Cyclops is a networked performance, collaborative narrative, and alternate-reality-game designed to be played by groups of people working together across the word. Set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the game begins with a series of audio tracks. Some tracks are musical compositions, others are filled with odd voices reading letters and counting numbers, others still resemble nothing more than noise and static. Each track is, in fact, a puzzle of increasing complexity. As players work together to solve them, a narrative about early research into psychological operations, mind-control experiments, and an alternative history of the internet age begins to emerge. Over the course of the game, players come across a collection of artworks that are specifically created for Cyclops players. To find these artworks, players must identify and follow up on clues provided within the game. Cyclops is a world within a world.
A portal to access Cyclops can be found at cyclops.sh, and more information about the project can be found here.
This post is part of a series of posts supporting works from the exhibition You’ve Just Been Fucked by PSYOPS at Pace Gallery, New York.
You can find more information about this project and other posts in the series here.