Green Groworld
Over the last year, we've been working with the guys at FoAM as part of a project called Groworld, which had its first public showing last night. Groworld contains many elements, from games to artwork to food to actual gardens, and it's all about promoting the "vegetal state of mind." Not, of course, in the passive sense, but as a way of getting people to reconnect with the idea of slow growth, plants and food.
[caption id="attachment_510" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="An environmentally friendly PC at the Groworld Bazaar (not sure about how you water it though!)"]
[/caption]
We were responsible for two elements - the 'Gardener's Web', and concepts for a Groworld ARG. The Gardener's Web was envisaged as a way for people to keep track of their plants and gardens online, through a combination of sensors and manual input. There was some inspiring stuff out there, like the plant that Twitters, and so we set to designing it.
In the end, we had a few false starts, but we came up with a nice site that integrates sensor feeds, Flickr photos, and has the ability to add plants to gardens and so on. It's a nice example of the sort of thing that's possible.
We also came up with concepts for an ARG that would bind together all the various elements of Groworld. This was pretty exciting, since the entire point of Groworld was creating an experience that would live both online and in the real world, with information constantly flowing between them. The prospect of making an ARG that would create a story and universe and a real collaborative element was pretty attractive! And so here's the poster we presented last night:
Also involved in Groworld were the excellent game designers Tale of Tales, responsible for The Path and recently Fatale, and they came up with some very neat 3D worlds that just exuded organic and plant-like ness. Plus there were games-a-plenty, drinks made from urban plants found in Amsterdam, and some interestingly weird plant-ish music!