At the end of last year, our collective published a book, or rather, a dictionary, of valuable words (or pictures, images, things) for art education (or for education in general, or just being a human being). However, we did not want our dictionary to be a terse, timid canon of the rights things to know at the moment. Instead, we were interested in creating a place that could afford new practices of thinking or seeing. So, we made our dictionary in the form of an exquisite corpse, a playful book that allows a semi-random mixing of parts of pages. The dictionary enables or invites the reader to leaf through and come up with an alternating set of fresh words and images in each spread.

The Exquisite corpse is a game developed by surrealists from similar children's game consequences. It is a lovely way to create collaborative work, as its loose structure allows for surprises, weirdness and shall I say, "surrealist" connotations. All of which, I think, are crucial when trying to grasp contemporary life.

Front Cover of the book "Erinomaisen Jouhevaa" — Erinomaisen Jouhevaa -kuvatiadekasvatuksen sanakirja

The dictionary named "Erinomaisen jouhevaa" in Finnish and loosely translated to" marvellously smooth" is currently only in Finnish. However, I still highly recommend purchasing it as it is a lovely book (and it even has a meaning in English and Swedish and pictures! 🥳).

However, other than smoothly promoting our marvellous book, I actually try to tell here that I made a webstie, - an online game -, based on the book. And the game works in Finnish, English and Swedish! The website is, of course, not as nicely tangible, nor is it as deep as the original book, nor is it an exquisite corpse style of thing. Nevertheless, it might at least give you a glimpse of the book.

Originally I created the game as a prompt for one of the courses I teach, where the students get the assignment to depict the role of art and education in alternative futures. But after reading the students' excellent texts on magical futures with unicorns, I thought that maybe others might enjoy trying the game. I must also mention that the game bare similarities with the wonderful Situation labs" The Thing From The Future".

The game is quite simple, and by clicking the question mark, it generates a new prompt which the user can then use as a basis for a text, drawing, or other media. Thanks to comments from Marko Teräs and others from the CreditEd network, I have attempted to take the prompts further than just texts that promote a linear, easily discernible future vision. This work is still on-going as I experiment with different graphic and interactive elements. Currently, the visual elements are a bit sparse and simple, that randomly take over the screen, but hopefully they might nudge towards a more messy or unknown futures. I’d love to hear more ideas or comments about this and the idea in general!

The game can be found here: https://utopiointi-slottedufva.wunderbucket.dev