Noticings

For a while Tom Armitage and I have been kicking around the idea of a game called Noticings. Recently we managed to find the time to build a simple version of it, and a few of our friends have been playing it for a few weeks. It seems to be going OK, so yesterday I took the password off and opened it to the world.

From our about page:

Cities are wonderful places, and everybody finds different things in them. Some of us like to take pictures of interesting, unusual, or beautiful things we see, but many of use are moving so fast through the urban landscape we don't take in the things around us.

Noticings is a game you play by going a bit slower, and having a look around you. It doesn't require you change your behaviour significantly, or interrupt your routine: you just take photographs of things that you think are interesting, or things you see. You'll get points for just noticing things, and you might get bonuses for interesting coincidences.

If you spot something interesting, take a photo of it and upload it to Flickr, tagged with 'noticings' and some geodata. Each day is a turn, and photos from the day get pulled in at 3pm GMT the following day, giving you time to upload them and tag them properly.

We're starting very simple. There are two rules:

Slowly, as the game evolves we'll add new, more exciting rules and tweak the old ones. Perhaps extra points for venturing out at lunchtime every day for a week, or for spotting things along lines of latitude or longitude. Who knows? It's part art, part psychogeography, part city discovery engine. You can keep up with the changes on the blog.

We'd love it if you gave it a go, and even more if you let us know your thoughts (email is probably best).

Update: Tom has jotted down some his thoughts, expressing the goal much better than I.