GAMEPLAY MAKING OF HISTORY ABOUT US
A Crimping Journey |
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Our journey starts in Porto on a cold night of December. Hanging on the wall is the hexagonal board made of paper triangles assembled together with tape. In our hands, origami junk ships trying to find their way into the board.
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The game borrowed its name from a practise of the old days known also as shanghaiing: kidnapping people from pubs to sell them as crewmen to ships. This theme of piracy, of smugglers' tunnels and maritime law sets the background, a skeleton for the far more complex and complete dynamics that we now have. |
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But that is not all. The design takes us yet further back, to the creation of strategy games as instruments of reflection and application in real life. It pays homage to games like chess which have lasted through the ages. It refers GO when it searches for it's own etiquette, it's own ritualistic movements. The tall elegant vessels resemble the ancient game of senet. It references mancala game yet also the flower of life, found as a recurrent pattern of mankind. All the pieces it contains, as well as the movements it invites, are charged with symbolism - objective but also subjective, that you can search for yourself, as we did, thus empowering yourself in this continuing dialogue of all lives and all times.
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Navigating through shapes... |
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From watercolor fold-out versions
Through wood and metal hinges Through rocking winds swiveling branches and oubliettes a long process of writing, reviewing, transforming of venturing straight into the unknown |
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And It is only beginning. Our joy is to see it played, touched, opened, studied, interpreted; to see it make the way of it's own accord, so that this history is no longer only in our hands.
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