“Where there is architecture there is nothing else. And this “Nothing else” is spreading. The built buildings, the laid out streets and marked out parking spaces are not just taking place, they take over the place.”

To encounter today’s European urban complexity means to integrate diverse forms of cultural practice and diverse groups of people into processes for common cultural intangible and tangible results. We see the art project “The city of Abadyl” as a way of knowing the world — a methodology for exploring, understanding, and building human realities. Abadyl is a proposed city, a fantasy, a set of codes and models, a library of artefacts and prototypes and foremost it is it´s co-creators.

Map of Abadyl

In the  project  “Journey to Abadyl” we set out to create an interactive experience based on a framework of play-rules, fiction and role-taking we call “The Anatomy of Choice”. Here participants are invited to a series of thematic Portals; each bridging from one world to another, from the factual to the fictional, from virtual and the real. Guided and aided by performers in a mixed reality space, participants experience a kind of computer game in a spatial format, linking what we already know and spotting the new.

We ask: What are the qualities at play through history constructing this spaces and who is invited? Our answer is an experience structured as a matrix in which the participants are exposed to distinct choices that include both moral, ethical, and physical dilemmas and challenges.

Portal sketch in Kødbyen

The Portals will be designed as thematic artistic elements – Ideal Space, The trick of the tale, Wanderlost, “The Residence Table”, People’s Choice, “Try walking in my shoes” – and function as an invitation to participate in the creation of events which can be experienced in the virtual city as well as in the staged events in Kødbyen. In this way people are given the opportunity to reflect on consequences of the growing social media reality seen in relation to the actual physical environment around us. The Portal format allows us to set up interventions and events during the 12th months of the project with different constellations (partners) and on different locations in Kødbyen. The culmination of the event will be the interactive performance event “Journey to Abadyl” in late 2017 where material from the Portals will be enacted and integrated.

We hope participants will go away feeling enchanted and empowered, challenged, moved, and inspired.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

The upcoming three years 2015-2017 Kristianstad University, HKR, will be one of twelve project partners in the EU-financed “The People’s Smart Sculpture”. “The overall aim is to explore and document new strategies for involving digital media and Information and Communication Technologies in the development of user­centered culture.”

Kristianstad University HKR are one of the partners in “The People’s Smart Sculpture” with the project “Journey to Abadyl”. Michael Johansson at HKR are artistic director of the project in cooperation with the nordic network PRAMnet and live art scene Warehouse9 in Copenhagen.
Pressrelease (swedish only) – http://www.hkr.se/sv/om-hkr/media/pressmeddelande/kreativt-projekt-forandrar-stadsrummet/

“The Journey to Abadyl set out to create an interactive experience based upon “The Anatomy of Choice” in which participants are faced with different dilemmas staged and presented. This mixed reality space contains digital film footage, sound, physical objects, augmented reality, computer games and hidden messages that are all part of a story waiting to be discovered. An experience structured as a matrix in which the participants are exposed to distinct choices that include both moral, ethical, and physical dilemmas and challenges. A kind of computer game in spatial format.”

In Journey to Abadyl – JTA – we will focus on research in digital narrative space, co-creation and audience participation. During the three years we will arrange a series of workshops and public events. The events will take place mainly at Warehouse9 in Copenhagen and the overall plan is to arrange an interactive performance in 2017 entitled Journey to Abadyl.

“Journey to Abadyl” should be seen as a synergy of the expressions of the theatre, the exhibition, the roleplay and the amusement park, using dynamic new media, a non-linear dramaturgy and theories from computer games, working with notions as “story world” rather than “script” and “game play” rather than “drama”.”

As an upstart for the project we arrange a symposium on the 25th March in Copenhagen, at the live art stage Warehouse9. Invited to this symposium are creators, researchers and media professionals who have experience and knowledge in this field. The symposium will be held in two parts – presentations of concrete projects by artists, researchers, producers in the field – group discussions and an concluding panel. The topics for the discussion are centered around audience involvement in a narrative space and strategies for using gameplay and interactive media. The topics will be forwarded together with a complete program for the day in short.

We hope you can participate in the symposium with reflections and experience from your perspective on the theme – digital narrative space, co-creation and audience participation.

At the symposium PRAMnet members will hold a short presentation of JTA with focus on our work with Practice based Research in Art and Media. http://pramnet.org/