G80 Installation

How far are we prepared to go to optimise the management of the Earth? The G80 interactive device speculates on a global management system for planetary problems that brings together different forms of intelligence in a contemporary reinterpretation of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s World Game. Inspired by war games and strategy games, this game of simulating scenarios on a planetary scale is aimed at “an equitable distribution of resources”.

Created during the cybernetic era in the early 1960s and developed over several decades, this game embodies the promise of computation and mathematical models for solving socio-political problems such as overpopulation, energy, consumption, access to services, and resources, etc.

The installation consists of a matrix of 80 motorised sliders on a console, reminiscent of a control room. Each slider corresponds to a named variable, with + and - signs measuring their scale. Some of the variables are directly inspired by those defined by Fuller and his students, while others have been redefined by Fragmentin to refer to the major issues of our time, such as ecology, migration, gender equality, and the development of technological innovations. In this installation, the sliders act as both inputs and outputs.

The public is invited to interact with the work by changing the value of the 80 variables representing the phenomena at the heart of the Earth’s fragile balance. When no visitor interferes with the matrix, it activates and alters the position of the 80 sliders to form geometric patterns.