Canberra 2060: Futures With a Capital F.

After consulting locals and scientists, Boho Interactive created a range of models of Canberra’s future and used them to create mental mayhem by setting up deliberately unrealistic, rather fun scenarios for its participating audience (i.e., everybody) to work with in saving Canberra from a range of foreseeable threats and to make it resilient to unforeseeable ones.  Then it turned the process of responding to these scenarios into a lively game show in which teams competed and cooperated in order to survive the future as well as possible.

Limiting participants on stage and on line via streaming video to 40, the format provided for participation by all.

The game’s visuals were beautiful, nice high-tech screens supplementing the more homely paper and pen.  Despite the season’s having just begun, the performing artists’ familiarity with a complex script was impressive.  Even more interesting was their ability to respond to the unexpected in participants’ strategies.

Boho Interactive specialises in such audience games, and it did a brilliant job of making this one double as food for thought as well as a good deal of fun.  Imaginative, versatile, and too lively to leave a moment alone, Canberra 2060: Futures With a Capital F will stay with you for the unique experience it is as well as for the zany possibilities it explores.

John P. Harvey

Image: Participants and artists in Canberra 2060: Futures With a Capital F.