Scrabble On The Wall

Right at the moment that Scrabble has made its global comeback thanks to the amazingly popular and hyper-addictive smartphone game Wordfeud, the Polish artist NeSpoon has introduced Scrabble on the city’s walls. The so-called Scrabble Project that RebelArt has stumbled upon was part of the ArtBoom Festival in Kraków. Although one would expect this project to be an interactive game in which everyone can participate by bringing letter tiles found in a dusty Scrabble box on the attic, but that’s not exactly the goal of the project.

In fact there are serious messages to be read in the selection of words. The 400 different tiles are all traditional hand-made ceramic bricks. Each of the eight installations on the walls in Kraków is dedicated to a documentary movie and the criss-crossing words are a reference to their content. That gives the project a serious touch. The artist describes his thoughts as follows:

“The Scrabble Project reflects the information mosaic we use to create our image of reality. It is meant to encourage viewers to reflect on their knowledge about the world, usually constructed on the basis of unified information supplied by large media concerns through mainstream media. It is also an invitation to independent explorations and verification of information on the most important aspects of our reality, such as GMOs, global health policies, the nature and causes of financial crises, corporate social responsibility, global warming, conspiracy theories, etc.”

Although I don’t get this rather critical message of the project, I like it anyway. Just because it surprises passers-by and makes me automatically think about new words to add, and about how to get tripple word scores.