Panel Statement
Chair Persons: Lynn Hughes & Heather Kelley
Presenters: Cindy Poremba & Emma Westecott
This panel focuses on some of the most interesting developments in games and playable media. More specifically it will look at the recent surge in making independent games or game-like media art and artifacts. How does the indie moment in the games industry intersect with the rise of interest in playable media outside the industry (art games, game art, games as research, embodied play, new arcade games, lo-fi and retro games, diy….)? Panelists will provide a broad overview of current “gaminess” but will also be drawing on examples of their own art/design work. Papers will address the following types of questions:
- The relation between goal-based and free play models of games/playable media, as well examples of designing for appropriation. What is the relation between expressivity and rules? Whose expressivity? What does/could it mean to author playable media for appropriation? (Lynn Hughes)
- The rise of lo-fi games in the light of V.W Turner’s notions of the liminal & liminoid. Contemporary indie practice in the spaces between diy & artgames. (Emma Westecott)
- How new arcade projects draw the play experience out into the exhibition environment. What are artists doing to re-imagine games for alternative social contexts? How can curators engage with the design of play -particularly in non-gallery spaces? (Cindy Poremba).
- What kind of soft and hard ware contributes to a pleasure experience.? How can we make sure game goals and sensual “goals” are mutually reinforcing? How might sex games be a forerunner of other “gamification” efforts where the goal is more than self-referential entertainment? (Heather Kelley)
- Lynn Hughes is Associate Dean for Research, Fine Arts, at Concordia University in Montreal, CA. She was instrumental in the structuring and funding of the Hexagram, Institute for Media Arts and Technology, the largest and most productive New Media hub in Canada. More recently she co-founded the Technoculture Art and Games Research Centre at Concordia in order to promote collaborative, interdisciplinary games research. Her current project is the design and production of a gesture based full body game.
- Heather Kelley, also known as moboid, is a media artist, curator, and game designer. Currently Ms. Kelley heads her interaction and experience design studio Perfect Plum. She is co-founder of Kokoromi,an experimental game collective, with whom she has produced and curated the renowned GAMMA event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context.