Transmission 24.5: WORLDBUILDING COLLECTION: THE PLAY
Here come insights and behind-the-scenes from our futures practice! A glimpse into our uncommon perspective and approach, to keep updated or to know what to expect when time traveling with us.
Summer is a concept season at The Time Travel Agency:
Worldbuilding for adaptation.
In each broadcast of The Time Travel Transmissions two sections:
Worldbuilding Collection, our latest tools for worldbuilding.
Hyperlink Stroll, a chill summer activity inspired by The Wiki Game.
Concerned with the question 'How does Worldbuilding fit in a process of adaptation?' we’ll look into the worldbuilding that happens in our futuremaking.
What if the process of adaptation was pleasurable? The playful nature of worldbuilding is an opportunity to feel so– worldbuilding processes and tools teach how to access creativity and pleasure especially when we are stressed. What if by stepping into a future world we felt good about where things are going?
Our Nordic experiments embrace play and social participation while our American experiments focus on implementing, taking risk, and adapting fast. When play culture meets adaptation culture, there’s a lot to learn from each other.
Like open-heart surgery, making futures is invasive, yet our clients work from the assumption that their organization is going to make it.
Worldbuilding is a stage in our process that allows futures to be explored.
We make worlds so our clients feel what it’s like to live in and affect those worlds;
to feel agency.
These are behind the scenes of our most recent worldbuilding tools,
developed between Sweden and California this year
for organizations envisioning how to move forward.
Here are the most recognized stages of our process:
Inside Worldbuilding is 'The Play'
TOOL 5: THE PLAY
WHAT ‘THE PLAY’ IS
THE PLAY is a worldbuilding tool that challenges the notion of scripted stories and emphasizes “the experience itself”. The Play is a one-use, disappearing item, akin to a fortune from Zoltar or a dissolvable tablet.
It serves as a counterbalance to our other tools: whereas the rest of tools embody the significance of stories, The Play highlights the idea that stories can hold significance and, paradoxically, not matter at all.
The Play is purely an experience of the realm of stories.
With its one-use, disposable nature, and timed dissolution, The Play encourages unfiltered responses and discourages embellishment during Worldbuilding. By letting go of the need for fabrication, participants can embrace the authenticity of the moment, leading to a deeper connection with themselves and their creative expressions.
The Play acts as an antidote, offering a unique space where stories can take a backseat, allowing the experience to shine on its own.
HOW ‘THE PLAY’ COMES TO BE (AND THEN NOT)
The duration of The Play mirrors the dissolving process of an antacid tablet, providing a tangible timer for the experience. To activate The Play, all that is required is water.
While The Play dissolves, all questions are asked (only) by a travel agent and answers are created invoking only creativity and interaction from the players. Due to the timer, The Play discourages romanticizing and challenges participants to provide often genuine and unfiltered responses. Since no one besides the travel agent can ask questions, travelers are never left with the urge to say “And you?”, and usually relax and answer honestly, and we move on.
By engaging with The Play, folks also let go of the inclination to make things up (an urge that comes with a sub-urge of being clever, performing, being interesting, “being intellingent in front of my boss”, etc.), and embrace the soothing effect that comes from embracing authenticity (the same way an antacid’s effect is soothing after a meal).
At the time of writing this Transmission, we wondered: The Play perhaps encourages participants to explore alternative forms of embellishment.
The Play sits on a counter, outside its little envelope, almost sizzling. A question for THE PLAY: Could you share the most intimate experience you’ve had with some players (names and details omitted)?
“One time, a question hung in the air inviting each player to delve into the depths of a personal intimacy related to seeds. As the participants gather around me, a sacred space formed where trust and vulnerability intertwined. I will honor privacy, so I will only say that stories were whispered, secrets exchanged, and emotions laid bare, right in front of me, as I sizzled away. In this cocoon of trust, the boundaries of personal connection set me off to my journey of dissolution.”
A chill summer activity inspired by The Wiki Game for those taking it easier this season: in each broadcast, three links creatively related to worldbuilding, to hop from one to another in a breezy digital stroll.
On the next transmission: the CINEMATIC UNIVERSE tool and more Hyperlink Strolling. See you in two weeks!
And on LinkedIn and Instagram: MOVING DAY, a storyworld we built using IMPACT: Learning Edition, a game (from fellow inventors KnowledgeWorks in Pittsburgh) that ignites deep and systemic conversations about the future of learning, which we angled at the future of a city’s garbage economy.