Brooklyn"s Streets Become Digital Playground

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) September 15, 2006

Inspired by New York and birthed in Birmingham, the game of Urban Reversi returns to its roots in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood at Noon on Saturday, Sep. 16. Tomorrow, the city’s streets will be transformed into a large-scale urban game like those previously staged in other major cities worldwide. A team of young professionals will descend upon New York City for the weekend, flying in from Birmingham, Ala. to stage the game of “Urban Reversi” at the 2006 Conflux Festival.

Urban Reversi is a location-based game blending a wireless broadband internet network, the coolest Internet-phones on the market, strategy, and performance art. Teams will traverse the urban grid of Williamsburg, improvising scenes suggested by an online random phrase generator. Digital images of the staged scenes will be uploaded to a server to win street intersections in a game modeled after the popular board game Othello.

“Birmingham’s tech-savvy workforce caught the bug last year when we turned our downtown into a digital playground, inspired by past urban games in New York City,” said Curtis Palmer, president/CEO of non-profit TechBirmingham. “It’s exciting to bring our game north out of the Deep South and share the game of Urban Reversi with the city that originally inspired it.”

The Urban Reversi game will take place within a six-by-six-block area adjacent to several of the Conflux festival venues. A map of the zone is available for viewing on the project website. Teams of 4 to 40 people are encouraged to play this free event at the Conflux Festival headquarters. Individuals showing up to play the game will be placed into teams. All the technology necessary to play the game will be provided, but individuals are encouraged to bring their own Motorola Q phones to expand the number of potential participants. There is no limit on the number of simultaneous players or matches.

Members of the Birmingham civic group, Catalyst, will help stage Urban Reversi. “This is a natural fit for us,” said Alan Hunter, founder of Catalyst and former MTV VJ. “We are interested in linking Birmingham’s civic-minded young professionals with opportunities to influence the world around them. This game and the effort in New York City takes our tag-line, ‘hip to be civic’, to a whole new level. With Urban Reversi, it’s now ‘hip to be tech.” The game will be staged again, next week, at the renowned Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, in Birminghams historic theater district.

About CONFLUX Festival:

Conflux is a hub for contemporary psychogeography, the exploration of the physical and psychological landscape of cities. Conflux 2006 will feature a full program of events from Thursday through Sunday, with projects from over 75 artists from across the US and countries including Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and Australia. Events will take place at multiple locations in Williamsburg, with festival headquarters at McCaig-Welles Gallery, 129 Roebling Street between N. 4th and N. 5th Streets, where maps and a schedule will be available. All Conflux events will be free and open to the public. A complete schedule with event details and additional information is available online at http://confluxfestival.org.

About Urban Reversi:

Urban Reversi is a project of TechBirmingham, a not-for-profit entity focused on growing the Birmingham, Ala. region’s technology economy. Partners in the game include University of Alabama at Birminghams Game Development Club, developers of the game, and Catalyst, a young-professionals group making it hip to be civic.

TechBirmingham was formed in 2002 by the community to lead, support, and coordinate the start-up, attraction, growth, retention, and expansion of technology-based businesses, investments, and jobs for the entire Birmingham metropolitan region. For more information on TechBirmingham and its other activities, please visit http://www.TechBirmingham.com. For more information on Urban Reversi, please visit UrbanReversi.wordpress.com. A newsreader XML feed is available for the effort.

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Brooklyn"s Streets Become Digital Playground