Luminescence

Template:Larp Luminescence, also known as "The Flour Larp", was a four-hour long larp in 2004, in [A Week In Finland] before [Solmukohta 2004]. Luminescence is a game about cancer patients in music therapy. They all all going to die and attempt to come to terms with this fact. The players are semi-naked in a roomful of flour, which has been defined as ”normal” within the game.

”[The players] really went to town with the flour, having flourfights, burrowing into it, pouring it onto each other, stuffing it into their mouths and underwear. The players reported that the flour was very versatile as a medium for nonverbal communication and as a tool for all kinds of symbolism. The people stuffing it into their underpants had prostrate cancer. Perhaps the most poetic thing we heard was from a guy who had been lying down in the flour for a long time. When he got up, the shape of his body was still visible in the flour. He touched it and could feel the body heat dissipating the same time as his touch destroyed the fragile image itself.” (Pettersson, Kingdom of Flour)

Techniques

• Pre-larp Workshop
• Soundtrack
• Pre-written characters
• Must touch when speaking
• Rule of Normality
• Symbolic scenography
• Flour

Documentation

Articles

Luminescense has been written on extensively by Juhana Pettersson and Mike Pohjola, often including player comments.

– Juhana Pettersson: The Kingdom of Flour, a description of the game for the rpg.net column No Good.

– Mike Pohjola: School of Flour ([knutepunkt.laiv.org/kp05/School%20of%20Flour.pdf PDF]), Developing methodology through eight experimental larps, in [Dissecting Larp], 2005.

– Juhana Pettersson: Roolipelimanifesti, a non-fiction book about roleplaying (Like, 2005).

– Juhana Pettersson: The Age of Indulgence, an article in [Playground Worlds], 2008.

– An article on the larp in [Nordic Larp (Book)] by Juhana Pettersson.

Video Documentation

Video footage from the larp:

External links

Juhana Pettersson's artistic statement: http://www.juhanapettersson.com/works/luminescence/

Production

• Solmukohta 2004