Nevertheless, the article is pretty interesting if you are interested in urban spaces and consumerism in general.

Some of the highlights of the article could be:

In the mall, one can simulate normal social life around the commodity−form, to which the place owes its existence in the first place.

The experiences offered for consumption must be reconcilable with the images of the brands
represented and with the image of the mall as brand zone. The mall, then, is a pseudo−public space or a gigantic private space.

The values of the shopping malls, their sedation of experience and their controllability, are also becoming the values of the city.

A revolutionary multi-player, multi-site game and arts space to be played across all five cities. Players use their own bodies to send balls of projected light across the playing space, aiming for goals representing the other cities. Entirely interactive, it’s a competition to see which city has the least light balls in their square when the time runs out. Designed to be aesthetically beautiful and great fun to play and watch, games are a minute long and run throughout the night. Just turn up and play, or get your team together in advance…

Link for the site.
Here is a google video of how people are playing it . It follows very basic rules and intuitive in that sense. 5 Courts was conceived, designed and programmed by digital media artists KMA (Kit Monkman & Tom Wexler).

Why do I blog this?
I think this piece is kind of important because of several points. First, it puts the user in its center and this is not only personal interaction, it becomes a collective set of action rules with opponents in other cities with the basic nature of the game. So the fun gets multiplied. Second, it uses cities as “castles” which might fit as a good example of urban computing application.