"Juggling Balls"

Författare

Liam Morren
Peter Bednar
Nicola Hay

Summary, in English

Juggling balls’ is a multi-player game that was developed in the form of a Java Applet. The game was developed as part of a software-engineering project. The software itself was designed for the needs of an ongoing research project. The foundation ideas and further development was drawing on a research project which focuses on visualisation in relation to individual emergence in a context of double bind/abusive relationships. The project included work on Bateson’s “Infinite dance of changing coalitions” which deals with ways in which schizophrenic families interact within double bind or abusive relationships. Use of balls and colours in these animations were intended to convey an idea of having abstract, non-threatening forms in the application. People using the program would then have no distractions, e.g. knowing who the other players might be. Another set of animations illustrates Bateson’s “Infinite dance of changing coalitions”, itself a translation of Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s game theory, using three coloured areas (red, green and blue) and three shapes (red, green and yellow). The shapes move in and out of the different coloured areas, showing how coalitions are always changing. Using these ideas, the software was designed and implemented using an evolutionary prototype method. This has allowed the client to view and add input throughout the life of the project. The game tries to simulate, in an abstract way, how double bind relationships might work between the people involved, and to some extent how involved they are.

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