<nettime-ann> The Garden of Error and Decay

The Garden of Error and Decay is an endless story-telling flow controlled by real

time Twitter feed, actual economic data and the user. The sequences of animated narrative

pictogram reality units are displayed in the web and may be viewed in a form of projection

either indoor or outdoor as well.

The collage like scenes are fed by the permanent flow of Twitter statements regarding

negative events like for example natural catastrophes, terrorism, ecological disasters,

wars, financial crisis, plane crashes, health damages, social unrests, poverty, famine etc.

The more intensely Twitter users talk about similar error/decay themes the more often the

appropriate animated representations appear in the visualized story (projection).

The user has the opportunity to intervene in the course of the generated story by

means of a simple shooting interface that can be used to eliminate any desired disaster or to

generate more of them. With the gesture of shooting the actor either frees the world of a

negative occurrence or she triggers their growth off. The participator can come under the

illusion that she has control over her actions. But she is to find out that in fact the result of

her action is decided by actual changes of international stock exchange data. If the stock

exchange index rises up the shot caused by the participant will eradicate the negative story

thereby she will liberate the world. On the contrary if the stock exchange index falls down

the visitor’s shot will cause a multiplication of the negative event and thus she will lead the

world toward its doom.

In The Garden of Error and Decay project, the principle of a game should be perceived

only as a metaphor. Although the user determines her activity (to shoot or not to shoot)

she has no control over the result of her action similarly as she doesn’t influence unpredictable

phenomena of the highly complex networks of the real world. The only one who decides

on the saving or the destruction of the world is the stock exchange.

This innovative narrative format that could be defined as Data Driven Narrative

Game (Game/Non-Game) or Real Time Generated Interactive Movie uses the additional

story generators or narrators (Twitter, stock exchange data) as a new inseparable aspects

of the non-linear story flow influencing not only the evolution of the narration itself but the

interaction between the actor and the narration as well. By this The Garden of Error and

Decay reflects on the networked media reality of the 21st century that seems to have at least

as strong impact on the world’s events as the catastrophes of all sorts of kinds have. The

slightly observable analogy of The Garden of Error and Decay to the well-known painting

by Hieronymus Bosch The Garden of Earthly Delights is not a complete coincidence.