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London-based think tank Proboscis provides a setting in which artists and scholars can explore the relationship between individuals, communities, and the environment, and create tools through which people can articulate their own examinations of space and identity. Two of the nonprofit’s projects use game-like narrative techniques to inspire discussions the social, cultural, and physical worlds.
Artist Alice Angus used the early modern game tableau polyoptique as the inspiration for Endless Landscapes, which uses fragments of a panoramic painting of London to explore the layers of history and the role of personal experience and perception in the construction of environment. By arranging the cards, participants trace connections between events and understand the interrelationships and contingencies of the past:
Erno Goldfinger’s 1966 Trellick Tower has been moved to the riverside where it might be neighbour to The Tower of London, begun by William the Conqueror in 1078. The phantom of a WW2 Barrage Balloon has drifted through time, denying airspace to enemy aircraft, while the Montgolfiers’ 1783 hot air balloon floats by. An apparition of the 1903 Spencer Airship No2 shimmers over the city as people hurry into the Underground. A shadow of the de Havilland DH60 Gipsy Moth in which Amy Johnson flew from England to Australia in 1930 shares the skies with helicopters, Concorde, airliners and geese flying south for winter.
Proboscis’s StoryCubes project invites participants to create more fluid narratives. Each face depicts an item or concept, and the arrangement of the cubes–either in two or three dimensions–creates a new way of perceiving relationships. The cubes can be used to facilitate brainstorming or to play games, to plan public events or foster communication between generations. Proboscis provides templates for creation of cube sets, as well as design services.
Other groups have used games to help players explore community issues, such as the collaborative storytelling game Master Peace, but the works created by Proboscis make design a more integral part of the project, particularly for the customizable StoryCubes.