Power Up

Monday, February 28, 2005

I dont know how many of you already know about the Chloe Delaume's Corpus Simsi project -

you can scroll down this link and read about it and then follow the links in the text to bits of the project itself.

http://http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/9597.html

This is a snip from the end of the posting describing the project:

Just as Loquet's Maxed-up MSP computer sounds contain the voices of dead folk singers, Delaume's books contain in their aspic characters from the video games of yesteryear. They prompt a startling thought. Maybe a time will come when all our computer software is unplayable, all our formats incompatible, all our machines useless. When that day comes, maybe the only remaining memory of the virtual worlds we created in the digital age will be encoded in books. The book, the original portable simulated world, might have a strange, phoenix-like destiny: to be electronic simulation's only enduring body. SimWorld's parent... and its child.

posted by: helen at 19:11 | link | comments |

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Aesthetics of Play Conference

Rune's conference Aesthetics of Play: Please disseminate as widely as possible.

The website is beautiful.

At the top of the 'theory' page there is a quotation attributed to Aarseth "Should we expect game scholars to excel in the games they analyze?" and i wondered what you all thought of that? I wonder how you would set the criteria? When I first starting researching female Quake players I was still completely rubbish at playing it in multiplayer and my entire ingame experience was a fort/da game played at warp speed (alive/dead alive/dead alive/dead) but I was quite happy to analyse that game even then. Should I get my coat now I have fessed up to being a 'not very good' gamer?

***CALL FOR PAPERS***

Aesthetics of Play
A conference on computer game aesthetics

University of Bergen, Norway
October 14-15, 2005

http://www.aestheticsofplay.org

We invite proposals for papers to be presented at the conference Aesthetics of Play, to be held at the University of Bergen 14-15 October 2005. The conference is hosted by the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, and is arranged in collaboration with Norway's first game-art exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall.

We invite papers that address the diversity of cultural meanings as they are expressed in computer game technology and software. The notion of 'aesthetics' in this context is a broad one, encompassing the formal structures and audiovisual characteristics of games and game technologies as well as the wider epistemological, cultural and political dimensions of the gaming experience. Our aim is to contribute to the continued development of a cultural aesthetics of computer games, allowing us to better understand their role as mediators of cultural change. We especially want to encourage contributions that offer analytical 'close-playings' of particular games or genres. We invite a broad range of game-centred approaches, hoping to attract a rich mixture of highly focussed and particular investigations as well as broader more speculative work.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

- Game architectures. The analysis of formal, technological and narrative conventions of computer games
- The representations of society in contemporary game-worlds
- The epistemology of computer games
- The audiovisual aesthetics of computer games
- Theories and methods of game analysis
- Aesthetics and industrial imperatives

Abstracts of maximum 300 words should be submitted by 18 April, 2005 via the conference website http://www.aestheticsofplay.org.

Notice of acceptance will be sent out by 29 April, 2005.
Presenters will be asked to submit the full papers by 16 September, 2005.

All papers will be published in the online conference proceedings.
For more information visit the conference website at http:/www.aestheticsofplay.org or contact:

Eli Lea (eli.lea@uib.no) for practical or administrative inquiries
Rune Klevjer (rune.klevjer@infomedia.uib.no) for academic inquiries

posted by: helen at 20:21 | link | comments (21) |

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

the Tetris defence

OK, the gender politics are a little iffy, but is this another nail in the coffin of what Helen has called 'the Tetris defence'?

posted by: sethgiddings at 12:32 | link | comments (14) |

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

games lab NZ

Power Up ally Gareth Schott has a new site and project in New Zealand.
see what's on the slab

posted by: sethgiddings at 16:43 | link | comments |

Monday, February 07, 2005

Digiplay 4

The Digiplay 4: teaching with, learning from, computer games seminar at the London Knowledge Lab was a stimulating and convivial affair. Presentations and discussion ranged from accounts of developing innovative games in schools to questions of higher education and its relationship with the games industry. Lily-livered academics blanched at horrific accounts of the conditions and culture of working in the industry.

I particularly like the look of Savannah, a collaboration between Nesta Futurelab, the Mixed Reality Lab, and the BBC. Schoolchildren ran around their playing field as simulated lions, tracked by GPS and informed by handheld video when they encountered virtual elephants or rivers.

Savannah

posted by: sethgiddings at 12:01 | link | comments (1) |

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Screenplay

This year's Screenplay festival in Nottingham is on Friday 25th February through to Sunday 27th February.
See http://www.screenplay.org.uk for details.

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