FoAM and the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators are currently designing groVerse (working title), an evolving, responsive story-scape. It is a near-real narrative that invites participation of all ages, by incorporating elements of both alternate-reality gaming and guerilla gardening. groVerse is a semi-fictional world. It unfolds through digital, physical and hybrid realities, with humans, plants and software as its primary propagators. The reality of groVerse stands on shoulders of pataphysics, situationist psychogeography, dadaism, irrealism, ethnobotany, permaculture, the algorithmic mysteries of the Voynich manuscript and Codex Seraphinius.
groVerse is a world populated by gardeners, tricksters, alchemists, diplomats, puppeteers, as well as many other humans, plants and human-plant hybrids. The diverse groVerse population is united in a common pursuit: to intertwine human, botanical and electronic worlds into a life-giving, self-sustaining reality. The reality begins in stories, spreads through media, gradually infusing organic materials, clothing, intimate shelters, public spaces and eventually people's daily lives. It will begin in cities - where now there are dark gaps between buildings, tarred roofs and abandoned sites, groVerse will spawn edible landscapes, scented parks and green oases of wilderness amidst concrete urban jungle. Over time, it will grow into a massive, distributed hybrid reality garden, able to propagate in electronic, cultural and biological realms.
Related: groworld