Cookie Rolling in St. Charles!

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Originally uploaded by Avant Game.

It was a snowy cookie rolling adventure in St. Charles, Illinois.

This was definitely one of the most satisfying cookie rolling adventures ever. The snowy backdrop combined with an unusual statue made for some of the most dramatic and playful cookie rolling photos to date.

Special thanks to my cookie rolling collaborator Bob, who thought of this location AND procured the locally baked ginger snap cookies for me!

Massive Cookie Rolling Update

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Originally uploaded by Avant Game.

If you've been following my cookie rolling project (now almost three years in progress!!), you'll be happy to see I've made a major update to the official cookie rolling text.

(In this photo: Can you guess what word I'm about to install in Mother's Party Animal cookies, made locally here in Ann Arbor?)

I've added nine new cities, on three different continents. These nine words represent the past year of cookie rolling.

I've done 33 words so far, in 10 countries, on 4 continents. I've probably missed about a dozen cities, that I really wish I had made time to cookie roll in -- Helsinki, Oulu, and Rovaniemi all in Finland are chief among the cities I was in but didn't roll. Next month, I'm going to roll in Austin to make up for a missed chance in 2005, and I've got at least three major Asian cities in three different countries on my cookie rolling schedule for this spring and summer.

After three years, I'm currently in the middle of my second sentence. I hope to finish this sentence by the end of 2008.

The Alternate Reality Society

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Originally uploaded by Avant Game.

Kiyash and I spent Friday night alternate reality gaming in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco. Along with our co-conspirators and ad hoc teammates -- Kid Beyond, Kristian, Robin , and Cate -- we dedicated the entire evening to completing a custom-designed itinerary of SF0 missions.

SF0 is my favorite game these days, besides Werewolf. I call it the world's first Alternate Reality Society -- we're talking about a 24/7, 365 real-world MMO that emphasizes face-to-face gameplay, making, crafting and hacking, and creative intervention in public spaces. It also has a really great, functional interface that allows you to submit, organize and annotate all kinds of mobile evidence of your gameplay. Their social network features are really fun and functional, too.

I spent a large part of Chapter Seven ("Powers and Superpowers") of my dissertation This Might Be a Game writing about the SF0 game, in its earliest incarnation. If you're interested, download the full text and do a PDF search for SF0.

These are the three missions we completed Friday night. Clicking on the links above will take you to our mission reports, with stories and photo sets, for each.

Something Very Good

INSTRUCTIONS: Go to a street corner of your choosing and wait for something fantastic to happen.

Seeing Beyond Sight

INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Blindfold yourself. 2. Go out in public and make your way in the world. 3. Photograph things you notice - while blindfolded.

Object Annotation

INSTRUCTIONS: Pick a local public object that you enjoy and leave a note on it describing your feelings in great detail.

SF0 is brilliant and I'm so happy it exists. You can play it anywhere in the world, and if you're not playing it yet, I encourage you to sign up -- and make me (I'm "avantgame") a friend! (Or a foe... if you dare...)