Welcome to Musée Psyché's September 1996 Special Exhibition and an INTERNET 1996 WORLD EXPOSITION event Bitniks Picnic. This is an invitation for the bitniks around the world to take another look at our reality - is our reality augmented by the net? In order to find out, we have to take a closer look at our physical surroundings. So why don't you picnic too? This event physically takes place in England and Japan.
This exhibition has three parts:
| Find a right spot | Every good picnic starts with finding the right spot. Bossa Nova Girls, our official musical band, and Kenji Saito, our director, is taking a trip to England to find a right spot for the ideal picnic for bitniks. This is their travelogue updated in real-time. |
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| ISBN (Internet Sumo for BitNiks) | There is nothing like reading a good book under a fine weather. But a book is also a good place to start thinking about our reality. Musée Psyché proposes an Internet game in which ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are given brand new meanings: they represent electronic sumo wrestlers! Bring your favourite books to find out which one is the strongest wrestler under the new reality. |
| Bitniks forum | Participate in an open space discussion by bitniks around the world. |
You may also be interested in listening to the Bitniks Picnic theme music at our MPEG Audio Theatre.
In early 1990s, a Japanese toy maker came up with an excellent idea for a new game which would make children go crazy about it. It was called Bar-code Battler.
Bar-code Battler was a game which could link the physical world to that of the game. In the game, a bar-code which is printed on most merchandise today is interpreted in a completely new way: a description of a warrior. This enabled children to pick up virtually anything in their houses for the game. Children were thrilled to find out which of their belongings were the strongest. But it didn't stop there. Soon, children began to go out looking for stronger warriors. Stores became their hunting field. They would value merchandise by the strength they would show as worriors, not their prices or utilities. The children learned to see the world through a different value system. It was a different mapping of meaning onto the same old world. The same world, a new reality.
ISBN (Internet Sumo for BitNiks) is an experiment to make another new reality by mapping new meanings on ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers).
