Playing with Poetry: transmedia project commissioned by Oeiras Library

Co-workers & Funding

Playing with Poetry was a aproject designed and created to invite players to go to certain urban environments in Oeiras, a city nearby Lisbon, Portugal, (a public library and a thematic park with a collection of sculptures representing Portuguese poets) and to explore, during one month, Portuguese poetry. Players had to solve eight puzzles in real world and answer online questions and after that they received short videos and audio files each time they found the right answers. At the same time they could explore eight flash games (on-line and in a multimedia facility) and audio installations, made with sensors, inside Oeiras municipal library. Players were invited to post photos and to write poems and at the end of the project they won prizes (t-shirts, mouse pads, a digital camera and Portuguese poetry books).

An article, titled "Playing with poetry, a Portuguese transmedia
experience and a serious ARG", about the participatory experience
in this project, was selected for the 2nd international IEEE consumer electronic society games innovation conference at the City University of Hong Kong in December 2010. Afterwards, the project was shown in an IGIC 2011 special session with the title, “Alternate reality games, urban and serious play”, in the third international IEEE Consumer Electronic Society Games Innovation Conference at Chapman University, Orange County, California, 2011.