Research Call 12 Jun 2026 - Collaboration under Constraint

General
1

Hi everyone! I’ll be leading tomorrow’s research meeting.
Topic is Collaboration under Constraint

  1. Demo of a collaboration platform that uses constraints strategies as automatic workflows
  2. Introducing the idea that both success and failure are positive outcomes
  3. Art & Research - 2 sides of the same coin
1 Like
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Looking forward to it! Is there any prereading you might suggest? Any authors or theories it would be helpful to be aware of?

3

Oh, loads :frowning:
On the literary side - there’s Oulipo movement just as an inspiration to look in the direction of constraints. Then there’s Mechanism design - Wikipedia - which I won’t go into (deliberately) - but useful to understand the problem.

I don’t want to give out too much and also I’m thinking of letting people have discussion between themselves so it doesn’t turn into a debate. The main principles are simple and easy to experiment with.

4

Following on from the research call - constraints seem to be an endless source of fun and tension.
Two main modes of implementing them seem to be visible and invisible.

Do the people know they are being intentionally constrained?
Can participants discern that the system is constrained vs being at the limit of its design and capacity?
Can it be inferred from the outputs that they are the product of a constrained system?
What does the constraints do to the constrained? Torture or liberate?

Permission structure for play?