Natural catastrophes and urban interactions: a game.

The actual Argentinean crisis has been resting on two tendencies that have been growing stronger during the last decade. On one hand the unstoppable erosion suffered by the democratic representation system and on the other the dismantling of the public space favoring private interests. We focused our attention on how these two tendencies are exaggerated by the influence of the environment transformations.

Since 1976 there is an increase of more than 50% of the volume of rain.
On the year 2001 the floods have generated more than 1000 million dollars losses in agriculture and cattle.

These new environment conditions are now affecting the proper city of Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, the image these floods produce is an amplification of the state of the public space and the relations that constitute it. An important fact about this image is that the floods provoked a temporal indetermination between the public and the private space: the water has easily passed these limits. There are hints about a new variable in the game: the relationship between landscape and public space, or if you like between catastrophe and public space.
These new environmental conditions appear paradoxically as if they constitute in itself a political situation, a crisis. So, catastrophes, can be seen now as a metaphor not only for argentine politics. We must remember the flooding in Dresden and its political consequences in Germany during 2002.
Flood! is part of an strategy public discussion launched by m7 and its objective is to explore, analyze and think about the relationship between crisis and city. We understand by crisis an unexpected and dynamic phenomena. A possible name for it is catastrophe and this can be a natural or social one. o, what we are developing are dynamic urban and political scenarios based on exceptional situations. The crisis and catastrophes offer us transformation models where everyday situations that we use to see at low speed can be seen in a fast one. They are high exposure interactive scenarios for urban actors.
As part of this strategy a table game called flood! was developed. This game is taken as a base to produce a simulation more focused on the interaction between the actors and the making up of their discourses than in a realist one based on the environmental issue of a flooding. One of the considered hypothesis of the game, is that from its mise en scene of some actors and an exceptional and fictional landscape, a critical analysis of the emergent trends of the real city can be made. Can we do urbanism without depending of the state? How can we do to avoid the pyramid of advisers who leave behind the civil sector and put them all under the nickname neighbors? Which is the relationship between urbanism and citizenship? How can we develop and improve tools or instruments alternative to those generated by the hierarchical system that the projectual mechanism managed by specialists has set up?

ambient & conversation
(taken from flood! a game session by m7. The AmericasSociety. NY. Dec 10 2002 )
Carlos Brillembourg:-I would like to concentrate the discussion on this idea of flooding as an urban game, as an urban strategy that allows us to rethink possibilities within the city through this kind of crisis situations where solutions are not normally evident or they don’t become evident. In a way, the flooding in their view works as a kind of conceptual tool that allows us to see hidden structures within the urbanism of a city. And also as a kind of tool that allows us to rethink about the position of the citizens versus the construction versus urbanism versus the politicians. They see the event of flooding as a possibility of freeing up those relationships where the normal political structures that are in control of the situation, loose control involving architects, artists, philosophers and a multiple group of people, one can then think about the possibilities to use a crisis situation to resolve problems that are always related within the cities.
M7: -The making of this ambience is already very important, because it gives so much credibility to the issue. I was thinking about what he said... maybe the problem is not the opposition between formal and informal. Because the idea of the game is to create a form of exchange in the sense of the coffee houses did in London and Paris at the 18th century. The coffee house was a meeting place where the social rank of the people was eventually suspended, you could enter into an ambience where you could freely discuss the news. And the first newspapers were originated in these coffee houses, because the latest news about shipwrecks, wars, dead kings and other issues, were heard among those conversations. The first insurance company in the world, Lloyd’s, was a coffee house in its origin. So our interest is to make stories just to perceive the beginning of a tradition or the starting of a new institution, or in which way these are changing...So, at last, the problem seems to be how to create a tradition of more aware citizens. We are architects, so we like making plans. After all, we were educated to do that. This problem in Argentina, has becoming shaped under the circumstance that people left the responsibility to the politicians or the experts, and they did what they wanted. The conflictive relationship between citizens, institutions and traditions of a city, or a country, as appeared in the concept of the coffee houses, is linked with one of the aims of the game: how to improve a sociable and civilized form of discussion. Just only trying to discuss in a serious way the urban problems with experts and non experts is in itself, very strategic, nowadays .
Sofia Hernandez: -to what extent do you think that the way of organizing or the way of working of the increasing of emergency NGO’s in South America precisely, with Brazil being one of the countries at the top of the discussion of NGO’s and their importance to spur civil society. I want to know if you find yourselves more linked historically or methodologically with NGO’s than with any specific architectural firm or collective or perhaps modes of working or strategies.
M7: - It’s an interesting point of view. I was thinking, first, that an NGO supposes certain social articulations and deals and second, as Ines said, about our gang culture and its relationship with the art world...This plan is difficult to compare with that of an NGO, which demands certain formalities...This degree of informality is now linked with what we have been talking about to create the conditions for new traditions or an ambience , as Mauricio said. At this moment, our work is in a difficult relationship with these urban decision structures which Carlos mentioned, indeed, they have a long development.

Scenario:
The scenario proposed by flood! is conformed by a map/gameboard and by the characters that will be “played” by the participants. The gameboard represents a critical flooding situation in the city of Buenos Aires. In its second version, the building up of the map is another game in itself : an scenario projection game.
Characters are establish by random combinations of social stereotypes and urban trends. You need three elements to make up any character: a social role, a (secret) goal and an style (an urban and/or political trend)

“Players”:
The determination of who are really playing, displays a second interaction between participants. This second scenario is a mix of real and fictional situations:
1 – Each character is established and managed by a team of players. As we mentioned before, the making up of every character is cast by random, so the team have to discuss and develop a discourse- strategy in order to face the critical scenario. The elements you need to compose every character (role, goal and style) are not obviously related at a first glance. Therefore, this stage is the first step of an increasing urban and political discussion.
2 – Voting is one of the decision making systems that can be used in a game. But in flood! rules allow each participant to vote in an independent way from that of the team. Maybe you do not agree with the political or urbanistic trend of the character developed by the team. Voting means here a possibility of counteracting or criticize the consensus reached into the team during the character building process . Still in the voting stage every assistant at the game session is invited to vote. So, a new interaction beyond that between the characters and those team members who managed them is achieved.
3 – The presence of experts and representatives of (private and state) institutions between the participants is an strategic tool to develop the game as a hint to intervene in the public debate about urban politics. At the end of the game, the participants are asked for an opinion or a brief report about the session. A self critical reflection from a technical, institutional or bureaucratic point of view is now added to the game.
The same participant can be in two or three different positions at the same time during one session.
First as a member of the team that bear the performance of a role or character. Second, as an independent player and third, as a technician, politic or citizen giving opinions about the interaction produced during the session. This allows the participants to act in a critical way, because of promoting multiple identifications, changing point of views, and contradictory ways of thinking.

Inertial situations or rules?
Although flood game is very detailed in its beginnings, it isn’t the same for the further development of the session. If we have to assemble the characters that were cast by random for a given situation, during the simulation we need to makeshift tools and speeches in order to cope with changing situations.
In the gameboard color elements are displayed to mark the map. These can be used by every team for their convenience. Another element that is at hand are the tools. These are forms where the teams write down what they want to do or communicate to the other participants. The only condition to go forward in the performance is that the rest of the participants have to accept what the other teams or participants propose or act. That’s why one of the proposed mechanisms is voting. The further use of these mechanisms or others established by the participants, depend on the agreement that each participant or team could achieve. Therefore, rules are establishing and changing during the session. The gameboard is filled with color pieces and “tools” that bear consigns, but the reading of this whole situation depends on the proper participant’s skills not only to organize their own information, but to make up a convincing reading for the other participants too.
If the situations are jammed a designed mediator or an editor could intervene. The term editor indicates that all of the conversations and interactions of the session are building up a library of archives, of reports.

End of the game:
Once the game has started, it can be noticed that the end of the simulation can be achieved naturally. But the performance’s dynamics can produce its own ends...But the participants and the editor can propose the finish of the session too. Also the game can be played at the same time as a competition about rhetoric, political strategy or diplomacy. In this case, we propose two simultaneous winners elected by voting: the team that has been more close to achieve its secret goal and the team that has made the best performance. As in other games, the establishing of prizes is an stimulus to involve people in the game own development. This can be additional energy to achieve the goals proposed by the simulation. But establishing different types of prizes (it could be more than two...) allows a differentiate evaluation at the end of the process.
All the produced material is registered and is wrote down in a report. The process of the game is completed with the diffusion of the session and its further discussion and analysis.
m7red / pio torroja - pt@m7red.com.ar – www.m7red.com.ar
m7red: Based in Buenos Aires, m7 net is an upgrading of m777 the former (architectural) group.
m7 is an urban resources network which holds archives, laboratories and consulting offices. It have been working in the last five years, convoking a wide range of experts and non experts, to analyze, discuss researchs and make proposals on the most pressing political and urban topics. We are working between the boundaries of a NGO, a research group, urban consulting and strategic forum. Our know-how is constituted by the analysis and management of exchange processes and transformations between the civil society and the state nation control.

Forecasting new scenarios.
Providing meeting and conversation facilitators systems for fostering auto-government and decision making processes.
Exchanging information between experts and non experts.
Providing hosting for experimental associations.