Play, tap into instinct, and experience the thrill of human connection 

Emergence

Have you ever seen a flock of birds flying in perfect coordination, as if the flock is a single organism, flying as one? This is emergence: when simple, local interactions lead to complex and adaptive group behavior. Just as flocks are more than a collection of birds, human groups, under the right conditions, can become something more than a collection of individual members. In Synch.Live, emergence becomes a model and method for human cooperation.

How it works

Groups of 10-20 players enter the play area in the dark, wearing custom hats equipped with mini-computers and randomly-flashing LEDs. The goal of the game is to figure out, as a group, how to synchronize the lights on all of the hats. The rules are simple: no talking, no touching, keep walking. Players cannot see or control their own hat lights; instead, they must pay attention to each other, self-organize, and find new ways to communicate, beyond words.

Direct, embodied experience

Synch.Live exhorts us to play, tap into instinct, fall into rhythm, and experience the thrill of human connection. Unlike social media algorithms that reward disconnection, short-term pleasure, and long-term dependency, Synch.Live’s algorithm rewards connection. Players can only solve the game challenge together, through direct, screen-free physical interaction.

Cooperation is a social instinct

Yes, humans are hard-wired to divide the world into us and them, but humans are also capable of re-classifying, in milliseconds, who is an “us” and who is a “them.” By activating our social instinct to cooperate, we can pry open limiting beliefs and create the space for new patterns and interactions to emerge.