Setting up collective online experiences is one of the characteristics of the practice of The Mycological Twist. Reverse Synergy (2021) is a long-game experience in the online multiplayer game ECO. The Mycological Twist offers an alternative view combining art and technology, which questions or slows down gameplay logics such as competition, “survival of the fittest” and possessive individualism, before they bleed out into the lived world. In a sense, this kind of artistic gaming interruption can be seen as a form of online activism, giving the artists and players a field where they can apply a positive practice to oppose a hostile space by bypassing the dominant narratives and establishing the collective thinking as the only sentiment of survival.

Reverse Synergy explores alternative aspects of the dynamics of digital communities and gaming culture, breaking away from dominant linear narratives and forming a participatory experience between physical and digital space where the players (exhibition visitors) are both creators and viewers of history and the evolution of the game. Additionally, Reverse Synergy highlights the processes through which players delve inwards while physically distanced from the performative body, investigating how a player is deeply involved with action mentally, while physically being at rest.

Reverse Synergy, 2021
Multidisciplinary installation
Dimensions variable
Online multiplayer game ECO from Strange Loop Games
Courtesy of the artists
Commissioned and produced by the Athens Biennale
With the support of Mondriaan Fund