Invisible Playground explores the social mechanics, technical infrastructures, places and non-places of cities by installing experience systems on top of them. Developed at the intersection of site specific theater and transmedia gameplay, these systems grant participants entry onto the invisible playgrounds they walk across every day without noticing. Hiding in plain sight, employing a cover story called routine, they are easily overlooked. What happens upon them is distributed and not visible from a single point of view. They do not provide positions for spectators, only for players. As ghosts, pirates, agents or aliens, players are reenabled to take action upon them – rediscovering their own world in the process.

As artistic practice, Invisible Playground creates procedures enabling aesthetic experiences of players’ everyday lives and environments. We embrace the challenge of developing opportunities for situated, playful action as an iterative process, collaborating closely with participants. We develop an art of rulesets, instructions and missions, using both analog and digital technology as tools to connect people, objects and places.

As a political effort, Invisible Playground develops experimental modes of participation in the urban space. Through creative appropriation, we draw attention to that which resists or enables play, reconfiguring what is known and what is unknown. We highlight not only power structures amongst players, but also between players and their surroundings and between players and play organizers – generating unexpected conflicts, alliances and communities.