Pervasive games takes place in the ordinary world and consists of players and non-players. Tapper discusses her theory of ‘in-between-ness’ which she describes as “a space which someone who is playing encounters someone who is not” (Tapper, 150). These pervasive games interrupt the everyday social, political and cultural world by creating an imaginative world in which players and non-players interact. Tapper’s contention that in-between-ness “invokes a mood of uncanniness” (Tapper, 150) in non-players because they are left in the dark to what is going on around them. The origin of the uncanny, according to Freud, relates to the Heimlich (homely) and the Unheimlich (unhomely). The idea of taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar is very interesting, especially when applying this idea to public spaces. For instance, making an everyday routine unfamiliar by performing it in a different space or location. (Eg. Wearing pyjamas to a business meeting or boiling a kettle in the middle of a street).

Tapper, J. (2014) Pervasive Games: Representations of Existential In-Between-Ness. Themes in Theatre, 8, 143-161.