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Media & Performance Theory (OGMV08007)

Dr. Chiel Kattenbelt & Dr. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

Session 1: Studying play in contemporary (media) culture

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• Caillois, Roger. Man, play, and games. University of Illinois Press, 1961.

Aspects of play

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• Play as metaphor

• Play as a social contract

• Play as simultaneous (de)mystification

• Sicart, Play Matters (2014)

• Juul, The Art of Failure (2013)

Recent focal points of play research

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• Oulipo

• Narrative architecture (Jenkins)

• Hyperfiction

• Game poetry

Play and the arts I: Literature

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• Improvisation

• Variations on a theme

• Cadenzas

• Paraphrases and Medleys

• John Zorn, Game Pieces

Play and the arts II: Art Music

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• Play and ritual

• Play as subversion– Retail Hacking

– Gaming the System

• War Games

• Re-Envisioning society as a quasi-playful system

The element of play in culture

Burroughs, Benjamin. "Facebook and FarmVille. A Digital Ritual Analysis of Social Gaming." Games and Culture 9.3 (2014): 151-166.

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• The Local Community as an “Ecology of Games”?

• Economy– Werbach, Kevin, and Dan Hunter. For the win:

How game thinking can revolutionize your business. Wharton Digital Press, 2012.

• Project management– Paasivaara, Maria, et al. "Teaching students

scrum using LEGO blocks." Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering. ACM, 2014.

• (Military) Conflicts– Fong, Gwenda. "Adapting COTS games for

military simulation." Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGGRAPH international conference on Virtual Reality continuum and its applications in industry. ACM, 2004.

Societal discourses of Play:Play as a ‘ready-made’

solution

Norton E. Long, ”The Local Community as an Ecology of Games”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Nov., 1958), pp. 251-261

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• Education– E.g. Roussou, Maria. "Learning by doing and

learning through play: an exploration of interactivity in virtual environments for children." Computers in Entertainment (CIE) 2.1 (2004): 10-10.

• Law– Balkin, Jack M., and Beth Simone Noveck.

State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds(Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society). NYU Press, 2006.

– Lawcraft, Case Law Game

• Research (?)– Digital technologies in humanities research

• Q: Implications?

Societal discourses of Play:Play as a ‘ready-made’

solution II

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• Playing styles and player typologies/mentalities

• Play as a means of performing one’s identity

• Culturally specific mentalities of play?

The element of play in culture: Player mentalities

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Playfulness in media usage practices: Literacy

Daisley, Margaret. "The game of literacy: The meaning of play in computer-mediated communication." Computers and Composition 11.2 (1994): 107-119.

• Play and (media) literacy

• Remixing

• How does play foster a specific form of literacy?

• Other examples?

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Playfulness in media usage practices: Media relations

• Remediation

• Intertextuality/Intermediality

• Adaptation

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Play as ‘subversive’ media use

• In-game photography (Poremba)– Re-creating the photographic and/or

documentary gaze

• Spoiling (Jenkins/Mittell)

• Spotting mistakes/glitches– http://www.moviemistakes.com/

• Archiving narrative tropes (Chaney/Liebler)– http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main

/HomePage

Poremba, Cindy. "Point and Shoot. Remediating Photography in Gamespace."Games and Culture 2.1 (2007): 49-58.

Chaney, Keidra, and Raizel Liebler. "Canon vs. Fanon: Folksonomies of Fan Culture." Massachusetts Instituteof Technology.–2007. URL: http://web. mit. edu/comm-forum/mit5/papers/Chaney_Liebler_MIT5. pdf.

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Commodification of Play

Foxman, Maxwell. “How to win Foursquare.” Rethinking Gamification. Eds. Mathias Fuchs et al., 2014, pp. 71-90.

• Play as an integrative element of using ‘apps’– Paidia and ludus

• Affordances (Norman/Gibson) of play in software design– Foursquare

– Instagram

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• Play-based curricula and learning tools

• Scientific visualization as playful practice

• Theorycrafting

• Newsgames– Analytical Game Design (Remote

Control)

Play as a means of knowledge-creation

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Play as a means of knowledge-creation:Playful appropriation of (digital) media technologies

• Playful/hedonic technologic use– Why specifically with digital technologies?

– Play as un-blackboxing digital technology

• YouTube

• Google Maps/Earth

• Google Wave

• Google Glass

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• Q: Other ‘turns’ and their theoretical implications?

• How could such a claim be substantiated?

OUTLOOK: A ‚ludic turn‚ in media studies?

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• Examples– Bounden– Fingle– Spy Party– Kinect games

• Cf. user discourse

– Singing games

• Q: Analytical categories?

• ‘Constructing’ the environment as a stage

• Benjamin, “performing for the machine”

EXCURSION: Aspects of performance in (digital) games