Some fun moments during the Pergames conference came with the testing of Shame Station, an interesting student game project.

Shame Station lets you command via joystick another human being via a headset with a commands display inside, transforming the person into an avatar, and making him or her to perform actions we wouldn’t normally do, “shame free”.
The goal of the project was to show how guilt (and conscience of our acts) where in the end related to our own body’s actions, and a joystick would relieve us from guilty feelings as long as the shameful actions where performed by someone else’s body. Interesting enough, the body-avatar was also relieved from all responsibility because of his or her being “remote controlled”

In Salzburg the only shameful action performed unfortunately was the simple spraying of innocent spectators with spring water, see a picture

Anyway the whole experience made me wonder about the utility of commanding an avatar, or being an avatar - in our role-demanding and role-shifting society in how many situations it would be nice to be free from the responsibility of our actions, either performing them directly either leading someone else to do what we don’t want to do personally….

Technorati Tags: affective research, locative games, pervasive games