The show features archival documents describing Buckminster Fuller's attempt to redistribute the resources and wealth of the world justly and humanely using a giant game, which dreamed of a comprehensive database that would provide the players of the world game with better data than their politically elected or appointed counterparts. He began the process of assembling a catalog of the world's needed an inventory of the world's vital statistics--where everything was and in what quantities and qualities, from minerals to manufactured goods and services, to humans and their unmet needs as well as capabilities. A new stadium was imagined that could monitor the current state of the world, bringing vital news into the “game room” live. No such thing existed in the '60s, when Fuller began this process. The exhibit chronicles his conversations with universities and congress to realize this dream.

Initially proposed for the US Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Buckminster Fuller’s World Game was central to Fuller's research. Across its different manifestations the World Game focused on the goals of overcoming energy scarcity and altering conventional territorial politics through the redistribution of world resources.

Ultimately, less a game than a design process for the planet, Fuller believed the World Game would also engender an alternative human, World Man. This new human type would be the fruit of winning game scenarios that reallocate global resources—from minerals, to livestock and energy supplies—arriving at the “bare-maximum” conditions under which the largest possible population would have sufficient calories to become “globally conscious.”

Curation: Mark Wasiuta and Adam Bandler

Photo Credit: James Ewing