Game design and programming:
Rianna Suen

Narrative design and art:
Mariana Marangoni

Music and sound design:
Mikey Parsons

Production:
Nick Murray and Mateus Domingos

Wood Wide Web was commissioned by Playing Poetry and Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre, and launched at the National Poetry Library as part of the Poetry Games Exhibition

In the wake of the self-destruction of Twitter, we’re interested in exploring where else people live on the internet. Spaces that don’t rely on the neo-liberal principles furthered by big tech monopolies and their revenue models based on data collection and questionable user retention strategies.

Digital literacy is not what it once was, lost in those spiralling digital skyscrapers – which echoes, like a prophecy, the disastrous fate of Pruitt–Igoe. After decades of decay and suffering, the architecture complex was finally demolished in 1972 – most its former 57 acres of land now a forest. Social media may be way past their peak, but it is still difficult to devise what could emerge in their resting grounds. As platforms that went from tools of online connection to powerful and unruly entities capable of shifting the world’s politics, economies and cultures in an unprecedented velocity and scale, it is understandable to see why many didn’t think that their demise was possible.

Our work then, proposes this turn to a ‘web-scape’ that is much larger than the ‘Big 5’, offering a glimpse to hand-coded meadows and a curated selection of websites and tools that follow the same principles of reclaiming the ruins to grow gentler woodlands. It comes in the form of a walking simulator game, with portals to other websites, which exist as houses in a forest that you grow yourself by leaving messages behind as you wander through the game, as seeds to populate the land.

Even though our project is just another tiny slice of the Internet, it will hopefully provide people with the knowledge that other ways of co-existing and collaborating online are possible, beyond the shining, elusive gates erected by the ‘Big 5’.