Magic Circles is an online laboratory for projects exploring the social and technical aspects of virtual worlds. Seeking to investigate virtual worlds in all their wealth and diversity, the Magic Circles laboratory programme invites practitioners from different areas to engage in an eight-week cycle of online discussions, tours, and experiments.
The organisers are looking for projects at any stage of development that explore the possibilities (and shortcomings) of virtual worlds. The laboratory is conceived as a sort of horizontal production residence, through which participants will be encouraged to support and guide each other in their online spaces of choice.
Examples of eligible projects include:
- Surveys of in-world ecosystems, economies, cultures, and communities;
- Development of world-specific interactive content (games, puzzles, automata, Turing-complete computers, Rube Goldberg machines, etc);
- Creation of in-world artworks and performances of any kind (sculpture, installation, exhibition, theater, concerts, etc.);
- In-world photography and filmmaking practices (video essays, fiction, experimental, etc.);
- Pocket and purpose-built worlds in private servers;
- Development or detournement of control/sensorial interfaces (accessibility hacks, mocap systems, teledildonics, etc.);
- Archaeology of defunct or discontinued platforms (MUDs, Habbo hotel, Club Penguin, The Palace, etc.).
The programme is hosted by the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, and supported by Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s MetaMetaverse project and the Zentrum für Netzkunst.
Participating projects will receive a 1,000 CAD stipend. Ad hoc production support may also be available on a case-by-case basis. The organisers are planning to showcase processes in a small exhibition at the Zentrum für Netzkunst, Berlin, in Summer 2025.
