In thinking about how mapping relates to the rest of my ITP work, the first thing that springs to mind is certainly situationism and the ideas of Guy Debord, who has come up multiple times in different contexts. For Big Games I reported on SFZero, a real world game steeped in situationist ideology, with a bit of Marxism and playful anarchy added to the mix, stretching their game space to encompass the entire urban experience. By asking players to recontextualize their everyday experiences through subversive acts of public play, the creators have developed a framework for enacting and reinforcing their philosophical and political beliefs in a much more effective way than many serious games. We’re attempting to develop a similar system as part of a Performing Technology project which involves repurposing modern super hero and political revolutionary myths through advertising, but I’m not quite ready to discuss it, as it’s still taking shape.

Of course, any real-world game has some elements of situationism, and the game which I’m developing for that class does as well. Along with Adam Parrish and two other team members, we’re creating a version of Clue that lives on the streets of New York, layering historic locations and a mystery narrative onto the modern city. As we attempt this translation, we’re encountering both the affordance mapping of Donald Norman and the issues of agency which James Corner discusses. Exploding Clue has necessarily lead to mapping, both cartologically, as we choose locations and paths for players to move through, and theoretically, as we discuss how to map the information sharing and logic puzzle of the boardgame onto the real world.