Project Description

The Rilao Remote Viewing Protocol (RRVP) is a collaborative worldbuilding game produced for the 2014 Science of Fiction conference in Los Angeles. The RRVP used a card deck and ruleset to scaffold participants through a storytelling and making process; a website collected the output of this process in real-time, enabling participants to watch live as the fictional world of Rilao emerged from their collective imagination.

From the Guidebook Introduction

Welcome to the Rilao Advanced Research Center (RARC). Using our newly-developed Rilao Remote Viewing Protocol (RRVP), your team will psychomediate visits to Rilaoan locales in at least 5 different time periods over a 150 year time span. Your objective is to return from those visits with descriptions and illustrations of the things, people, and practices you observe. In Phase I of the Protocol (“the call”), you will produce brief descriptions of things, people, and practices; in Phase II of the Protocol (“the response”), you will expand on descriptions created by other teams, illustrating them with images, stories, and other kinds of media. You will then upload this material to a website, from which a book will be produced for publication and international release.

As with so much of Rilaoan technology, your intuition is critical to the functioning of the RRVP. The RRVP is a guide. It will lead your imagination to places and times you have never visited before. As someone who has only recently learned of Rilao’s existence, your imagination is uniquely positioned to access details about Rilaoan culture without the kinds of interference from expectation and prior knowledge suffered by native Rilaoans. We are entrusting you to help us gain insight into our world.

Team

Process Design: Jeff Watson
Creative Direction: Alex McDowell and Jeff Watson
Text: Lauren Fenton and Jeff Watson
Graphic Design & Layout: Bryan Zhang, Eric Marshall, and Jeff Watson
Website: Cornelius Bergen
Concept Development: Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson
Special Thanks: Trevor Barber, Juan Diaz, Esteban Fajardo, Casey Fenton, Karl Menjivar-Baumann, Ossie Parker, Isabella Schloss, Emily Wanserski, 5D Institute, everyone in Alex McDowell’s USC Worldbuilding class, and all the fantastic facilitators, volunteers, and participants at Science of Fiction and Berlinale Talent Campus

Website

Works created during the 2014 Science of Fiction experience are published at http://rrvp.rilao.net.

Press

In February of 2015, the RRVP was the centerpiece of a three day workshop at the Berlinale Talent Campus during the Berlin International Film Festival.