by Leo Bayly Barton
2026
One shared website.
Three flagpoles.
Anyone can raise a flag.
Anyone can lower one.
What flies is decided collectively, without deliberation.
This work invites you to reflect on what flags are.
Questioning the power structures they create, the underlying assumptions they promote, and the ways in which they are used to competitively reinforce everyday identities.
- Tap an empty pole to interact.
- Choose to lower the current flag, raise a new one, or do nothing.
- Search for your flag using keywords.
All actions are recorded in the logs.
The flying flags and emergent interactions DO NOT represent the opinion or perspectives of the artist.
This artwork presents contemporary and historical flags in dialogue, as selected by users. Tensions may emerge as users select and reject flags for display.
Efforts have been made to remove flags strongly associated with or used by contemporary hate groups. If you encounter any flags which inherently promote hate, please report them via the report/feedback button in the menu.
The Flag Game is a website installation, inviting you to “fly your flag”.
Through this competitive interaction, where any new flag must displace what came before, The Flag Game invites reflection on the symbolic power
dynamics of flags. Exploring themes of nationalism, political identity, and the distance between the individual and the collective in today's digital world.
The work goes beyond national flags, offering a staggering variety of regional, historical and identity-focused flags; exposing the lineage and granularity of these symbols and their claims to power.
Prompting the question: which flag(s), if any, represents you and why?
Available freely online, visitors are invited to return again and again to witness, and shape, how the game evolves.
leobaylybarton.com
Flags are pieces of cloth attached to tall poles, bearing symbols or designs that represent a group, nation, or idea. They are used to convey identity, allegiance, and authority.
Flags are strange pieces of cloth, in that they evoke strong emotions and serve as powerful symbols in both historical and contemporary contexts.
But the question is: why do modern nations, cultures, and identities find themselves tied to this format?
Searching for the origins of flags, I was surprised to meet a single dead-end each time:
the military.
Read the five short essays on flags here.
The flying flags and emergent interactions DO NOT represent the opinion or perspectives of the artist.
This artwork presents contemporary and historical flags in dialogue, as selected by users. Tensions may emerge as users select and reject flags for display.
Efforts have been made to remove flags strongly associated with or used by contemporary hate groups. If you encounter any flags which inherently promote hate, please report them via the report/feedback button in the menu.
-Tap an empty pole to interact.
-Choose to lower the current flag, raise a new one, or do nothing.
-Search for your flag using keywords.
-All actions are recorded in the logs.
Searching for the origins of flags, I was surprised to meet a single dead-end each time:
the military.
From Ancient China, Egypt, and Rome to religious and colonial conquests, to modern nation-states, flags appear to have their origins firmly tied to military power and authority.
Ultimately, this research led me to the conclusion that the very nature of flags is inherently tied to grouping "us" versus "them", used for identification and intimidation in violent encounters.
While such a function is existential in wartime, modern flags do not primarily serve as battle standards. Instead they build the foundations for deep-seated personal identities.
Yet due to this exact lineage, modern flags divide far more than they unite.
These divisions emerge on many levels; borders between recognised nations to the trampling of unrecognised groups. With each flag reducing its wavers to only a single identity.
Of course, flags from various nations can be flown in unison--and this is something I draw great pleasure in seeing. However, such flying will always produce two groups: the included and the unrecognised other.
For example, for each flag flown at the UN there are countless unrecognised others without a flagpole to represent them, or—perhaps worse—their identity has been claimed by one or more other flags.
Flags, particularly national flags, exist as monoliths—claiming representation over large areas of land and diverse groups of people.
Taken favourably at a local level, flags can serve as useful markers of towns, rules, and ways of life—making clear the borders between one way of life and another.
Zoom out, though, and flags compete for space. National flags supersede local flags, claiming all identities under one new design. Flattening all identities into a new whole.
While such a framework may work for some nations—particularly those who drew their own borders, or had geography define them—it creates friction in others. Compressing the international identity of disempowered groups under the weight of the more broadly recognised national identity.
Resultantly, many disempowered groups produce flags of their own—sometimes based on historical precedent, sometimes entirely new—creating a competing claim for identity within the same format of flags.
Of course, the world is large and the granularity of identities across its surface is impossibly diverse. However, it is also impossible to imagine that only 200 internationally recognized state flags represent anything near the diversity of human culture and experience that our planet has to offer.
Although not a requirement for inclusion, all UN-recognized nation states have an official flag.
These flags all adhere to the same strict format: a large, flat, patterned fabric, detailed on both sides, which is hoisted on one of its lateral faces.
Thus, these flags can all be flown interchangeably.
The question is: can all cultures adequately express their identity when it is forced into the same universalised format?
Historically speaking, flags appear to not be a universal language. While most cultures have created objects to express authority and group identity, they have usually taken notably different forms. From Hawaiian Kāhili and Southern African decorated shields, to body art and esoteric knowledge, to the Asian and European military banners and flags which evolved into the flags of today.
It may be argued that the flag is a simple format, that can be moulded to any identity. As a single piece of cloth, it can be decorated in any pattern, then flown to represent any people.
However, this assumes a cultural tradition in and identification with abstract visual designs—be them the block-colours favoured by Islam or iconographic designs favoured by, for example, the Swiss.
In short, we must ask whether the quiet uniformity of flags is due to their universality—or whether it is a remnant of the cultural conquests of the past 500 years.
If flags originated in the military, there must have been a moment when their use shifted to civic use.
Many flags vie for the title of the “first national flag”. Scotland stakes a claim for its use in the battle of Athelstaneford in 832 CE, while France is argued to have created the modern civic flag after their revolution of 1789 (adopting the flag in 1794).
Yet what these claims have in common, is the adoption of the pre-existing format of military flags/banners for civic use.
This is where the complexity lies.
Flags serve a very specific purpose in military context: to tell friend from foe; safety from danger; who you should help from who you should attack. This turns flags into binary symbols.
Map that framework onto civic life and you get competition.
On a local level, civic flags may produce increased unity—bridging former sites of division (town, geography, belief). But only if your locality doesn’t exist within the borderlands. There, such symbols produce division at worst and hybridity at best.
On a global, level, though, civic flags create great division. While also enforcing a gaze of false flatness—compressing differences into one symbol of the nation; particularly for distant viewers with no connection to the land that that flag is representing.
Returning to the question, then, we might be better off asking whether flags do—even today—represent everyday people? Or whether they instead represent the structures of state which those people live under and within.
Many countries have laws to persecute individuals who desecrate flags. Most of these laws extend to, or are purely protective of, the flags of other nations.
Taiwan, for example, lists insulting either the national flag or the national emblem of ANY country as a criminal offense (Articles 118 and 160 of the Criminal Law of the Republic of China). Punishments include fining or imprisonment.
Punishment varies greatly between countries.
Some nations, including the United States and United Kingdom, permit flag desecration as legal under the framework of free speech and expression. However, in August 25, 2025, the United States president enacted an executive order which attempted to reintroduce the prosecution of the burning of the American flag.
Beneath these laws, though, a question lingers: why are flags considered sacred in the modern day?
One answer may suggest that they are the representation of the many, under one banner. And to disrespect a flag is to disrespect the population who live in the nation which that flag has come to symbolize.
Yet, such an answer assumes that the state and its apparatus actually represents those within it (as opposed to merely claiming to). Furthermore, one must ask which flags are protected by such laws?
Do flag desecration laws count for the flags of unrecognised states or non-state identities?
The dataset includes approximately 30,000 flags, past and present.
It includes public-domain (or equivalent) flags aquired via Wikimedia Commons.
The data was carefully cleaned to remove: exact duplicates, rotations, non-flags and hate flags.
It does not claim to be an exhaustive dataset of all flags ever used, and it does not include every flag in the world today.
If any important flags are missing or any non-relevant flags are included, please let me know!
No data is gathered or stored beyond the anonymised messages which are publicly visible in the logs.
Seeing Like a State
James C. Scott (1998)
A critique 20th century “high modernism”. Exploring how it replaced situated, local knowledge and systems with panoptic, state-legible alternatives—and the issues it caused.
Identity and Violence
Amartya Sen (2006)
A philosophical analysis of how societal pressures force groups and individuals to grapple onto singular identities, producing conflict as a result.
Imagined Communities
Benedict Anderson (1983)
An analysis of how nation states became the most authoritative form of social organisation, exploring the methods and illusions which hold nationalist structures in place.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
A broad analysis that critiques foundational Western beliefs about political structure, by exploring a variety of alternative political systems found throughout history.
Please report any issues or feedback via this form.
This website displays flags selected by users. It may evoke strong emotions and opinions.
Displayed flags and emergent events DO NOT reflect the views of the artist.
If you witness any hateful behaviour or flags, please report them via the menu.
Search for your flag.
Retrieving your flag…