Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal

Abstract

I am applying with a series of two projects that I am developing in collaboration with Jacqueline Stevens, a political theorist and author of Reproducing the State (Princeton University Press, 1999) and designer and artist Cynthia Madasky. The first, AgoraXchange, will be a dynamic and accessible online community whose diverse participants will discuss, collaborate, and contribute ideas concerning the game design, the aesthetics, and the politics of the second part of the project, Citizen's Dilemma. Citizen's Dilemma, will be an online multiplayer world that will offer a tangible political alternative to our current world order. In Citizen's Dilemma, all the world's nation-states have been replaced by countries in which political status is no longer determined by birth, and the legal order no longer rewards materialism. We have chosen to use the hugely popular and dynamic form of the online multiplayer game because of its potential for extraordinary detail and elaboration, active and sustained player investment and participation, and timeliness and accessibility as both a medium and social forum.