Mount of Olympus

Mount of Olympus is a participatory social game complete with props inviting participants to confront our desires in pairs.

William Winter suggests a new form of role-playing in extended space via the style of a role-playing video game. Visitors in laurel wreath-like crowns bearing AR codes (the players) appear on the screen with animal heads representing a sacrifice or as the heads of Greek gods carrying out missions such as giving or receiving gifts.

In combination with traditional video game imagery the players on the screen exist in an augmented reality. Missions are provided to the participants that are experiencing the extended space inside of the mask, absorbing the participants/players into their newly assigned roles.

Though thoroughly engrossing the limited frame and view on the screen is designed to keep the players at a distance so they remain aware, conscious of real space and the subject of the action. Simultaneously a live feed of their activity is projected into a sculpture across the room resembling an Ancient Greek sacrificial altar for others to witness at a distance, putting them directly on the chopping block and further distancing them from their perceived experience.

In collaboration with Berlin-based artist William Erhard Winter we developed an augmented reality role-playing game where people wearing AR markers have their faces replaced by 3D masks of characters whose role they have to assume.

Technology: QR codes // openFrameworks

Location: Art gallery (Berlin, Germany 2018)