Play Your Place

Sound design for Play Your Place computer games devised in Southend Westminster.

ABOUT PLAY YOUR PLACE

Play Your Place is an open artwork and game-building game created by artists, programmers, and imaginative citizens to develop a collective vision for a richer, emancipated life for all beings in all places.

People bring their expertise to game-jam events and through two imaginative world-forming activities: drawing and play. They swap their experiences and aspirations; they pinpoint obstacles to a good life, the tools by which these are overcome, and the rewards of success. In the process they create the resources and rules for polemical online platform games that can then be tested, remixed, relished and redistributed in epic play-sessions.

Where once the boundaries between the worlds of atoms and bits were marked by screens and passwords, chips and implants are now on or in our bodies, devices and appliances. The architecture and maintenance of the web, and the infrastructures of the Internet that underpin it are of consequence to us all. We are in the web, we are its users. The web is in us and upon us.

BACKGROUND TO PLAY YOUR PLACE

Play Your Place grew from conversations between artists, writers and Southend planners and residents about how people could get involved in planning decisions in their town. This formed the foundation for an artists’ residency for Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield, UK) and Dr Mary Flanagan (Tiltfactor, USA) and author Rachel Lichtenstein (UK) hosted by Metal in 2010. We have since created games about places with residents and visitors to Southend, South Westminster, Classroom N4 and the Alt_Cph ‘14 alternative arts festival in Copenhagen.