The Dictator Game (2012)
The Dictator Game is a participatory performance originally developed for Creative Time’s 2012 annual summit. The performance is based on the idea of inequity aversion —a term utilized in economics and sociology to refer to the theory that our awareness of inequality amongst each other can lead to feelings of guilt, mutual destruction, or mutual cooperation.
The 10-15 min. intervention will consist of a participatory game show, asking audience members to come onstage, and becoming part of a number of games taken from experimental economics that put to test our altruism and cooperation based on our awareness of inequality (one of which, the most famous is called the Dictator Game, when one participant is given a lot of money and is given the option to either share it to the next person or not. Further scenarios give more power to the second participant, making the exchange relationship more complex as the game progresses. In the Creative Time version of the event, the game was interspersed with Protest Music songs.
Tags: Economics, Participation, Performance, Politics