http://www.playfulsubjects.org
The Play Research Group in the School of Cultural Studies at the University
of the West of England invite you to the symposium - Playful Subjects:
technology, agency and computer games.
The symposium will be on 12th and 13th May at Spike Island in Bristol.
Invited speakers include:
Barry Atkins
Diane Carr
Jon Dovey
Helen Kennedy
Graeme Kirkpatrick
Tanya Krzywinska
Caroline Pelletier
The artists John Paul Bichard and Maggie Parker will present and discuss
their work
There are spaces for a few more presentations. If you are interesting in
presenting research that closely relates to the symposium theme then send a
250 word abstract to [log in to unmask] by March 15th.
Who or what is at play in computer games?
Computer game play is at once an intense media experience of interaction
with flows of images, sound and action, and a cybernetic feedback loop
between software, hardware, bodies and brains. The common experiences of
compulsion and immersion that characterise computer game play have yet to
be adequately theorised: what are the distinct pleasures (and anxieties)
engendered through play with computers? How can we theorise agency in these
technological networks and gameworlds animated by artificial life, virtual
physics and computer-controlled entities as well as human players?
This symposium will address computer games, computer game play, and
computer game players as analytically inseparable. What questions does this
raise for the study of computer games as popular media texts or events; for
theories of spectatorship and subjectivity in film and media studies or
agency in the study of technoculture; for our understanding of distinctions
between the human and the technological?
How can we theorise the intimate relationships between the human, the
textual, the ludic, and the technological in the act of gameplay?
http://www.playfulsubjects.org
Please send enquiries to [log in to unmask]
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