Something Something Soup Something
Philosopher Stefano Gualeni’s experimental videogame Something Something Soup Something takes the guise of the innumerable fantastic work simulators (see Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor). You, the player, are an employee at a soup restaurant in the far future when inter-dimensional teleportation technology has moved humanity to a completely post-scarcity world. Crammed in a dingy basement, you are the lone employee in the space where the kitchen would have been. Your only job? Tell the mysterious beings at the other side of the teleporter how many soups the patrons order. Oh, and since they aren’t human, really, the most important part of your job is that you have to determine if each incoming order is or isn’t human-ready soup. Does it have to be hot or is cold okay? Stuff it in or just Liquid? Solid soup? Does fetid or nutritious make it any more or less soup? Just because it is poisonous, does that mean it’s not soup? Unlike a traditional game, there is no losing, and after all the soups have been served for the night, the game doesn’t score anything but merely describes to you the working definition you’ve built for your version of “soup”. With humorously sloshing animations, you do your job, passing along “soups” and dumping “not-soups” in an intuitive exploration of Wittgenstein's philosophical endeavors via a surrealist version of Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn B. Mervis’ classic linguist research project about cultural differences of soup, “Family Resemblances.”
Creator: Stefano Gualeni
Link: https://soup.gua-le-ni.com/
Connections:
Meret Oppenheim - Object (aka “Le Dejeuner en fourrure”)
Yasmina Reza - Art
Josef Kosuth - One and Three Chairs