William W. Lewis 

The Game of Democracy or The Paradox of Choice

 

How can gamified performance with digital tools expand awareness of polarizing algorithms?

 

Gamifying Democracy is an artistic research project led by William Lewis (PhD), assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, in collaboration with Sarah Johnson (MFA, PhD) assistant professor and head of the dramaturgy MFA program at IU Bloomington. The project focuses on immersive, participatory, and gamified approaches to performance-based audience interaction merged with technologies to create open-ended dialogues between populations with conflicting opinions.

​

Audience members role play as opposing factions in a participatory “game show” framed within a post-apocalyptic future to develop a solution for correcting past mistakes that led to their societal downfall. Utilizing smartphone polling and actor facilitated discussions the teams embody the process of algorithmic sorting and polarized identity formation. The audience leaves the performance with a better understanding of how to break out of cycles of distrust reinforced by our digital platforms and tools. 

​

Over the past ten months a team of students and faculty from the Rueff School of Design Art and Performance at Purdue, in collaboration with peers at IU Bloomington, and Ohio State, have written, designed, and tested the production. To date, four workshop productions at Purdue, in the Civic Theatre of Lafayette, and at IU Bloomington have helped to refine the narrative and the technical framework.  The team is now working to develop a new polling software built specifically for the next phase of production in order to amplify the game play mechanics.  The project will also plan to tour four more Big Ten campuses in 2026 while working toward a non-academic audience at the Indy Fringe Festival. A book project is in the works detailing the process, outcomes, and lessons from the project in order to show how games and gamified performance can help raise further awareness of the societal implications of algorithmic conditioning and create spaces for constructive dialogue between people with opposing perspectives. 

Team Members: William Lewis, Sarah Johnson, Juanita Mejia Restrepo, Tatyanna Rodriguez, Elizabeth Zerfas, Jacelynn Valinski, Megan Lederman, Rivers Blue, Sisi Clark, Zhong Wang. With guest actor Isabelle McNamara Angel.