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Excuse me while I talk a little about food

September 25, 2011 by Linn

I’ve been having a lot of fun with food lately. I’m finding creativity in the kitchen a great way to just completely unwind. My extra curricular activities have had an increasing tendency to become serious work and even more time infront of the screen. I needed something where I could let my thoughts and creativity flow freely without having to sit infront of a screen as I think I was in danger of burning out. I’ve rediscovered my pallet after quitting smoking 2 years ago. I recognise the flavours, smoking doesn’t completely kill the tastebuds, but taste has a whole new potensy for me now. And of course, I’ve been writing a lot about the taste of coffee lately – which makes me yearn for taste adventures. The added benefit of cooking is that it’s a great excuse to invite people I adore and find interesting for a meal – I learned so many new interesting things last night when I served this dish to the WPG crowd. It’s a special feeling to have your living room filled with such potential and greatness.

So that was a rather long introduction to why I shall now share my food adventure this weekend on my blog. I considered creating a new one to have all my identities in their designated place but I’ve been doing a lot of merging of identities of late and I might as well let this blog grow with me. So if you don’t mind – let me tell you about my culinary adventure this weekend.

I started on Friday night – the goal was to get as much chopping and preparations done so that I could spend all of Saturday setting table and cleaning apartment.

Welcome Food

So I never really trust all my friends to be on time to these dinners but some will be and so they don’t starve while waiting for the late people I try to have snacks that aren’t going to fill them too much, but will keep them satisfied. I LOVED my combo yesterday. I had previously cut up strawberries and green grapes and grated some fresh ginger and pepper over them. Put them in bowls 3 hours before the guests came so that the fruit would absorb the ginger and pepper well. I served this with some dry sparkling rosé wine. It was sooo nice! I tried mixing in some chunks of mild blue cheese in some of the combos, but the cheese killed the taste.

Starter

The starter was just me worried that I didn’t have enough food and also kinda annoyed that there wasn’t enough color and taste in the main dish. So I made a salad – I love salads! Ohh – I forgot to mention that I had a vegetarian that eats fish as a guest – so meat was out of the question. But ok – I think the salad can best be described in the layers. On the bottom was some tube pasta that I had blended in a avocado, mild bluecheese and garlic paste. Green salad. Dad’s mushrooms. The mushrooms are so scrumptious but take a lot of love and care to make. So the muschrooms are sliced and I fry them in real butter till they’re competely soaked and dark brown in colour. I then add them in a bowl in layers with finely chopped garlic and chilli inbetween. They have to stay over night in the fridge to get all the flavour soaked into the mushroom. Very tasteful, if I say so myself. And on top of that I chop red peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, spring onion, basil, lemongrass and sage. With some dashes of olive oil. I made way too much – so I’m sitting here eating brunch from a very large bowl.

Main course

I made a sort of fish stew. The base I used was 2 coconut milk tins – about 2 dl of milk – one jar of tomato purré – fresh grounded ginger and garlic. I started heating this up when the guests arrived as well as adding chopped cherry tomatoes and scallop onions. When the starter was served I added chopped halibut and cod. I also turned on some cauliflower which I had chopped up to large bouquets and put in some salted water. I also started the steaming process of a dates and beetroot mix – which turned out to be gorgeous, by the way – but next time I might fry instead of steaming. When finished with the starter I added some king prawns that had been marinated in garlic and some tiger prawns that had been marinated in red curry paste into the stew. And some peas! This wasn’t ready as quickly as I thought, so the guests had to wait a bit – but designate a wine pouring prince and they won’t mind. My neighbours might mind, though, as we all became very jolly.

Dessert

I’m not a dessert person – so I just couldn’t be bothered. I bought loads of different chocolate and put them in bowls around the table. I heard no objections.

I still need to clean all the dishes – but I’m just too tired to do anything. Promise to take pictures of the food next time, but only have left overs to document right now, unfortunately. Did not know that I would feel compelled to blog about this! ;)

Posted in Food, Friends&Family, FUN!, Interesting | 1 Comment »

World Peace Game Bergen part 2 – The Players

September 4, 2011 by Linn

So sorry for the delay of this post. Real Life has claimed my full focus the last couple of weeks and I also had to reach some deadlines applying for funding

Kristian Bjørkelo - journalist

to do the game again in Oslo in February. So thanks for being patient. I hope that my memory of the events are still somewhat intact.

I can’t take complete credit for the conclusions that I’ll be writing here. On the last gaming day we had a great debrief session and a lot of the observations I will mention here are from that. Almost all of the players had something they wanted to share in the debrief, so I credit them all with these observations.

First, a few words about our state of mind when starting the game

Our group was so diverse in nationality, age and background that we witnessed some truly beautiful moments that certainly left me moved and my belief in the wonders of the game enhanced. Kristian Bjørkelo was often around us observing and sometimes commenting because he’s writing an article about the game. One day he commented how united we all were in creating actual peace and that he didn’t see enough conflict and terror in us. I believe he accused us all of being a bunch of lefties. I think he may be partly right, but I also believe that he was just given this impression from observing us and not physically living the crisis’ with us. But Grethe Melby reflected one night upon our state of mind as well, wondering if we were perhaps unconsciously infuenced by our grief and the collective compassion from
 the Norwegian terror attackstwo weeks before. I believe they both have relevant points and perhaps this is a sign of playing with young adults and older – we all have baggage, experience and opinions of the world that we take very seriously. One of our adult players was Bosnian and found herself reliving

My team - Ashbury

several emotions from her experiences of the war. I felt that she was such an invaluable player. She was fierce in her pursuit for peace and was a great reminder of how realistic all the scenarios that come out of John’s game are. He’s managed to create a game that teaches us about the complexities of the world – by experiencing and feeling it. This is so unique, for most who try to create such games get lost in the complexities and the players have to end up reading and overanalysing.

I believe that our state of mind and our past personal experiences helped bring the game to a whole new level and gave me a lot of ideas on how we can build from this. I keep wanting to use the word “simplistic” when I describe the gameplay of World Peace Game – but this seems just so incredibly unfair because it is anything but! It is however simple to get involved in the game, and I think that’s what’s fascinated me the most. There are few barriers before you feel the immense responsibility and importance of your contribution to the game and that’s a magical ingredient. When we started to feel the responsibility – the passion and our feelings became real.

Jonathan making pancakes for Friday night while representing Fujistans efforts in solving World Peace

Jonathan making pancakes for Friday night while representing Fujistan. He's our hero!

I was last in line in selecting my cabinet so my selections were often a selection based on the other’s unselection (!). Like Prime Minister Fernandez who always chose men – I decided to pick a woman for each man he picked, so naturally I ended up with a women’s only team (and we kicked #$$!). My first selection was Eira – a young girl who had proven herself to be very outspoken, smart and just really cool after only an hour together in the same room. Eira became my Secretary of State. My second selection was Maja, who I had met the day before and was super impressed by. She’s such a bright and smart young woman with a lot of fight in her, so she naturally became my Defense Minister. For the selection of my Chief Financial Officer I chose a woman who was similar in age to me and who I had heard give a presentation on Creative Commons for Girl Geeks Bergen – Grethe Melby. Yet another incredibly smart woman and teacher that I felt would contribute to a strong and vibrant team. I’m also pretty sure I panicked about my choice in eager teens/tweens and wanted someone my own age by my side as an ally.

The kids are alright

Ashbury contemplating

My cool crew! They just blew my mind! So smart people!

As a team I think we functioned very well. I delegated a lot of the deliberation to my Defense Minister and Secretary of State. They had so much fight in them and were just so determined. I learned so much from them! Where I felt the need to build up our defenses and make sure that we had a military that was able to defend our country, Ashbury, against any attack from the others – they just looked at me and asked “Why? Shouldn’t we just get with it and create world peace?”. How could I argue? I credit a lot of the game’s direction and the fact that we were able to proclaim world peace to these two fighters. I was certain that they would declare a coup d’état when I foolishly invested in a software production company together with the arms dealers without specifying what kind of software was to be made. But they managed to forgive me and move on. There was an extra bonus with having these two fireballs on my team – they knew a few of the other players. So when they had to negotiate and solve certain problems they went straight to their friends to solve them. They did not, however, know anyone in the oil rich country, Fujistan – who incidently only consisted of “adults”, so Grethe and I handled these negotiations, although not as focused as our two other team members. Several times during the game, I was reminded of how old I am and how slowly my mind works compared to a 19 year old. It was fascinating and at times very humbling to realise this. I have to admit – my confidence in my own abilities wavered at times.

The UN and The World Bank declaring peace - ok, I'll admit it - I had a tear in at least one of my eyes!

The UN and The World Bank declaring peace - ok, I'll admit it - I had a tear in my eye!

If anything, my faith in the youth of today is just so much enforced. They’re so much smarter than we were and so much more involved. I learned so much from working together with them and later debriefing with them. It was absolutely such a golden treasure  - that I want to do more.

But here I am – going on and on and not writing about the main drama event, where the defence minister of Subsistan resigns because he strongly disagrees with his Prime Minister! I’m sure term papers in political science could analyse and document this event – for it was truly exciting, real and intense! I’m uncertain if I’ll delegate time to write about it in another blog post, I can’t promise anything. For now I’ll leave you with a dilemma that we ended up facing; When a former defence minister is in exile in UN controlled territory – can he then vote when a re-election is forced in his country because of mistrust towards the Prime Minister?

That’s all I have time to give you for now – you’ll be hearing more soon! ;)


Posted in Gameplay, World Peace Game | 5 Comments »

World Peace Game Bergen Part 1

August 14, 2011 by Linn

I have so incredibly much to share from the week of playing The World Peace Game that I’m thinking it may just have to come in installments. I think I will try to break it down to three parts.

Part 1: My overall impression of what The World Peace Game is
Part 2: The beautiful people that I got to play with and how their unique minds and hearts contributed to a mind blowing experience.
Part 3: My thoughts on how the game can exist without it’s founding father.

John Hunter

Ok – I’ll admit it. I was absolutely star struck by John Hunter. I’m not even sure if star struck is the right word. For me it felt like a truly  spiritual experience being in the presence of such an incredibly peaceful, calm and brilliant man. There’s definitely something very guruesque about Mr. Hunter and you feel ready to follow him to the end of the world if he asked you. You may laugh – but  I’m guessing if you’ve met him, you’re probably nodding. He is no preacher, though. John Hunter is a very humble man and I suspect he’s rather embarrassed while reading these words of complete adoration for him. The man and his soul are very essential to the game and already after 2 minutes of meeting Mr. Hunter, we were talking about how it can survive without him. It does not surprise me that such a great man would become a teacher and extremely pleased that he would use a game as a medium/tool for his teaching practices. The game has been built and written the last 20 years or so – let us never forget what an awesome achievement it is.

The Build-Up

We were so incredibly privileged to get to use the facilities of the youth club organisation Ungdomshuset 1880. The other organisers were familier with the incredibly majestic room/concert hall we set the game up in, but I had a complete surprise. Naturally the game construction got the “spotlight” under the incredible chandelier.

It was fascinating watching John set the board up. He was cutting the countries to size and placing lots of little trucks, torpedos and various other nifty little gaming artifacts tactfully without any written instructions. I was very impressed by how he laid it all out from memory. I was given the task of cutting out some rivers from blue cardboard. It was all very fun and magical.

The Set-Up

The very first order of business on Monday was delegating teams and occupations. John usually does this with kids that he knows very well so our little gathering of 22 players that he did not know was a challenge. We decided to try out volunteerism on the four Prime Ministers, The UN, The World Bank and The Arms Dealers. After this the Prime Ministers had to pick out their cabinet. I volunteered as a Prime Minister of a country that Mr. Hunter described as “hippies with guns”. I’ll get back to the teams more thoroughly when I describe the wonderful group of players we had the privilege of playing with. I’ll just point out now that there was a wonderful array of coincidences and some fairly obvious alliances. This is another problematic layer of making the game accessible beyond John Hunter’s class room, but I’m confident that a few “get to know the room” roleplaying activities could identify the leaders and classes of communicators in the room. That said – one of the most beautiful things about the game is how it’s designed to just dive straight into. I often find that if there is too much bahumbug in the beginning of such activities my eyes tend to roll in the back of my head and my eagerness wavers.  We’ll figure it out.

Now – this is the set-up. Basically there are four countries with completely different resources,
 culture and peoples. One country is artic with limited resources, one is desert-like with massive amounts of oil, one was rich in minerals and military and my country had a lot of clean energy technology.  We were then given 24 crisis between the countries, cultures and environments that needed to be solved. So you start out on the brink of war and the goal is to solve the crisis together to create world peace while still protecting your country and your people.

John walked around the board as he explained each crisis. By the 10th crisis my mind was already confused and spinning so we were all rather overwhelmed by the end of the run through. I felt optimistic that we could figure it out, though – and I believe that comes from the way we all had to agree on the value of each board piece. We – the players -defined the value of things. There’s keys in the game and a value sheet for each gaming piece, but there ar

e holes along the way. We found a purple marker in our country that we couldn’t figure out what was, but through a few discussions and declarations we managed to agree on it.

Maria from The UN being rudely interrupted in her Sun Tzu reading by laughter.

A game day

Each game day would start with a reading from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. It was a very ceremonial quiet contemplation time in the game – the only quiet contemplation time, in fact. The words became very powerful in such a ceremonial setting while adrenaline levels are very high and wanting to get in to action.

For each gaming day each country gets to make a decleration. This will the country presenting it’s gaming moves, signed treaties, trade agreements, declarations of war, disarmament, coin tosses to see if battles were won or if oil clean-ups were successful a.s.o. Each country also got a declaration from the weather goddess on the weather and the stock market. And for each turn the country got a random card which could be anything from a volcano erupting or cloning technology. The UN was given 2 declarations per gaming day and I think the World Bank and The Arms Dealers could declare anything whenever they wanted, it at least seemed that

way.

Inbetween each declaration was a very limited deliberation time. This was the time we used to make trade agreements, arms deals a.s.o. The limited time made it all so incredibly intense and adrenaline levels were so high that you just couldn’t help but have fun. It was all terribly confusing but an intriguing creative process and we literally felt like we were making magic happen. Being forced with time limitations, having several things to figure out at the same time and having lots of people you did not know made for many exciting challenges.

Why it works so well

Ole-Morten Algerøy - our wonderful project manager

It’s all about the communication. I’ll get more into the communication of it all when discussing the players in part 2 – but let me just point out a how incredibly well designed the game is for communication skills. The games I enjoy the very most are the ones that demand creativity from me and that I can jump straight into without having to read several pages of gaming rules. When rules become to complicated and require books to explain them, I have a tendency to faze out of the enthusiasm. Which is why I enjoy computer games so much compared to table top games. Domputer games design the narrative and rules into the game – well – most at least.

This game goes straight into communication mode from the very first minute. Firstly we have a game master (John Hunter) who talks to you as an equal, as if you and he are about to create this game together and solve these problems together. He shows no sign of superiority or that he has all the answers – the ball is in everyone’s court. John functions as a mentor, an advisor and as a participant. In fact, I would say that the weather goddess had more power than the game master – at least visibly. ;)

Even though the 24 crisis were overwhelming and impossible to get a good overview of, they seemed tangible and solvable. Prime Minister and Defence Minister disagreeing on tactics.

The game is also very dependent on the players’ creativity, which I suspect is John Hunter’s intention. Another thing that I found fascinating was that everyone seemed to feel somewhat comfortable. At least to my observations, it seemed like no one was too shy and getting secluded into a corner. To my eye it seemed that everyone was 100% involved from day 1. And that’s unique for a game that has players from all ages, walks of life and nationalities. John, the game and the board made that atmosphere – and it truly was magical.

We took loads of pictures click the links to have a run through and please feel free to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Day 1 - Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4 - Day 5 – Packing

 

 

 

Posted in FUN!, Future Thinking, Gameplay, ME, World Peace Game | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments »

World Peace Game Bergen starts today

August 1, 2011 by Linn

Super excited! Got to meet John Hunter yesterday and I was instantly smitten and very starstruck.

Setting up the board in Bergen

My partners in crime are generously letting me play which I’m super excited about it. I’ll be working during the day and playing afternoon/night – so any spare time I can get will be focused on rest. I won’t be blogging through the game as I suspect that my focus will be occupied. I’ll write a good debrief here after, though.

I will, however, be posting updates and pictures here:

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Peace-Game-Bergen/226364467399587?ref=ts

Twitter : https://twitter.com/#!/verdensspillet

Posted in Academia, ME, World Peace Game | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

World Peace Game and my first steps into game mechanics!

June 12, 2011 by Linn

In October I was very privileged to attend a dinner organised by Bergen International Film Festival - BIFF (falls under the category “Love my job”). Here I met a very enthusiastic gaming man named Erik. BIFF is one of, if not THE, largest international documentary film festivals and one of the things I adore about them is that they go out to schools and show important documentaries and discuss them. Erik was one of the discussers and when he got a whif of my gaming interests he went in a trance like state talking about this great gaming documentary that they were talking about at these schools. I have to admit, I wasn’t convinced – it sounded way too classroomy for my taste. But I gave it a go – and admitidly I too was smitten! The documentary was called “World Peace and other 4th grade achievements”. Here’s a little teaser:

Now – another thing that I adore about BIFF is that they often invite the subjects of the documentary as well as the directors. So the amazing John Hunter was actually in the room taking questions – and I was instantly smitten. Let me take a time-out to also say that Chris Farina did a great job in telling the story of this game. It was beautifully told!

So in the course of the next months I spammed Erik with articles and lectures that touched on gaming narrative. He finally agreed to meet me sometime before Christmas and we had a fabulous inspirational enthusiastic talk about games, learning and taking kids seriously. The idea was born that we should do a summer school or something – trying to experiment with the game – see if we could recreate it somehow.

Erik has been in constant dialogue with Mr. Hunter and been able to participate in some gaming sessions via Skype. I do envy him for that, but my life has limits on time. But I’m so pleased to announce that John Hunter will be coming here at the beginning of August and we’re actually going to recreate the game with him! Isn’t that cool?

Still not convinced this is fabulous? Watch John Hunter’s TED talk:

Admit it! You feel inspired, too!

The thing I’m most looking forward to is extracting John and putting it into our game. I think this is the most challenging aspect, because it is his insight, his will and his aura that makes the game. How do we extract his personality into the rules of the game? It’s challenging and soooo fascinating! A thing that I’ve been caught up in is his almost ceremonial reading of The Art of War.

So this first round will be in English since John will be here so we decided to have teenagers that are more comfortable with English. The following groups will be participating:

1) Teenagers from Bergen
2) Teachers
3) Teenagers from Oslo
4) Teenagers from Finland
5) Teenagers who have had their asylum application denied

I think it’s a good group and I think we’ll see some great communicative activities between the groups. The board is almost ready to be made and the bits and pieces should be getting together pretty soon.

We’re still short on funding, however – so if you want to contribute or have any ideas of where we can apply for funding, please feel free to get in touch!

Søknad om midler

Prosjektbeskrivelse Verdensspillet

Posted in FUN!, Gameplay, Interesting, ME, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

Storytelling cross platform

May 15, 2011 by Linn

Last week I attended The Nordic Media Festival and was so lucky to catch Brian Seth Hurst from X Media Lab. Mr. Hurst came to talk to us about cross platform media.

I still get chills and I must admit – a little tear in my eye when I think about The Conspiracy for Good, which X Media Lab is responsible for:

It’s a beautiful story and something I would definitely like to be a part of. I was thinking as Seth presented it that I suppose there was no coincidence that the man who wrote Heroes was also responsible for creating a game that made all participants heroes.  I know I get cheesily sentimental about these things – just can’t help myself.

As I sat there listening to him I kept thinking that this is something I would love to do. Writing something that was broadcast multiplatform would be so much fun and so much something that I would like to do. It has everything that I want to do creating a story world, opening up for collective storytelling, gaming and making some significant difference along the fun way. Mr. Hurst said that all such stories should start off with some fundamental mythology – what an interesting insight. I can see that this is fundamental – the mythology will be the center or the grounding of the story creation.

I foolishly grabbed the microphone at the questions section and started a little discussion about how to start such a story, although I wasn’t very clear and I’m afraid that I came across as a sceptic – which I definitely am not! My thoughts on the success of Conspiracy for Good is the fact that they had Tim Kring creating it. He already has truck loads of fans after his brilliant Heroes and getting people to participate in a game that he created I hesitate in using the word “easy” – but you get my drift. His following and the dedication of his fans helped bring The Conspiracy of Good to life. So – I guess what I’m trying to say is that in order for such cross platform storytelling to work – one needs “believers” from the start. In order for me to start writing something like this I must consider creating a story first, which will create fans that want it to evolve and they want to participate in its evolution.

So – I’ve been thinking about this. I mean – creating a story that will get fans is any writer’s dream?! Right? So – it must be a tall order to create something that great before creating a good ARG, right? So – I’m thinking, maybe we should start with a charity, NGO or a certain cause that needs to be highlighted and has a story that needs to be told. Create media stirr about said cause so that people at least have heard about this and then create a muliplatform story for people to get involved.

And my thoughts go to all the collections we have in the course of a year. I don’t know what it’s like where you live but I feel like there are people with a bucket asking for money for a good cause all year long in Norway. It would be fun if one of these causes could look into something like this. The successful story is already there – the media will be interested in helping and I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to get more involved rather than just giving my money to someone who hardly knows what they’re collecting money for.

Just thinking out loud ….

Posted in Brainstorming, Collaborative Art, Gameplay, Storytelling | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Games and religion

March 20, 2011 by Linn

So it’s Sunday and I decided to completely ignore all obligations and tasks I should be doing and just lean back and let myself be inspired. Sometimes life needs a little receiving instead of always doing. And what do you know? I was so inspired that I have to share it here!

I took the time to see the Game Design challenge at GDC 2011 – and boy was it worth it. It’s an hour long and totally worth your time. The design challenge this year was to create a game that was also a religion or could become a religion. The designers were Jason Rohrer, John Romero and Jenova Chen – who are all amazing and definitely great thinkers about the expression of games.

What an interesting challenge and what insight these designers have. Jason and Jenova both took a more personal approach about what religion was to them, whilst Romero made a sort of interesting satire of religion or Christianity in itself by using Twitter. I enjoyed all three presentations and I definitely valued all of their definitions of religion and how they created them with game – dare I say narrative? – or game perception, maybe? They all thought about religion creatively and managed to extract the mechanics of religion into game mechanics – and that’s very genious!

They all certainly reaffirmed by love for the expressive and adventurous nature of games. And I adore GDC for making this challenge every year. It’s lovely to see great minds rise to “impossible” challenges.

Enjoy!

Posted in Gameplay | Leave a Comment »

The Story part 3

February 27, 2011 by Linn

I’m determined to get my thoughts from The Story documented somehow, although a week has passed, I shall continue on.

7) I was late coming back after lunch and missed the introduction of Paul Bennun & Nick Ryan. This is a session I would have loved to be more prepared for. I didn’t know who they were and wish I’d looked them up and played their games before attending, because their story was astounding!

Their story was sound. Together they have created a game based entirely on sound called Papa Sangre (downloading now).

Entering the Palace of Bones from Papa Sangre on Vimeo.

Absolutely spectacular, right? Definitely challenging gameplay. I’m really looking forward to playing it. I’m going to have to rely on Antony Mayfield’s notes of the talk, however – because for me it is a mind blowing blurb at the moment. I remember thinking what a spectacular notion, 3D sound is. Also how to think and perceive through sound. Very cool. As Mr. Mayfield says:

There was some really interesting discussions during the session, including ideas about creative and navigational language of sound for storytelling, which I’d like to hear more about.
One point which really struck me was when Nick reminded us just how hi-tech recorded sound was, how new it was – just a hundred years ago, as he put it, if you heard a sound you could be sure it was something happening nearby. Recorded sound allows us to separate time and location from the listening experience.

Indeed.

Here’s some more of Nick Ryan’s work which was extremely cool!

8) Mary Hamilton and her Zombie LARP – I’m sure everyone who knows me knows how I was sitting at the edge of my seat absolutely thrilled with her presentation! It was just so much fun listening to her. I’m not really a LARPER – but I would consider playing a Zombie LARP – just because it seems like so much fun! And that’s exactly what Mary’s presentation was – FUN! She’s generously shared her slideshow:

Zombie LARP – a story machine http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=maryhamilton-zombielarp-110219033007-phpapp01&stripped_title=zombie-larp-a-story-machine&userName=MaryHamilton1

I think what really hit home with me most, was the character creation process. Players are given a fun nerf gun – and that was it. The player’s character evolved around the mechanics of the gun. I found that very simple, smart and welcoming! It seems so open and ready to accept any story that wants to be told. I really like that.

Again – Antony’s notes sum it up very nicely!

The nub of her approach to story was this: “we create edge conditions so people can make their own stories.” She also described how they had formalised or made space for story telling after games (“frothing” as LARP participants call it).

Read “Nerf gun as story engine”

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The Story Part 2

February 20, 2011 by Linn

I’m sitting at the airport with bad internet connection – (I mean seriously! Why do they make this so hard?!)  - but I need to get this off my chest before I get to Bergen, for I know that everyday life will distract me.

So where was I?

4) After a brief coffee break came the remarkably enchanting Karl James to talk about the wonderfully simple yet difficult skill of listening. Sometimes, if you just shut up you’ll hear remarkable stories that you never thought you’d hear. And what beautiful stories he had to share. Like the extremely powerful story of a rape victim he had been talking to. An extremely powerful woman who had worked through the grusomeness of being raped when she was 14. A man had snuck in the back door of their house and raped both her and her mother. Gruesome, right? Absolutely horrendous. But my tears didn’t start flowing until he told us that when they were supposedly finished, he forgot to stop recording and they stumbled upon something heartbreaking. The woman told him that she didn’t regret the rape – she had learned to cope with it, survived and it was a large part of who she was. But then she said something completely unexpected “I do regret what it’s done to my brother” – my eyes are welling up just thinking about her minor break down then. She began to cry and talked about how her brother had become completely secluded and was much more troubled than anyone else in the family. It was heartbreaking and a story seldom told or shared, but because Mr. James was so good at listening, we were given this precious gift. I completely agree. I’ve been thinking lately that I’m very good at articulating other’s feelings when they’re sharing them with me. In fact I take pride in being able to describe what they’re going through better than they themselves can. It makes me feel like an excellent writer and gives my ego a boost. This is totally wrong of me! Of course I should give them room to find the words themselves! I’m looking forward to discovering all the magical stories I will encounter.

Please listen here – I know they will fill my ears in the next coming weeks.

5)  The artist Cornelia Parker was just a breathe of fresh air. What a delightfully nerdy and interesting artist she is. She took us through her works with humor, delight and normalness, if I can say that without seeming patronising. I love artists who can talk about their art without being high culture snobbyish! It was amazing listening to her and the stories about her “exploding” art. She was definitely a lovely treasure that I could’ve listening to much longer.

6) Phil Gyford. What a delightfully great nerd he was! He runs the blog Diary of Samuel Pepys and is doing an exceptional job at it! The core things that stood out for me in his presentation was that his audience was of the older generation and he was catering to their desires and also that he’s been experimenting with some really funny ways of using Twitter. He had truly found a smart way to use the different mediums for the same – let’s call it – narrative. Very exciting stuff!

Lunch

And I’ll have to write the rest later! But OMG it was excellent!

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The Story 2011 part 1

February 19, 2011 by Linn

So I’m on my annual (2nd year this year) pilgrimage to London. Why? The Story! This has got to be the most inspirational day (I hesitate to call it a conference) of the year. The Story is the brainchild of Matt Locke. As he says, he just wanted to create the conference that he really wanted to go to.

I was there last year, but was unable to rearticulate the pure joy that the day brought me. So much inspiration! This year – all I want to do is write about it. I haven’t felt so inspired to write in FOREVER! But that’s the whole point of this pilgrimage – to be inspired, hear new good stories and celebrate storytelling. I must admit that I feel exceptionally geeky travelling from Norway for the event, but it’s just so worth it. And after, I have the whole weekend to work on my inspiration and write in lovely London.

Margaret Robertson was the perfect MC for the event. She excused herself for only being interested in games, but her storytelling geek surfaced quite well. So I’ll do the talks chronologically:

1) Ministry of Stories

I think I first heard of Ministry of Stories from my sister and I’ve been smitten by it ever since. Ministry of Stories is a writing center for those under 18, inspired by David Egger’s project 826 Valencia. Apparently he had the idea of creating a writing project for young people and found the perfect place to run the project from. But the house required that there me some sort of shop front – so why not sell Pirate supplies?! Wonderfully creative! Here in London, they’ve chosen the Monster Supply theme. They were there at Conway Hall and it was lovely going up to the counter and having a debate if I really need some Colly Wobble or some Vague Sense of Unease. I wanted to buy them all ofcourse. Perfect gifts for my writer friends, but didn’t have enough cash on me.

Egger’s TED talk here.

2) Matt Adams from Blast Theory

Matt had a fascinating presentation on the narrative through SMS in ivy4ever. It was truly inspiring learning about how they used the medium. What fascinated me most about this talk was the way that the teenagers engaged with the character. Although it was evident that she was not real, the conversations were open and real. Matt talked a little about the realism and the troubles that come with it. When it comes evident that this is a bot, does it ruin the narrative. He drew out some beautiful examples that it indeed did not. I kept thinking about the Norwegian phenomenon of the “pink” blogs. Øyvind Solstad once gave a presentation where he mentioned that some of the girls were acting as counselor’s to young girls struggling with growing up. We all know that advice is taken more seriously by those our own age and the example that Solstad gave was heartwarming and quite honestly brought a tear to my eye. But I suppose creating a narrative that is about teenage pregnancy and is made specifically to engage these teenagers in conversations, such counseling is needed. – hmm – my thoughts may be straying away from what Matt actually talked about here, but this is what I’m thinking about after learning about ivy4ever. I’m really looking forward to learning more about sms narrative and Blast Theory. Will be paying attention!

3) Adam Curtis – BBC

OMG what a fascinating man! Truly – where should I start? Firstly he challenged the naivité of all of us who embrace collaborative writing on the internett and think that it will change the face of narrative forever. He doesn’t think it is so and challenged us all to step back and look at the larger picture. While at the same time he felt that TV was an old medium that was loosing it’s magic. He also mentioned that people were looking for the longer fuller story. Why do I feel like that is not the case in Norway. I feel that the British media are always interested in talking about this, but in Norway I don’t see it as much. For us the fuller story is dwelling on the local – that’s at least my impression.

Adam showed a short clip of a young Afghan BBC journalist interviewing a Taliban member about the burning of schools. He then showed us the whole entire clip of the interview which was surreal and absolutely fascinating. This small group of Taliban members had decided tha

t they should circle the camera with the large dangerous guns and missiles while he was interviewing their leader. Making the journalis

t fear for his life and making the interview seem like a Monty Python skit in my opinion. The journalist is wonderfully sarcastic in the intervie

 

w and made it just so informative and a fascinating piece of news. It put the surreality of the whole Afghanistan situation in the “real” light. For none of us can make sense of it all, and stuff like this reaffirms our suspicions that things aren’t clear cut. Or as straight forward as “regular” tv edited news stories try to make them. We don’t believe the polished versions anymore.

And now – I need some lunch! ;)

 

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