Sharing words and sounds

Thank you for generously agreeing to participate in this project which will be exhibited at the gallery Grizzly Grizzly in Philadelphia in November 2025. Your contribution will be an integral part of a collaborative installation by Joe McKay and John Roach that foregrounds PLAY as part of the visitor’s experience and as a tool for generating the work itself. With your involvement we aim to celebrate the messy human playground of meaning-making, something that might result from interpretation, mythologization, speculation, analogy, instruction, misdirection, maybe even sabbotage.

As a group you represent two distinct parts

Words

Sounds

The sounds and words that you contribute will be randomly paired when a visitor presses a large red button to start playing a game. So no sound will be native to the game itself, all will be determined by chance.

Next Steps

Here’s the process in a nutshell, but we go into more depth further down the page for both words and sounds contributors.

Play the games and select which one(s) you want to respond to (you can find them at the bottom of this page)
Generate your material
Title your file with the name of the game, your name, and any title you want to add.
Example: Gears Evolved – John Roach – The Philosophers Stone
Upload the work via a google form

Words – What do do next

Use language to respond to your chosen game. There’s no guardrails here in terms of style or content. It can be a poem, a set of instructions, a speculative history, it might also be a text written by someone else that seems essentially connected in some way. The main thing is to interpret, translate, or respond to the game itself.

Here are a few technical parameters, links and dates.

Submission date:
Please submit by September 21st (we’ll send a reminder a week before)

Length:
Your writing should be no more than one page

What to submit:
Please submit a file of a recording of you or someone else reading your written work. This can be done on whatever device you have available!

Where to submit:
Use this Google form please!

Sounds – What do do next

Use sound to respond to your chosen game. There’s no guardrails here in terms of style or content and you can use any tools, procedures or idioms that you want. The main thing is to interpret, translate, or respond to the game itself.

Here are a few technical parameters, links and dates.

Submission date:
Please submit by September 21st (we’ll send a reminder a week before)

Length:
Your sound file should be between 1 and 5 minutes long

What to submit:
Please submit a WAV or AIFF file.

Where to submit:
Use this Google form please!

There are three games you can choose from.
Note that each game has view options and other parameters you can adjust at the bottom of the interface. They do not come with instructions, so take some time to explore. If you have questions please let us know!