“You are 4.3 billion kilometres away from the nearest human, what would you like to do?”

Naked on Pluto is a text-based multiplayer game on Facebook. You are stranded on the planet Pluto, naked, alone. Your world is empty except for fragments of data, objects relating to your past life on social networks – but seen through the distorted lens of the game world. You can explore this world, at first alone and later in the game you’ll be able to invite and interact with friends. You can add and manipulate objects you encounter, interact with others and bots. Once you enter deeper into this world and web of data, you become aware of increasing complexity, characters appear you may recognise – are they friends or animated bits of data? Information is substituted and modified in subtle ways. Is it possible to remember what was ever real in the first place?

The game explores the limits and nature of social networks from within, slowly pushing the boundaries of what is tolerated by the companies that own them, carefully documenting this process as we go. Story and play are combined with an investigation on how exposed we are on social networks, and how our data are being used.

The project will be developed during a shared residency at NIMk, BALTAN Laboratories and Piksel, between June and November 2010, by Dave Griffiths, Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk. They will be in residence at BALTAN Laboratories in October 2010. The project is licensed Copyleft. The research and development process will be documented and can be followed at http://pluto.kuri.mu

Naked on Pluto will be presented as part of the Funware exhibition at MU in Eindhoven in November, at HMKV in Dortmund and as part of the Piksel festival 2010. (more…)