Simon Denny's Take on Gamification
From some of Simon Denny's works, we can see how the collage of popular entertainment and gamification creatively and impactfully convey the discussed topics. From example in his exhibition Games of Decentralized Life(2018) and the related revamps in 2019 & 2020, Simon Denny had produced a series of exhibits that drew inspiration from Milton Bradley's classic boardgame Game of Life. With the his research on the comparison of centralized and decentralized web technologies, the artist collaged related key points and images onto the Game of Life game board and package. With such composition, the artist transformed the game lanes of Game of Life into a media for his findings and skepticism on the emerging and high-profile crypto-currency communities of the time.
Beside from being an fun and catchy element, the usage of game lanes, which connected together to form game loops, also conveys the connection and perhaps collusion between the seemingly competing centralized and decentralized web techs. As the artist written in his statement, this was to bring out the question of whether the decentralized crypto-currency techs would instead become instruments of centralized, just as the freedom promised by 90s web techs had instead nourished the centralizing tech giants of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon from 2010s onwards.
Apart from this, we also see Simon Denny boldly utilizing gamification in his exhibition The Founder’s Paradox(2017). In this exhibition, there were sets of exhibits that took the form of popular broad games, while embodying competing political vision from real world scholars and advocates. One of the exhibits was Ascent: Above the Nation, which take the stereotypical form of table-top dungeon RPG. Instead of being entirely fictional, its player characters and worldview were written with details alluding stereotypes of identity politics participants in the reality. Common topics of the 2010s politics were referenced as game rules and items, hence conveying hypothetical political debate through each gameplay.
Again, such adaptation of the popular broad game was not merely for the sake of attention grabbing. By junction of board games experience and real-life political topics invite the audience to think both similarity and the difference of the two. While both may be common in some ways of the power dynamics, the stark difference of decision consequence is definitely otherwise. This leave plenty of places for audience's reckoning, such as whether radical notions are to be party neutralized and discussed in form of gamification, or whether gamification may degenerated into sugarcoating controversial advocation etc.
These are just two of Simon Denny's many works with gamification elements. The Founder’s Paradox and Games of Decentralized Life themselves involves multiple other instance of gamification, all conveying its specific reflection on the chosen topics. Yet with the above examples, we already had a glimpse on the potential of gamification as a mean of artistic mean, and its up to any playful artist to utilize.
Bloomberg Originals. (2015, December 29). Making Sense of Technology, privacy and Corporate Power | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 17 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfCB7dc5bQo
Buchholz, G. (n.d.-b). Games of Decentralized Life — Simon Denny — Exhibitions — Galerie Buchholz. www.galeriebuchholz.de. https://www.galeriebuchholz.de/exhibitions/simon-denny-koln-2018
Games of Decentralized Life – Simon Denny. (2018). https://simondenny.net/games-of-centralized-life-main/
McWhannell, F. (2017). A competition of ideals: A review of Simon Denny’s “The Founder’s Paradox.” Pantograph Punch. https://www.pantograph-punch.com/posts/founders-paradox
The founder’s paradox – Simon Denny. (2017). https://simondenny.net/the-founders-paradox-main-project/