, play the game and change the rules. We want them to experience Grafton street detail by detail and understand it. Grafton street is our playground. - Why do we act as we do on the street? Who owns it? Why do we feel like guests or trespassers? What is the nature of public space? Should we change the goals that beget the rules? What should the centre of our capital be like? We are not proposing answers merely hoping for a discussion asking people to stop existing within the current framework step out and consider the larger construct and ask is this really working? We propose therefore an event ....................
a
Spectacle (Drawing parallels building simulations.)
IF:
Constitution: The system of fundamental laws and principles that prescribes the nature, functions, and limits of a society.
Game: An activity in which players contend to a set of rules and principles.
Aim:
To use the building of a game to make people aware of the nature of simulated reality. As discussed above if games are how we test the process of creating simulations - using there construction should serve to highlight the ephemeral quality of said simulation and should also create an unease and questioning within the participant which defies the boundary of the game itself.
Method:
The treasure hunt:
The game Consists of 8 posters a clue written on each and introduced by a brief description of the rules. The game firstly encourages people to experience Grafton street in detail to learn something of its history and current condition. Upon agreeing to the rules the gamers become complicit they agree to explore Grafton street abiding by the rules. Upon finding the locations they are presented with a means to expand the game to shift is dynamics or to let it end. They are now collaborators the fact that they now become authors of the game means that they must consider the games development as a whole. They must understand the game as a simulation and must consider necessairly the games purpose. They must ask themselves the benefit of the games maintenance. It is a simulation...
