How far are we willing to go to optimise the management of the whole earth? G80 speculates on a global management system for planetary issues by bringing together different types of intelligence around a control console. G80 is an interactive work by the Swiss collective Fragmentin, commissioned by mudac in anticipation of its upcoming Fall program that will be fully dedicated to outer space.

The installation G80 is a contemporary reinterpretation of R. Buckminster Fuller's "World Game", a strategy simulation tool inspired by War Games, which aimed at "an equitable distribution of resources" on a planetary scale. Created in the cybernetic era in the early 1960s, it embodies the promise of computation and mathematical models for solving socio-political and ecological problems such as overpopulation, energy, consumption, access to services, resources, etc. Today with the arrival of supercomputers, the multiplication of data and the advent of artificial intelligence, the realization of such a total regulation project might be achievable.
Fragmentin’s work consists of a matrix of 80 motorised sliders on a console, reminiscent of a control room. Each slider corresponds to a variable whose name is engraved on the plate, with + and - signs measuring their scale. Some of the variables are directly inspired by those set by Buckminster Fuller and his students, while others have been redefined by Fragmentin and refer to the major issues of our time, such as ecology, migration, gender equality or the development of technological innovations.
In this device, the sliders act as both inputs and outputs. Visitors are invited to interact with the work and playfully stabilise the world by changing the value of each variable While making an initial change they soon realize that all the sliders correlate with each other. and that the variables are forming changing patterns without their intervention, suggesting the interference of other agencies.

Scott Longfellow