Rachilla｜Curator Richie Xiang's personal website

Project Introduction

Numerical Plant Adventure! was a ten-month project in co-creative fictive writing and world-building, developed by TTTB Artist-Run Space between September 2022 and July 2023 as a form of artistic research. TTTB devised a fictional world called “Numerical Plant”, which more than fifty participants signed up to create together through writing. Through storytelling, they steered the plot through its twists and turns and shaped the development of the world itself. Amid the rush of work and everyday life, the project offered a "slow game", seeking to recover the anticipation and excitement of postal correspondence.

Players took part by sending files through WeChat, a Chinese messaging and social media app—a format called Play By WeChat (PBW). This drew on PBM (Play By Mail), a term from tabletop gaming for games conducted by post. People have played chess by letter for centuries: Player A writes down a move and sends it to Player B, far away, who replies with a move of their own. The match proceeds through their correspondence.

Numerical Plant Adventure! was a ten-month project in co-creative fictive writing and world-building, developed by TTTB Artist-Run Space between September 2022 and July 2023 as a form of artistic research. TTTB devised a fictional world called “Numerical Plant”, which more than fifty participants signed up to create together through writing. Through storytelling, they steered the plot through its twists and turns and shaped the development of the world itself. Amid the rush of work and everyday life, the project offered a “slow game”, seeking to recover the anticipation and excitement of postal correspondence.

Numerical Plant Adventure！

Project Time:

September 2022 — July 2023

Cooperative Institution:

RaidenINST

A series of site-specific exhibitions by TTTB

This is enough for a game between two people. But where should the letters go when more players join? A kind of "relay service" emerged to support multiplayer games. Players sent their actions to this central hub, which gathered their submissions and mailed the results back to everyone.

This is enough for a game between two people. But where should the letters go when more players join? A kind of “relay service” emerged to support multiplayer games. Players sent their actions to this central hub, which gathered their submissions and mailed the results back to everyone.

PBM relies on postal correspondence, the same medium through which mail art developed. Mail art is a movement centred on sending small works through the postal service. It developed through Ray Johnson's New York Correspondance [sic] School (NYCS) and the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. Artists exchanged works and formed connections through the post, building an alternative art world that challenged hierarchy and the primacy of commodities. As Johnson put it, "Mail Art has no history, only a present." Here, present means both a gift and the present moment.

PBM relies on postal correspondence, the same medium through which mail art developed. Mail art is a movement centred on sending small works through the postal service. It developed through Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondance [sic] School (NYCS) and the Fluxus movement of the 1960s. Artists exchanged works and formed connections through the post, building an alternative art world that challenged hierarchy and the primacy of commodities. As Johnson put it, “Mail Art has no history, only a present.” Here, present means both a gift and the present moment.

In 2022, TTTB Artist-Run Space carried this lineage forward with the art project Numerical Plant Adventure!, its first PBW game.

The story takes place in a world called "Numerical Plant". In TTTB’s setting, the Numerical Plant is the only natural thing in this world. It grows high in the sky, with number-roots, a number-trunk, number-branches, number-flowers and number-fruit. According to research within this fictional parallel universe, everything apart from the Numerical Plant is a creation of civilisation.

The story takes place in a world called “Numerical Plant”. In TTTB’s setting, the Numerical Plant is the only natural thing in this world. It grows high in the sky, with number-roots, a number-trunk, number-branches, number-flowers and number-fruit. According to research within this fictional parallel universe, everything apart from the Numerical Plant is a creation of civilisation.

Co-creative Process

The earliest discoveries in the Numerical Plant world were recorded in two books, which became the starting point for the participants’ co-creation:

The gift of a good liar is making people think you lack a talent for lying is a diary containing nine stories from the journey of ten explorers. Together, they recount strange events in the Numerical Plant world.

You Said You’d Be Back Before Christmas Eve. Tomorrow Is Christmas Eve tells of ten explorers who, after eight months of exploration, witness the destruction of this world on the final day.

The world’s development was driven by the players’ fictive writing. Over the ten-month project, TTTB, as Game Master, gathered the participants’ writing into a periodical called Numerical Plant TIMES. Each issue recorded events large and small from that stage of the world’s development. More than fifty participants received a new issue on the 1st and 15th of every month. What one person wrote became something others would read, weigh up and write into the next part of the story.

Some players launched polls, exchanged information, looked for friends, fell in love, went exploring or discovered new continents. Others followed clues to solve a murder, founded organisations and recruited members, ran naked somewhere in the Numerical Plant world, or invited an NPC to join them in an activity...

Numerical Plant TIMES， 2022.10 —2023.7

Periodical

Showcase

Exchange and Sharing Activity

01 Exhibition

Exhibition Time:

2022.10.02 - 2022.11.03

TTTB × RaidenINS, Address: Cryptovoxels

Artist: TTTB Artist & Players

Created by Qizheng Gai, Jiahui Hao Dengliang Li, Yang Li,

Siyuan Zhang, Siran Zhang

Art institution RaidenINST provided the Cryptovoxels online exhibition platform and technical support for this project. The TTTB team transformed the co-created texts and game archives of Numerical Plant Adventure! into visual artworks.

Numerical Plant Adventure!

Cryptovoxels Exhibition

Ray Johnson, Moticos, 1956, Ray Johnson's Desk Drawer of Stamps

Ray Johnson, Moticos, 1956, Ray Johnson’s Desk Drawer of Stamps

Socks Friedman mailed to Lucy Lippard

02 Exhibition

Exhibition Time: June–July 2023

TTTB Site-Specific Space: THE PARK

Created by Siran Zhang, Jiahui Hao

Artist:

Siran Zhang（张斯然）, Yulong Huang（黄玉龙）,

Xiping Liu（刘羲平）, Jiahui Hao（郝珈辉）, Suyi Mu（慕苏懿）, Dengliang Li（李登亮）, Allen Ren（任伦）, Yujie Xu（徐玉杰）, Qizheng Gai（盖琦正）, Wenliang Sun（孙文亮）

As a point in time, Eve is when anticipation of something about to be revealed reaches its height. It can stand as a metaphor for an ending, or become the beginning of a story.

The Park is a fictional water management facility in the Numerical Plant world, located where the middle and lower reaches of the Black River of Love. Inside, a labyrinth continually reconfigures and extends, seemingly without limit. The virtual exhibition takes the Park as its setting. It follows the player 'Magician', alone among colossal objects, ruins and the labyrinth, as they explore events from the preceding ten months. Here, totems and symbols converge.

As a point in time, Eve is when anticipation of something about to be revealed reaches its height. It can stand as a metaphor for an ending, or become the beginning of a story.

The Park is a fictional water management facility in the Numerical Plant world, located where the middle and lower reaches of the Black River of Love. Inside, a labyrinth continually reconfigures and extends, seemingly without limit. The virtual exhibition takes the Park as its setting. It follows the player ‘Magician’, alone among colossal objects, ruins and the labyrinth, as they explore events from the preceding ten months. Here, totems and symbols converge.

Eve

Virtual exhibition

Eve, exhibition vedio, 2023

TTTB Player Online Communication Activity

TTTB Player Characters