[ISEA2019] Paper: Lindsay D. Grace — The Unbearable Lightness of Meaning Game

Abstract

Keywords: Recursive design, game design, social impact games, meaningful play

This is a brief summary of a creative electronic artwork called the Unbearable Lightness of Meaning. The game is a playable adaption of Kundera’s literary work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The game attempts to explore heuristically the ambiguity of meaning presented in making a playful experience through abstraction of meaning and representation. This brief summary explores the motivations, philosophical underpinnings, and resulting work as a first exploration into how such themes can be manifest in a creative electronic work. It is offered as a case study in meaning, perceived meaning and the translation of literary works into non-conventional play experiences.

  • Lindsay D. Grace is Knight Chair of Interactive Media and an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication, USA. He is Vice President for the Global Game Jam™ and Vice President of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance.
    His work has received awards and recognition from the Games for Change Festival, the Digital Diversity Network, the Association of Computing Machinery’s digital arts community, Black Enterprise and others. He authored or coauthored more than 50 papers, articles and book chapters on games since 2009. His creative work has been selected for showcase internationally including New York, Paris, Sao Paolo, Singapore, Chicago, Vancouver, Istanbul, and others. Lindsay curated or co-curated Blank Arcade, Smithsonian American Art Museum’s SAAM Arcade, the Games for Change Civic and Social Impact program and others.
    He has given talks at SXSW, the Game Developers Conference, Games for Change Festival, the Online News Association, the Society for News Design, and many other industry events.
    Between 2013 and 2018 he was the founding director of the American University Game Lab and Studio in Washington, DC. From 2009 to 2013 he was the Armstrong Professor at Miami University’s School of Art. Lindsay also served on the board for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) between 2013-2015.

Full text (PDF) p. 589-592

This creative research was supported in part by the generous funding of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.