UnFair

Games You Can’t Win, and a Ride that goes Nowhere.

Overall Project Description:

Carousel Music playing – audio/visual carnival vibe

  • The Trickledown Merry Go Round is positioned in the middle.
  • Five games – (that are impossible to win without privilege/advantage).
  • The games and music were created by local artists in a non-competitive collaboration.
  • Each game station is placed under a blue 10’ x 10’ pop-up canopy.  Each game has an operator/carnival barker w/an Un-Fair T-shirt.  Each game station can have a secure donation container for participants to donate to play (waivable).
  • Each Un-Fair participant will get a “Passport” that they can get validated at each game & ride station when they engage.
  • Passports will be collected and put into a drawing for donated gift certificates.
  • Monies collected would go to political support for progressive causes.

Other optional additions:
Stilt Walkers
Clowns
Mimes
Aerialists

Game Descriptions:

Boomer Noodle Toss

This game consists of a target board with three holes in it.  The goal is to toss pool noodles through these holes.

The three holes are be labeled “Affordable College Degree,” “Well-Paid Job,” “Home Ownership.”

The holes are easily large enough for the noodles to fit through – unless- you are not a Baby Boomer (born between 1946-1964).

For participants born after 1964, doors that flip down, reducing the target holes to a much smaller size, making the game virtually impossible to win if you’re not a Baby-Boomer.

Test Your Strength
(of Freedom)

This game consists of an illuminated meter that lights up based on the player’s strength. The meter has ascending labels:  “Puny,” “Weak,” “Sad,” “Livable,” and “Strong.”

Strength will be determined by the player’s answers to a series of questions. If they can answer “YES”, they get to hit a striking target with a nerf-hammer that will in-turn, illuminate ladder segments, indicating their strength (of freedom).

Strength Test Questions:

  1. Is your education paid off?
  2. Is your car paid off?
  3. Do you have minimal credit-card debt?
  4. Do you have excellent health insurance?
  5. Do you feel safe enough in your community to not own a gun?

Glass Ceiling
Ring Toss

This game consists of a target board with a collection of bottles that participants will be challenged to toss rings onto. 

The bottles are covered with a rigid clear plastic sheet (a glass ceiling), making the game impossible to win with the exception of white men, for which the glass ceiling is removed – and the man is allowed to stand closer. 

The men are praised by the game barker as being a good fit for the company and women are encouraged to smile more.  (A talent of the barker is important for this game.)

Fishy Fortune
(For the 21st Century Middle Class)

 This game consists of a wall over which participants will cast a fishing line in order to get their 21st-century fish fortune.  The operator will load the fortune behind the wall.

Fortune Examples:

  • Your rent will go up 30% next month.
  • Your car is about to break down. Repairs will max out your last credit card.
  • You will get a parking ticket – while paying your parking ticket.
  • Your health insurance will not cover an upcoming malady.
  • Your bank declines a house loan with a monthly mortgage payment lower than what you have been paying for rent for the last ten years.
  • Your employer is closing your job site and relocating for cheaper labor.
  • A pay raise in the near future? NO!
  • You will soon need to get a third job to make ends meet.
  • You will never make as much money as your parents.
  • Your vacation plans die with your old refrigerator.
  • Plan on sub-renting out a spare room to help pay your rent increase.
  • You will get even less sleep next year.

 

(Caution on this game-some/many participants will actually have these experiences.  If they’re playing with their young children present, substitute fun fortune options for the kids.)

Knock Down the Lobbyist Clown

This game consists of five lobbyist clown faces placed along a target board. Participants are be invited to try to knock down the clowns with beanbags.  It is impossible – unless you donate, upon which the barker will remove bricks from behind the clowns.  Each brick is labeled with court decisions – Buckley v. Valeo 1976, Boston v. Bellotti (1978), Citizens United (2010), Louisiana v. Callais (2026) – that have thus resulted money to flood into the election system via lobbyists, super PACs, and other systemic obstructions to actual majority rule.

List of Lobbyist Clowns:

  • Defense/War
  • Gas & Oil
  • Wall Street
  • Big Pharma
  • Big Tech (To be added)

The Ride

This ride is a merry-go-round type carousel with connected shopping carts that participants can push around in circles, going nowhere.

 Concepts and build by David Mollari Sederberg
 
Much thanks and appreciation for contributing Artists
Jill Carter
Painting of Fishy Fortune game board
And the lobbyist clown heads.
 
Natalie Coblentz
Painting of Glass Ceiling Ring Toss game board.
 
Original cartoon by interaction designer and artist Manuel Pereyra