Outside our garden apartment here in Park Slope is a guy pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. He's on his cell phone and just had this to say, "This area is nice, man. I like it a lot. Lot of trees and shit." Right on, but trees aren't the only thing we've got going on. This weekend, for example, there are two things of note right in our area, both experiments in creative interactive experience, though geared perhaps towards two distinctly different moods.
First, in Prospect Park about three blocks from our house is the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières "Refugee Camp" Exhibit, the same one that has earlier been constructed in Central Park. I hope to go check it out soon but it's drizzling a bit at the moment. One prefers to imagine a refugee camp experience without also having to be cold and wet. Will the Refugee Camp Exhibit avoid some of what has plagued the Camp Darfur refugee camp recreation in Second Life -- namely that sitting in front of your computer and wandering around in an empty virtual space doesn't inform you all that much about what it's like to be forced from your home under the threat of violence and starvation and subjected to a communcal living experience with no real end in sight? I think so, but we'll see.
And then over the river and through the tunnel in Manhattan is Eyebeam's Come Out and Play Festival 2006, complete with urban interactive games like MegaPutt -- a massively-multiplayer game of mini golf in the East Village, Spy School -- a text-message based espionage game, and Quoto -- a 30 minute challenge to photograph famous quotes "rebus-style" using the props provided by New York City. The last I had very much liked to participate in, but alas, all full.
