Civilization's Waiting Room

Civilization's Waiting Room was set in a future where society has unravelled due to climate change and war. The Civilization (Sivilisasjonen) is a city state that is a rare refuge from the surrounding wilderness.^[6] It is run by a benevolent AI known as Intelligensen ("the Intelligence") that bases all of its decisions on the sum of all the opinions and interests of the citizens, as it interprets these based on the extensive data it collects and is fed by the citizens. Sivilisasjonen was therefore imagined as an AI-based democracy.

The overall story arc of Sivilisasjonens Venterom unfolded over a dramatic day in the reception hall, starting in the morning with new applicants arriving, and ending in the evening with a ceremony in which those who had learned to manipulate the system were granted citizenship and access to Sivilisasjonen. During the day there were small personal dramas, planned plot twists and unplanned incidents, as well as large-scale hacking of the Intelligence undermining the foundational ideology of Sivilisasjonen. Players experienced conflicts on a personal level, as their characters had their interpersonal relationship challenged by technological mediation, as well as by their shifting interpretation of how this society worked. Participants also experienced large-scale drama as a group when the social framework of the Intelligence cracked and for a little while was replaced by a small group of more individuality-oriented hackers led by one of the organizers.

Three related larps set in the same fictional world were Ettersynsing^[7] ("Opticionated"), a short form larp using a dinner table setting that was run at the NORA 2021 conference on AI,^[8][9] Mønsterakademiet, a short larp set in a school that trained citizens for the Civilization, and Hawa, a larp for children run by the larp development company Tidsreiser that was set in another part of the world where there are no adults, and robots bring up children in an attempt to mould them into peaceful, productive citizens.^[10]

Malthe Stavning Erslev analyses his experience of playing Trin in the larp, discussing larps as a mimetic method related to design fiction.^[6] However, he found that the focus on the aspects of surveillance that are visible, such as screens and cameras, led to less focus on data-intensive surveillance, and thus the larp could be said "not to challenge imaginaries, but to solidify them."^[11]

In his MA thesis, Jon Andreas Edland argued that the "opportunity to observe a theme or situation from different sides and thus grants a larger room for reflection and understanding based on the context of the situation".^[7]