Tacit Dimension (2013–2019) was a laboratory for street games, mobilising the design process and gameplay as a research method to explore urban life from street-scale mechanisms to large-scale infrastructure.
Our games engage with urban mobility, self-organisation, embodied knowledge and imaginaries of data-driven and algorithmic urban futures. They often respond to research questions or missions from our collaborators in urbanism, architecture, academia, and the arts.
The term ‘tacit dimension’, borrowed from the philosopher-scientist Michael Polanyi, refers to knowledge we acquire through experience and interacting with our environment, but which we can’t necessarily put into words. Our street games aim to immerse players in urban interactions designed to generate tacit knowledge about specific sites to enable reflection about the urban.
Street Game Design
Streets, stairs and the rhythm of traffic lights constitute our platform. Tacit Dimension creates games in which the game’s explicit rules blend with the implicit everyday rules of urban life to create a coherent experience of play.
Probing Urban Complexity
Tacit Dimension creates games on street level that probe responses from larger-scale urban infrastructure, rendering the urban fabric’s complexities experiential.
Prototyping and Speculating
Tacit Dimension play merges existing and imagined urban mechanisms into a coherent experience, creating temporary immersions in speculative urban futures.
Team
- Viktor Bedö – Founding Director
- Perla Montelongo – Associate Creative Director (2014-2015)
- Ayşegül Dinççağ – Production Assistant (2015)
- Ricarda Ihmenkamp – Production Assistant (2017)
Some of the people and institutions we have worked with:Art and Technology Aalborg University // Design Akademie Berlin // Berlin Metropolitan Utilities Dialogue // Climate-KIC Berlin // ConstructLab // District Office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf // Dönerkind // Institute of Ethnology University Freiburg // Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Potsdam // Neighbourhood Alliance Klausenerplatz // Node Center for Curatorial Studies // Open Knowledge Foundation Germany // Sandefjord Kunstforening, Norway // Studio Schwitalla // ZHDK Master for Arts in Designs // Free Ice Cream // Fiction Forum