What’s New?
NEW SMP COMING SOON!
Our new solar-powered modded multiplayer survival server (phew!) is launching soon!
Watch the teaser trailer below, and click the button to learn more.
SunBlock One
SunBlock is a solar powered modded Minecraft server with custom mods that give access to real-time data about the energy consumption and production of the system as a condition of possibility for playing the game. Rather than just playing a game with a message around energy transition, we are endeavoring to provide a direct, tangible and playable experience of the energy infrastructures which make that experience possible.
LEARN MOREWhat is the Fun Palace?
On October 13th, 2023, the Minecraft Bloc research group at the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) lab brought the avant-garde 1963 “Fun Palace” by Cedric Price, Joan Littlewood, and contributors into the world of MINECRAFT!
LEARN MORELatest Musings
Legacies of Regrowth
This idea of regrowth or reclamation had a singularly humanist pretension in that the game’s progression, especially in the solipsistic single player world of Minecraft, was all for my own benefit. I wasn’t greening the world; I was greening MY world and indeed I only needed to change the land as much as my eye could see (if that). So, this grand ecological gesture which seemed at first so poignant suddenly struck me as just an enthusiastic form of gardening.
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To bonemeal or not to bonemeal
What kind of play is it when it’s not your move, your desire, your goals that are front and centre? Its interesting I think that we have less of an issue deferring to other humans… like in chess. We must wait for the opposing player to make a move and chess etiquette demands patience, but I don’t think we feel the same about an AI chess player for instance. If its slow, we wonder if its broken.
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Carrying Water
In industrialized societies with ubiquitous indoor plumbing, standing at the sink in your kitchen is very much like having an infinite water source in Minecraft and the closest you might get to the outside is looking through the window. Running for buckets could be a poor analogy for thinking about water scarcity (because Minecraft water is not actually scarce at all) but it is also very effective for thinking about the material ideologies of insides and outsides, culture and nature, and a mindfulness about infrastructure.
Read moreWhat do we do?
