ThingThingThing

ThingThingThing is a computational system that invites audiences to take part in collective world-making. It is built with easily-accessible tools and interfaces, allowing everyone to contribute a computational object of their own. All computational objects created by audiences are integrated automatically by the software algorithms. The result is an ever-evolving, never concluding, three-dimensional system of instantiations, created by everyone yet owned by no one.

ThingThingThing is both object and process. The world of ThingThingThing is a real-time simulation, a video game that plays itself, a never-ending film. The participants jointly determine its evolution by setting an initial seed state of their computational object, which later requires no further human control. All viewers can interact with the world by navigating an in-game eyeball and observe the behavior of all living objects.

ThingThingThing是一个艺术家创作的开源软件系统，它邀请观众一起来参与集体创世(collective world-making)活动。艺术家创造了一系列面向参与者的工具和界面。这些易用的界面和工具允许每个人都可以参与，并向这个虚拟世界贡献包含自己独特算法的物体。所有由观众创建的物体都会被头放到同一个实时计算的虚拟世界。最终成为一个不断发展的、永远不会结束的虚拟世界。这个世界由集体共同创建，却不被任何一个人拥有。

ThingThingThing同时是一个装置作品，也是一个重过程的模拟系统。一方面，ThingThingThing作为模拟，是一款无主角，自己玩自己的游戏、一部永无止境的影像；而ThingThingThing作为系统，允许参与者通过设计算法的方式来来创造一个具有独特逻辑的物体。物体被释放到模拟中去之后，就会脱离与创造者直接的关系，响应与自我的核心算法来与模拟中的其他物体互动。

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Workshop

The artists and technologists have been hosting a series of workshops with museums and art institutions around the world. The workshop enables everyone from students, artists, designers, architects and technologists to create their own programmed creatures with intelligence. Past collaborators include:

• NEW INC, New Museum, New York, NY
• Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China
• Macy Art Gallery, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY
• City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY
• Guangzhou Academy of Art (GAFA), Guangzhou, China
• Creative Tech Week (CTW), New York, NY
• Asia Art Archive in America (AAA-A), Brooklyn, NY
• Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai, China.

ThingThingThing已经在多个地方开设了工作坊，邀请来自各个行业的参与者参与到集体创世的活动中。在工作坊中艺术家会带领参与者建立他们自己的算法和他们自己的物体，然后通过技术方式将物体“上传”到最终的模拟中。过去的2年中，ThingThingThing工作坊已经在下面这些地方举行过：

• NEW INC， 新美术馆，纽约
• 艺术发电站(PSA)，中国上海
• 梅西画廊，哥伦比亚大学师范学院，纽约
• 纽约城市大学(CUNY)，纽约
• 广州美术学院(GAFA)，中国广州
• 创意科技周(CTW)，纽约
• 美国亚洲艺术档案馆(AAA-A)，纽约布鲁克林

Methodology

Borrowing video game as a playground to reenact this tension in a designed environment, We invented its own making based research methodology:

借用视频游戏这个媒介作为试验场，在预设的环境中重现人类创造者和自我创造的计算物体之间的某种暧昧的角力关系，我们设计了一套基于创作的研究方法：

• Players create their own computational objects, and set it loose. The creator loses direct access to their objects. The object takes on its agency.
• Collectively, these Objects forming a system, display a level of complexity beyond individual creators’ comprehension.
• The active making and passive observation reveals a process – complex computational system emerges as the result of a collection of simple rules governing computational objects’ individual and group behaviors in a controlled environment.

1. 玩家创建他们自己的计算物体(computational object)，并将其释放。创建者将失去对其对象的直接访问权限。物体承担起它的代理权。
2. 作为一个整体，这些构成一个系统的物体显示出超出个人创造者理解的复杂程度。
3. 主动创作和被动地观察揭示了一个过程——复杂的计算系统是在受控环境中控制计算对象的个人和群体行为的简单规则集合的结果。