The space of possibilities depicted by organizational licenses is considerable in size. It also lacks the proficiency that would come through shared experience and informed practice of its possibilities. Therefore, we need tools for exploration of this space -- a "vessel" that allows us, and others, to navigate this space. Here's a description of the vessel we're building.
Still from Le mont fuji vu d'un train en marche by Pierre Hébert
Play (the Lightness of Speculative Engagements)
To create engagement points that are easy to approach, yet bring people closer to the topic at hand, we’ll organize possibilities to play with films. These events will be structured by a game titled Possible Cinema.
Possible Cinema starts from the premise that any interaction with a film is a form of play: watching, commenting, re-enacting, and so on. The game offers diverse patterns of engagement for cinematic encounters, expanding how we interact with films. The game treats any film like a game board – the main surface of play, upon which a variety of interactions are composed.
How to play upon the game board of a film, then? To enable the play, we’ve compiled possible interactions during a film, expected or unexpected, and translated them into game moves. This expression of interactions as moves is an adaptation from paradigms developed within tabletop RPGs over the last decade. The approach we've developed provides a flexible way of “translating” mundane activity into modular building blocks for composing game-like systems. The research is also inspired by the cultural practices around moving images investigated within United Screens through the years.
For example, what if the action of pausing a film comes with a right (or an obligation) to ask a question related to the film and its current scene? The film will not continue before someone offers a response (not necessarily an answer) to this question. This simple change of interaction can already form a root for play. Beyond its more direct changes, it also generates outputs (in the form of questions and responses) connected to moments in the film. These outputs can become pieces of further play, or even grow outside of it, as expressions branching from the film to the wider world.
Alternatively, the pausing could bring the focus to the image frozen on the screen, opening a collective composition of a tarot-like card, based on this image. The card can then be saved and branch out of the film differently, perhaps developing into novel decks for interpretive reading -- of the film, other works, or even life in general.
As apparent from these simple examples, the play does not only address the “consumption” of the film but instigates new expression, even outside the game. Sooner or later, this will lead into a legally hazy area. This is quite intentional.
The game presupposes such problematic, and takes it as a potential source of fertility. As a haven for the problems it manages to instigate, the game incorporates a secondary layer – a meta-game of summoning cinemas to existence.
Play upon Films; Play of Cinemas
Still from Eye Test by Sudha Padmaja
To arrive at the layer of cinema, we can start with an observation: the myriad ways of playing on the game board of film can each be framed to be a game of its own, and presented as such.
In short, the context created is not just a game, but rather a game of games, branching into different playful configurations. It could be compared to the traditional card deck, and the numerous games composed and framed from the context of this deck.
To harness this potential of the context it establishes, the game integrates its cinematic layer in the following fashion:
To harness this potential of the context it establishes, the game integrates its cinematic layer in the following fashion:
• The actual play upon the film provides a testing environment, a laboratory of play that can experiment with games brought to it as seeds of interaction, possibly modifying their rules during the play. The building blocks are simple enough that such modifications can be created collectively (with possible help and direction from a hosting player, more versed in game design). • Any play that proves itself intriguing can be framed, and expressed in the form of a repeatable game: a storable and shareable social pattern that can be rejuvenated back into play. • Wherever and whenever these games are played, the organizers have the right to become a cinema, which is named simply A Possible Cinema. That is, they can publicly advertise their events of playing with film as an appearance (likely a temporary one) of the shared cinema the game establishes. It can be likened to a possible organization (in the structural sense of the concept of possible worlds): Appearing wherever it’s being played, maintaining consistent branding and publicity across different locations, thus granting players rights to the brand. • As a result, each instance of A Possible Cinema operates in a type of pocket reality, turning homes into cinemas, perhaps with particular films and games curated for them (with popcorn or not), while uniting under the same organizing identity. • It should be noted that playing in the cinema is optional. If one is happy to play a film as a private game with some friends, nothing prevents this. The layering is essentially optional.A note on the curious form of existence created by such a structure: while this cinema is, in some ways, limited to its magical form of existence, there are ways to hook it to everyday reality. In short, yes, it is still a game – but a game can be slotted to a recognized existence.
From this perspective, the events of the play, or appearances of A Possible Cinema, can take place as events in everyday reality: someone could visit such a cinema without knowing much of the larger framework around it, and still be able to play along. At the same time, though, every activity in the cinema can be approached as being a fictional play, akin to a Live Action Role Play (LARP).
In essence, the game is simultaneously a concrete piece of reality and a cloud of fictional play.
The Solid Seeds of Licenses
After summarizing this venue-layer of the game we can (finally) address the problems of hazy legal relations such play creates with films, especially for publicized events of the play. This brings us to licenses.
While we start at play, engaging the interactions through light and easily modifiable expressions, to tap into the fuller potential opened by this game, some form of organizational solidity would be beneficial. Thus, in the longer term, seeding its soil by licenses, as solid points to grow upon, is a core part of our strategic map -- part of the game design, even.
Licensing the Possible Cinema, or the possibility operate A Possible Cinema, offers myriad benefits. It brings clarity and solidity to players' shared rights, fostering a collective identity and a communal pool of development resources. Similar to recent game licensing models like OGL, this shared framework allows for common mechanics of play, enabling seamless integration and collaborative contribution.
There's a second major benefit to this area of licensing: it provides an anchor for licensing films, from and toward the cinema. As mentioned earlier, the legal situation of such play, if publicized, is potentially problematic. Yet, individual films can license themselves for distribution through A Possible Cinema, either as a commercial or non-commercial license (can tickets, or popcorn, be sold in a particular when playing with a particular film?).
Pragmatically, yielding to such a license might be difficult, even impossible, for a film that is part of dominant distribution channels. But this is a potential strength in the guise of weakness: our interest is to proliferate channels for films outside of current circulations. This possibility, limited to films that have access to inner circles, is an opening for films that have been left out. It could conceivably grow to an alternate form of circulation, upwards from the grassroots of living rooms and abandoned backyards as summoning places of A Possible Cinema.
This is also why the possibility of licensing a film for particular games is an important piece in the puzzle: it enables the makers of a film to curate the interactions they desire around their film. As mentioned in the beginning, the traditional form of watching a film is treated as "just another game" in this context. This means that such interaction, usually assumed by makers of films, can be included in its palette. At the same time, the Possible Cinema exposes films to the possibility of expanded social interactions, thus reconsidering film as a social and cultural catalyst.
Conclusion. The Vessel of the Game as a Catalyst of Cultural Reflection
In addition to its exposure, the game subtly invites a broader reassessment: it’s a glimpse into a wider reconsideration of the cultural roles of media at large. It’s a crack in the establishment of consumerism and a call for participation. Possible Cinema is a laboratory for creating ever-new relations with the media we live with.
Meshdia researches, designs, and prototypes new circulations for cultural work(s). We conceive media as networks and networks as media.
Meshdia moves in two directions:
- Create bottom-up and plural counter-infrastructures opening up new spaces within society.
- Intertwine game design, philosophy, legal, and technological imagination for growing new branches of culture.
We are currently researching and designing a social protocol for re-imagining cinema circulation. The Possible Cinema Protocol channels the cinephile's labors of love into new playful forms of sharing, disseminating movies in alternative ways.
For its existence, Meshdia thanks SAVVY Contemporary (United Screens) and Beyond Culture of Ownership, a program by Serpentine Galleries and RadicalXChange, for their support.
Interested in new counter-infrastructures of sociality? Contact us via email or in our Telegram group.
