Thing Thing Thing

ThingThingThing explores open source software development’s potential as a framework for generative narrative made collectively. ThingThingThing is a zero-player game. The artists and contributors jointly determine its evolution by setting an initial seed state of each Thing, which later requires no further human control. Viewers interact with ThingThingthing by navigating a giant eyeball and observing how the world evolves. ThingThingThing is an unending, three-dimensional system of instantiations, each of which is populated by an individual contributor. ThingThingThing’s aggregation algorithm copies individual avatars into an upstream account, enabling them to interact with each other.

The artists have been hosting a series of workshops, enabling anyone from students, designers to technologists to quickly build creatures with intelligence and interaction. One can also contribute remotely through ThingThingThing’s online development environment. ThingThingThing is not perfect. Anyone can make a Thing, with its unique glitches, awkwardness, and clumsiness. Once creators send off their code, they walk away from the keyboard and computer screen, let their Things take on a life of its own in the universe of ThingThingThing.

The latest ThingThingThing exhibition + workshop will be hosted at PSA Shanghai, between Nov 2nd 2018 and Feb 2nd, 2019.

Prior ThingThingThing collaborations also include Macy Art Gallery, Teachers College Columbia University; Creative Tech Week(CTW) New York; Asia Art Archive in America.

Past Video Documentation

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