NB: The time of the defense is moved to 10-13 (same date and place)

Rikke Toft Nørgård defends her Ph.D. thesis on digital games, gameplay and gameplayers entitled Gameplay Corporeality: the corporeal-locomotive dimension in gameplay activity and experience

28 November 2012, 10-13

The Peter Bøgh Andersen Auditorium, Nygaard bygn. Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N

Short Summary

Gameplay Corporeality: the corporeal-locomotive dimension in gameplay activity and experience

The thesis introduces the gameplayer’s bodily activity and experience as a significant, qualitative and meaningful dimension into game studies. This is done through investigating corporeal locomotion during gameplay, i.e. the gameplayer’s bodily activity and experience, in longitudinal empirical studies, across a variety of digital games and platforms, of gameplayers in gameplay. The thesis explores how gameplayers as (kin)aesthetic bodies experience the joy of doing and develop craftsmanship skills through taking corporeal-locomotive ownership of their ‘gameplay craft’ – be it in the gameworld of World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Battlefield, Rock Band, Tetris or Angry Birds. The thesis thus attempts to break new ground by investigating how being a player is expressed and experienced as being a body engaged and absorbed in corporeal-locomotive play – something that have hitherto received little attention within studies of games, gameplay and gameplayers. Therefore, Gameplay Corporeality tries to advance this new research field within game studies; a field that emphasizes the aliveness, presence, engagement and absorption of gameplayer as a corporeal-locomotive being. The studies in this thesis are among the first to explore and investigate gameplay corporeality, that is, the bodily activities and experiences of gameplayers, the corporeal-locomotive design, composition and choreography of gameworlds and the corporeal-locomotive dimension in gameplay activity and experience, as something that carries essential qualities and important meanings within it.

Available here as paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-Computer-Games-Somatic-Experience/dp/8791810213/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347860511&sr=8-1

Download pdf here.

First written as a PhD dissertation in 2011, the book investigates the bodily dimension of the computer game experience – based on the overarching thesis that computer game-play is a bodily founded and bodily savoured activity. Apart from the ‘trivial’ fact that the player needs a body in order to grasp the controller, the player also senses his/her body working through the visceral ‘feel’ of the game. Assuming a phenomenological and somaesthetic perspective, the book addresses the bodily experience of playing computer games, theoretically and analytically covering the spectrum from ‘traditional’ controller-based computer game experiences to ones that require ‘full body’ gestures. Simultaneously being bodily engaged in the game and reflectively aware of this engagement (a somatic experience and an experience of the somatic) is suggested as the aesthetic form that computer games rely on, as well as play with.

Speaking Code: Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression (MIT Press) examines the expressive and performative aspects of programming; alternatives to mainstream development, from performances of the live-coding scene to the organizational forms of commons-based peer production; the democratic promise of social media and their paradoxical role in suppressing political expression; and the market’s emptying out of possibilities for free expression in the public realm.
Presented by Geoff Cox in conversation with Constant, with Alex McLean (code), Franco Berardi (video), introduced and moderated by Joasia Krysa.

with Constant, and further contributions from Joasia Krysa, Geoff Cox, Tarek Atoui, and Magda Tyżlik-Carver
Ständehaus, dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany

The workshop introduces the work of the Finish artist and pioneer of electronic music Erkki Kurenniemi and an online archive of his work developed by Constant Association for Art and Media based in Brussels. It will introduce future plans for the exhibition and the online archive.

Constant started their Active Archives project in 2006. The first principle of the project is to understand the web not simply as a means of distribution, but a space for (collaborative) writing, prototyping, and developing ideas, and from there to investigate how can archives take part in this net-nature. How can archives be active beyond preservation and access? What would it take to give material away and receive it transformed? How would files be enriched by different connections, contexts and contradictions?

A blog documenting their ongoing experiments can be found at http://kurenniemi.activearchives.org

Online Archive: Erkki Kurenniemi (In 2048) is commissioned by Kurator and dOCUMENTA (13) in partnership with Central Art Archive of the Finnish National Gallery and Contemporary Art Museum KIASMA, and supported by Arts Council England.

Not mentioned however is the project iPhone-live by Johannes P Osterhoff that automatically uploads screenshots from his iphone e.g. like this where he appears to be reading Rhizome.

Organised by:
Digital Aesthetics/Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus University
reSource transmedial culture berlin/transmediale festival
Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg

We hereby invite proposals for participation in a research workshop around the 2013 theme of the transmediale festival, BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was A Planet). We are addressing researchers with diverse backgrounds interested in opening up some of the paradoxes of contemporary digital art and culture. Although the workshop is primarily aimed at international PhD researchers, it is also open to researchers who are pursuing research without institutional support.

The workshop aims at researching concepts and phenomena that, in the light of the festival’s thematic framework, have become destabilised by network culture and digital media (see below). Thematically, these may include – but are not restricted to:

/ techno-cultural displacement and invention
/ fragility of networks
/ disruptive potential of artistic practice
/ paradoxes of digital art and culture
/ organisation after networks
/ participatory research practices
/ research beyond academia
/ network epistemologies
/ networks after social networks

For more information on the workshop call, go to http://www.transmediale.de/node/22286/

Submit proposals at http://www.transmediale.de/node/18472/
Deadline 31 August 2012

Live artists and live coders, working towards live notation
http://livenotation.org/
Arnolfini, Bristol BS1 4QA
Entry: Free
Symposium and performances

The Live Notation Unit (LNU) takes over the Arnolfini for a day using its spaces as an experimental laboratory in which to combine two
radical performance practices: Live Art and Live Coding. The LNU will approach programming as performance art, performance art notation as code, code as speech, bodies as interpreters, and more. On the menu are improvisational sound works (where computer code and the artists’ bodies become instruments), site-specific time based art works (where notation becomes the ‘piece’ as opposed to its recording device) and a series of position papers proposing what the LNU’s new term “live notation” might signify.

Bringing together Sam Aaron, Geoff Cox, Yuen Fong Ling, Dave Griffiths, Alex McLean, Brigid Mcleer, Thor Magnusson, Click Nilson,
Hester Reeve, Kate Sicchio, Andre Stitt, Maria X, and Matthew Yee-King.

For more information and a preliminary programme, please visit our website:
http://livenotation.org/
Live Notation is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Læs den på din iPad eller Kindle, hvis du tør!

Poesimaskine på Roskilde Bibliotek

DARC/CAVI/DUL forskere har været med til at lave den  interaktive litteraturinstallation “Tilfældigvis er skærmen blevet blæk”. Poesimaskinen  udstilles forskellige steder bl. a. Roskilde bibliotekerne i perioden 11. april – 11. maj 2012 og Roskilde festival 2012 som en del af projektet Litteraturen finder sted. Installationens tekster bliver udgivet på http://blaek.netlitteratur.dk/

Følg projektet på www.netlitteratur.dk. Her følger en introduktion til værket.

Hvad
Installationen består af: en skærm, en computer, en bonprinter og 3 bøger. I hver af bøgerne er der indbygget sensorer, der kan registrere tryk. Ved at trykke på bøgerne, kan man skabe et digt, som automatisk printes ud på en bonprinter, og som man kan tage med sig.

Hvordan
Når installationen er i stilstand, vises et ordhav. Når man løfter en af bøgerne, kommer et hvidt tekstfelt til syne midt i ordhavet. Dernæst kommer der en tekstlinje frem. Ved at trykke på bogen kan man ændre på teksten. Der er yderligere to grader af teksten ud over den, som først optræder. Ved at fastholde trykket, vælger man den grad, man gerne vil have. Så ryger tekstlinjen ind på plads på det hvide tekstfelt og en ny fremkommer. Man fortsætter sådan, indtil digtet er færdigt. Dernæst printes det automatisk ud på en bonprinter og man kan tage det med sig.
Bemærk: Der er forskellige tekster tilknyttet hver bog. Ved at bruge forskellige bøger, kan man altså skabe forskellige tekster. Man må gerne bruge flere bøger på én gang.

Hvorfor
Formålet med værket er at vise ét af de træk, der ofte gør sig gældende i digital litteratur; nemlig at brugeren skal gøre noget med værket for at få det til at give mening. Her skal man selv være aktiv, for at der bliver skabt et digt. Det er først gennem brugerens interaktion med værket, at man egentlig kan tale om, at der er et værk.
Værkets lydbillede har – ud over at det er en del af værket – til formål både at skabe et lydligt rum for installationen, og at gøre det tydeligt, hvem der interagerer med hvilken tekst i værket, når der er flere, der leger med det samtidigt.
Projekt Litteraturen finder sted arbejder bl.a. på at finde modeller for, hvordan digital litteratur (der ikke eksisterer i fysisk form) kan formidles i det fysiske biblioteksrum. Mange af de nye litterære tendenser, der fremkommer i disse år – som f.eks. digital litteratur eller performancelitteratur – skaber nye, spændende udfordringer for bibliotekets formidling. Projekt Litteraturen finder sted søger at finde løsninger på disse udfordringer.
Projektet er 2-årigt og slutter i marts 2013.
Projektet har fået midler fra Styrelsen for Bibliotek & Medier.
Hvad skal værket efter 11. maj
Når udstillingsperioden på biblioteket slutter, skal der samles op på de erfaringer, der er høstet. De skal bruges til at finjustere værket. Værket skal i juli udstilles på Roskilde Festival 2012 i bibliotekets hal på festivalpladsen. Dernæst skal det turnere rundt på andre biblioteker i landet.

Hvem
Tilfældigvis er skærmen blevet blæk er skabt af Litteraturen finder sted, Roskilde Bibliotekerne, Digital Urban Living, CAVI & Tekne produktion, Aarhus Universitet.

3D programmering: Jonas Oxenbøll Petersen, Janus Bager Kristensen, Rolf Bagge
Design & konceptudvikling: Jonas Fritsch, Lasse Steenbock Vestergaard, Søren Pold, Martin Campostrini, Allan Thomsen Volhøj, Ann Luther Petersen
Lyddesign: Rune Wehner
Forfatter: Peter-Clement Woetmann