For the third exhibition at LIKELIKE, his new space for independent games and playable arts, Professor Paolo Pedercini premiered a new game called “Dogness.” In the game, players need to create the “purest” and most homogeneous dog park through selective breeding and immigration control.
The game is the feature of an article by Samantha Cole for Vice: Motherboard.
Cole writes: “Pedercini told me in an email that in ‘Dogness,’ he was looking into the work of Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and inventor of eugenics. He noticed that around the same time as Galton was establishing his dangerous, racist theories, Kennel Clubs and an obsession with purebred dogs became fashionable. Eugenics and dog breeding share the same language and misconceptions, Pedercini noted—the term ‘mongrel’ was applied to both dogs and humans, and in the golden age of eugenics in America, there were ‘fitter family’ contests similar to dog shows.
“’So yes, it’s a silly game with brightly colored dogs jumping around,’ he said, ‘but I was going for something a bit more complex and open than an allegory with a message.’”