CCCC.City — A Collaborative Worldbuilding Game

A par­tic­i­pa­tive instal­la­tion for the event 'The Soon­er Now' com­bin­ing the mechan­ics of role-play, board games and rapid pro­to­typ­ing. CCCC.CITY (aka "Four Seas" /​ "Fore­see City") looks at future cities through a tech­noso­cial lens.

Dur­ing the course of the one-day event, about two hun­dred vis­i­tors of all ages and back­grounds were invit­ed to take part in build­ing and inhab­it­ing a future city under the omi­nous super­vi­sion of AVA’s Chief Spir­i­tu­al Advisor’s representatives.

The Fiction in a Press Clipping

AVA’S CCCC.CITY TO REMODEL OUR ENTIRE UNDERSTANDING OF FUTURE LIFE

In a recent pub­lic address, AVA’s CSO Emme­line Sev­en­twen­ty­four offi­cial­ized her ini­tia­tive to relo­cate the company’s main oper­a­tions hub to the recent­ly acquired island of Soco­tra. Sit­u­at­ed between the horn of Africa and the Ara­bi­an penin­su­la, the island is seen by the company’s Chief Spir­i­tu­al Offi­cer as “the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage in busi­ness with emerg­ing mar­kets, while keep­ing our unique vision of the world”.
	The project is noth­ing short of pharaon­ic. With cur­rent­ly nonex­is­tent infra­struc­tures save for an indige­nous city — which the com­pa­ny ensures will be pre­served — and a rudi­men­ta­ry air­port oper­at­ing on a week­ly basis, “Set­tling on the island will be a chal­lenge," com­ments Sev­en­twen­ty­four, "not only due to its remote loca­tion, but also in regard to the high ambi­tions we have to devel­op some­thing that goes beyond the usu­al scope of cor­po­rate head­quar­ters. We will be relo­cat­ing a pool of vol­un­teers to this par­adise, and are plan­ning to build the city of the thir­ti­eth cen­tu­ry for their fam­i­lies. We want Four Seas to become the sin­gle most rel­e­vant urban devel­op­ment project and are, as per our human-cen­tric modus operan­di, about to run a con­sul­ta­tion to fore­see and cre­ate the city togeth­er with its future inhab­i­tants.”
	The merg­er of giants Aliba­ba, Ver­i­zon, and Ama­zon, AVA has seen total share­hold­er returns sky­rock­et to unprece­dent­ed lev­els. As its leader says, “it only makes sense that we, as a cor­po­ra­tion more pow­er­ful than most gov­ern­ments, own­ers of our own microna­tion, should give back to the com­mu­ni­ty by imag­in­ing the best social sys­tem mon­ey can buy”.

source: Laghari, Rajesh. Social Econ­o­my and Urban Devel­op­ment in the 22nd Cen­tu­ry. Busi­ness Out­sider May 20f8: 108–13. Print.

The Event

Invit­ed to cre­ate a par­tic­i­pa­tive design inter­ven­tion for the event The Soon­er Now sub­ti­tled ‘Urban Utopias’, with the con­straint that guests should be able to get involved “from just five min­utes to a full day,” we devised CCCC.City — a col­lab­o­ra­tive cre­ative explo­ration of the future city. Held in Octo­ber 2018 in the ‘Friends Space’ of Berlin-based cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion net­work Fre­unde Von Fre­un­den (FvF), the project took the shape of a half-con­struc­tion-half-role-play­ing game invit­ing audi­ence mem­bers to col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly build new struc­tures and invent their sto­ries as future citizens.

Upon arrival, each guest was giv­en a token to be exchanged against one of 200 unique Cit­i­zen Kits, com­plete with their per­sona as a new res­i­dent of CCCC.City. This com­prised a con­crete build­ing block, a small human fig­urine, as well as a com­bi­na­tion 'tech' stick­ers and some fresh nordic moss. In addi­tion, an instruc­tion man­u­al explained the rules of the game, which was split in three phas­es: the first, dur­ing which par­tic­i­pants were required to place their build­ing block on a large map, prefer­ably in a way that com­pletes one of the many pro­posed pat­terns — a process which often required com­mu­ni­ca­tion and lob­by­ing among cit­i­zens — and append the stick­ers in their pos­ses­sion. Those who com­plet­ed a pat­tern (think hos­pi­tals, hous­ing, hubs…) had to then invent a sto­ry for their new infra­struc­ture, in a way that inte­grat­ed the tech­nolo­gies and resources used. 

This sto­ry would final­ly be sub­mit­ted to our con­trol booth where it was fact-checked and val­i­dat­ed, grant­i­ng the project own­ers the right to name their struc­ture and to tweet about it, using a spe­cial hash­tag paired with coor­di­nates for the tweet to find its place on the map. It was of course equal­ly pos­si­ble for par­tic­i­pants to ignore the main goal and instead focus on dis­turb­ing exist­ing struc­tures so that they may nev­er be com­plet­ed — dif­fer­ent behav­iors being trig­gered by the roles par­tic­i­pants were assigned as part of their cit­i­zen kit.

It was only dur­ing the clos­ing keynote address that its CSO Emme­line Sev­en­twen­ty­four made her first appear­ance. Her inspi­ra­tional speech remained, how­ev­er, what should be expect­ed from a Chief Spir­i­tu­al Offi­cer: inspirational.

Fol­low­ing Emmeline’s inter­ven­tion, two stu­dents from Min­er­va Schools who had con­tributed to coor­di­nat­ing the game through­out the day, while keep­ing tabs on social dynam­ics among cit­i­zens, took the stage to deliv­er the con­clu­sions of the exper­i­ment. Con­flicts arose, they sig­naled, from the seem­ing­ly irre­press­ible need for a major­i­ty to devel­op detri­men­tal­ly to a minor­i­ty of scape­goats — in the case of CCCC.City, these were the "neo­hob­bits" whose habi­tat was destroyed in order to make space for the new "St Trout Grounds" school, and those whose CRISPR project went wrong and who could no longer show them­selves in pub­lic. Sol­i­dar­i­ty projects even­tu­al­ly devel­oped in reac­tion, with safe spaces being man­aged for both pop­u­la­tions, notably the hot-air bal­loon "CRISPR Haven" and the last floor of health cen­ter "Our Lady Of The Shire." Oth­er note­wor­thy phe­nom­e­non: a fair­ly equal pro­por­tion of tech­nol­o­gy- and tra­di­tion-infused projects, sug­gest­ing a strong anchor­ing of CCCC ideals with­in both past and future.

Final­ly, CCCC.City’s main archi­tects Otto Wavełs­ki and Rajesh Laghari — bet­ter known for their con­tri­bu­tion to Mex­i­co City CDRMX urban rede­vel­op­ment plans — took the stage to present the work­ing method in fur­ther detail, along with oth­er exam­ples of projects envi­sioned dur­ing the day. The "Cryp­to Train," which func­tions with­out a pre­de­fined route but col­lects data about each passenger’s ide­al jour­ney to cal­cu­late a path ensur­ing both high com­mute speed and short walks to des­ti­na­tion. The "Gen­e­sis", a retire­ment cen­ter built near a school to incen­tivize inter­gen­er­a­tional con­tact. "Dil­lon," a pre­scrip­tion restau­rant where food is served based on what your doc­tor says is best. "Fish’n’Bits," a dig­i­tal fish mar­ket where cus­tomers go vir­tu­al fish­ing and pick-up their catch ready for con­sump­tion upon leav­ing. "WCCCC," the roman-style are­na for com­mu­nal release, built as a response to the city’s inabil­i­ty to deal with human waste despite ambi­tions of being a zero-waste city. "Cyber­suck­er­punch," a team of pro­tec­tive cyborgs trained to man­age con­flicts between the under­ground club and near­by church. Or "Tow­er Of Mir­a­cles," the first autonomous trade cen­ter which ran­dom­ly prints goods that can be acquired on the blind by gam­bling cryptocurrency.

See also
CCCC.City — Game Kit Design

Future Cities and Societies — 

 30 Oct 2018 

Big thanks to Con­nor, Nicole, Inna, Tes­sa, & Capri from Min­er­va Schools for help­ing us through­out the whole day!

Pho­to cred­its (for all the nice pics): Fre­unde von Freunden