Exploring the new theatre modalities and expression, ApsArt opened new chapter in its work and embarked into adventure that leads into unknown but very exciting way. Namely, in many European and world cities, new creative movement has been started during nineties. This movement with many representatives has its aim to transform streets, squares and other public spaces into big playgrounds – through special kind of games. Games that take place in such spaces are entitled „pervasive games“ because they blur the border line between reality and game and enable fiction and nonfiction world to overlap.
Pervasive games take place in real space, in real time and, just opposite to video games, they enable players to make real social relations with other players. Those games transform cities into playgrounds by easy and simple triggering of new perception of reality. Players of pervasive games tend to look at the world with new eyes – and to perceive it as an imaginary world ruled by rules of game.
For playing of this games you don’t need anything except good will, joy and a bit of free time. These games, being actually kind of theatrical performances in open spaces, don’t require complicated technology, set design, costumes or theatre building. Nevertheless, modern technology has been used a lot in the last decade, for playing of such games – being rather kind of catalyst for designing of these games. People around Europe and world play these games using mobile phones, GPS devices, palm-top computers, sensory equipment etc.
There are several big festivals of pervasive games in the world. Most famous are Come Out And Play in New York, Hide and Seek in London, IgFest in Bristol etc. Growing community of game designers gathers during these festivals and presents more and more creative games each year. Growing popularity of pervasive games is signal that these games are becoming more serious cultural, educational and entertaining activities in big cities. These games are powerful tool of education and socialization that enable people to look at the world in a new, more human and creative way, to overcome obstacles and alienation and freely communicate with their social environment.
ApsArt is first organization in Serbia that deals with this kind of theatre (we can look at pervasive games as an art form close to street theatre) on systematic and organized way. We established cooperation with some of the most prominent world artists in this field. Our study visit to art group Blast Theory from Brighton, UK, where Bogdan Španjević and Mirko Stojković have been artists in residence in January 2010, became powerful inspiration for our new projects of pervasive games. In due course, ApsArt developed and patented special hardware that enables making of massive multiplayer scalable pervasive games – played via mobile phones.
All about the project of pervasive games you can find on the site YenDva3