Hello all, good to meet you all Friday. An interesting and productive day.
In answer to Gregor's 'two-sided' question I would say yes, objects are often located within exhibitions to lead audiences through the 'narrative' or 'thesis' of an exhibition. A recent example was the Postmodernism exhibition at the V&A. This was curated to lead the viewer through the exhibition eliciting that most postmodern of emotions, nostalgia. The timeline was implicit and exhibits were thematically grouped instead. It was extremely powerful.
And yes, a level design approach would be useful, if not essential, to designing an exhibition around games and play. Games are experiential and this needs communicating.
The concept of 'narrative affordances' is useful, particularly when augmented by viewing level design through the lens of wayfinding. Sometimes objects are deployed less for narrative purpose and more to 'steer' the participant through a playspace to build their own narrative or experience. I think this is key to any exhibition around games. Games are experiences that afford choices to their players, and this should be represented and utilised in any exhibition. The devices and conventions (often particular to games e.g. war films don't liberally sprinkle the set with crates, war games do) that enable these experiences are fundamental to understanding the medium.
My concerns about the current plans for the exhibition are that it doesn't seem to know who its audience is, and that it seems somewhat negative in its approach. Is this really an exhibition for 'gamers'? The term 'gamer' seems increasing irrelevant – and indeed a subcultural ghetto – in a world where games are now mainstream. For me the exhibition should celebrate the joys and possibilities of digital games that has enabled this mainstreaming to happen, not circle the wagons around 'headshots' and 'crunch'.
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