On cities, mapping, psychogeography and the experience of places.

A new outdoor mobile phone game is to be piloted in London on Saturday July 24th 2010.

Exploding Places takes you on a journey through time and space. You arrive in a fictional Woolwich in South East London, create your own community and place them in the real world Woolwich. Over the space of an hour you and your community travel through 120 years of local and global history. The First World War passes in just a few minutes as you play the game to ensure your survival.

You play on the phone screen and through headphones, as you walk the town’s real streets. You can interact with other players, join together and respond to conflict or difficulties in each other’s communities. The ultimate goal is to build a thriving community that grows and creates a new generation, based on health, wealth, knowledge, participation and your contribution to the game. The game will be broadcast on the BBC Big Screen in central Woolwich giving public audiences the chance to watch the games unfold.

Exploding Places is a real world SIM city or Monopoly, played live on the streets of Woolwich. The game offers participants a playful way to engage with London, engaging with its social, community and
regeneration issues. It will explores how new communities come to live in new areas, what happens to them, how they grow, whether they thrive and settle, whether they move on, etc.

Exploding Places is part of the exciting new area of creative endeavour called locative or pervasive gaming, bringing new and emerging technologies into the public realm. It sits alongside the critically acclaimed work of companies such as Blast Theory whose games have received major international awards and BAFTA nominations.

Be the first to play Exploding Places

To play you must first register a place:
Go online: www.explodingplaces.org
or call 020 8858 2825
or Email anna@streamarts.org.uk

Once registered, come to the launch and play:
When: Saturday 24th July 2010, 11am – 5pm
Where: The Tramshed, 51 – 53 Woolwich New Road, London SE18 6ES
Directions: British Rail / DLR: Woolwich Arsenal, then 2 minute walk to The Tramshed

Exploding Places www.explodingplaces.org

Created by Active Ingredient www.i-am-ai.net in collaboration with Greenwich Heritage Centre, Woolwich Polytechnic and Woolwich residents. Active Ingredients locative game Heartlands won the UK and Ireland Satellite Navigation Competition and the Nokia Ubimedia Mindtrek Award in 2007.

Commissioned by Stream www.streamarts.org.uk, the Greenwich based producer of public and collaborative art.
In 2005 Stream produced the Greenwich Emotion Map using bio-mapping technology with artist Christian Nold.
Funded by Arts Council London and Greenwich Council.
Produced in collaboration with Horizon Digital Economy Research, funded through grant EP/G065802/1 from Research Councils UK.

Dans la vie sociale urbaine, la rue a ses fonctions; elle est un important émetteur d’informations, perpétuellement et régulièrement renouvelées dans le changement incessant des gens, des aspects, des objets et des heures. La rue est un “texte social” qui mêle signaux (simples, systèmes binaires), signes (complexes, systèmes ouverts) et symboles (stables et porteurs de sens inépuisables) en des proportions équilibrées et dans des combinaisons infiniment variées, créant richesse, banalité ou ennui. « Un bon texte social est lisible et informatif : il surprend, mais pas trop ; il apprend sans accabler. »
La rue offre publiquement ce qui est ailleurs caché, et elle le réalise sur la scène d’un théâtre, presque spontané: « La rue offre un spectacle et n’est que spectacle : celui qui se dépêche, pressé d’aller au travail, ne voit pas ce spectacle ; il y figure. »

Henri Lefevbre, Introduction a la psycho-sociologie de la vie quotidienne, Du Rural à L’Urbain (1970) Ed. Anthropos, p. 89-98