Common explores the space between people and community trust
Common begins with a single player. They exist in a vast nothingness. The first thing they notice is that their life-force is decreasing, they are slowly eroding into the nothingness.
The only way to fight against this erosion is by inviting people to join Common. Players are sources of energy, and strong connections allow life-energy to regenerate and flow.
Each player is free to invite more players to join. Strength accrues like interest and flows from and to all connected players in a network, increasing the score of each player as well as the larger community score. But players must maintain connections or they will decay and disappear.
Location: Want to play? Marie Claire LeBlanc Flanagan will be at different locations around the region, looking for new players. Check here: https://commonplay.ca/schedule.html (no longer active)
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About the artist
Originally from Perth, Ontario, Marie Flanagan moved from Kitchener to Berlin in 2016 to make experimental games. She has recently developed Auscault: a facial recognition/biosignal work using machine learning to allow you to play another person’s body as an instrument; Other Hands: A Virtual Reality experience expressing the permanence of a person’s virtual choices on their physical body; Closer, A co-operative computer vision game that uses two moving bodies as a shared single controller; and TexTiles: An award-winning pattern-matching game using a database of historically relevant textiles at the Wikimedia Free Knowledge Game Jam.
Marie Flanagan Founder of Wyrd Arts Initiatives, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to encouraging, documenting, and connecting creative expression across Canada. She served as the Editor in Chief of Weird Canada, a website that celebrates and documents do-it-yourself, experimental, and emerging music, books, ideas, and art; and was the founder of Drone Day, an international day for the celebration of drone music.