The blog's been rather quiet of late, but the Group hasn't. Here's a report on its activities in the past academic year:
Two weblogs were set up:
one to publicise and document events and publications initiated by, or of interest to, group members
http://playresearch.motime.com
the other to continue and extend the discussions and collaborations initiated at the Power Up symposium in July 2003. This now has an international membership and readership and is making important interventions in the emerging (cross)discipline of game studies.
Helen Kennedy, Rune Klevjer, Jon Dovey and Helen Kennedy presented a panel at the first Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference at the University of Utrecht, 4th - 6th November. Helen presented a paper entitled ‘Feminism ‘In’ and ‘At’ play: Female Quake Players and the Politics of Subversion’. Jon’s paper ‘Powering up: reporting on computer games, ideology and play’ was accompanied by a scratch video of the Power Up symposium. Rune presented a paper titled ‘Gladiator, worker, operative: the hero of the first person shooter adventure’, and Seth presented ‘Circuits: a video essay on virtual and actual play’.
There have been a number of overseas exhibitions of Rod Dickinson’s work, and he recently presented his ICA – commissioned Waco Reenactment: nocturne. This was a reconstruction of part of the psychological operations conducted by the FBI at Waco in Texas in 1993 against the Branch Davidian religious community. The piece involved taking the audience on 3 coaches to a remote sports stadium in Essex and blasting them with bright light and 110 decibels of strange,
annoying sounds and dialogue. The project was funded by the Arts Council and hosted by the ICA in London. So far there have been two articles in the Guardian and another in the Belgian paper De Morgen. A feature is due out imminently in The Times, and various art magazines are planning reviews. The audio was streamed live online: http://www.wacoreenactment.org/live/. He has also exhibited work in Berlin at ‘Sparwasser HQ’ gallery.
Raiford Guins co-edited, with Anne Friedberg, the ‘Televisual Space’ issue of the Journal of Visual Culture vol 3(2):. This was published in August. Raiford and Anne wrote the editorial essay, and the issue included Raiford’s essay ‘Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Video Games in Space’. Other articles included: “May I Invade Your Space?”: Evidencing the Presence of Video Games in Black Technocultural Production” for the AfroFuturism themed issue of Callaloo and “Surface Invasions: Friendly Pixels in the Periphery” – on the French artist known as “Invader” for the video game fanzine, 1-UP.
Helen Kennedy and Jon Dovey both had research leave to work on their book Game Cultures for the Oxford University Press. In May, they ran a research seminar at Bristol University entitled ‘The Ludological Turn’ which presented some of the work from the book on the influence of play and performance theory in contemporary studies of digital media, in general, and games, in particular.
Helen Kennedy and Seth Giddings co-wrote ‘Digital Games as New Media’, a chapter for Rutter & Bryce (eds) Understanding Digital Games, Sage: forthcoming.
In June, Helen was invited speaker at the first UK International ‘Women in Games’ in Portsmouth, where she presented a paper entitled ‘Interventions and Recuperations: Visions of Hope and Some Harsh Realities.’ She is on a steering committee to organise and coordinate an annual ‘Women in Games’ event. She has also written up part of her PhD research – “‘Psycho Men Slayers’ – Illegitimate, Monstrous & Out there: Female Quake Clans and Inappropriate Pleasures” as a chapter for a book entitled Feminism in Popular Culture edited by Joanne Hollows & Jacinda Read.
Seth Giddings’ video essay ‘Circuits’ was also presented at Digital Generations: children, young people and new media conference, Institute of Education, July 2004. He was invited to screen it at a number of other conferences and events: The State of Play conference, University of Northumbria, January 2004; ScreenPlay festival, Nottingham Trent University / Broadway cinema, February 2004; Digiplay 4: teaching with, learning from, computer games, Institute of Education Jan 2005 (series organised by ESRC/CRIC University of Manchester). Seth was also invited by the Internet art organisation Low-Fi to compile a ‘guest list’ selection of net art projects. ‘Game/Art/Worlds’ then is an annotated list of net art and science projects linking games, art, and artificial life. At http://www.low-fi.org
Our ‘associate scholar’ Rune Klevjer has returned to Bergen in Norway but continues to contribute to the Powerup blog and we are discussing future collaborations.
Helen Kennedy and Seth Giddings will be running a new MA module ‘Game Culture’ this year. This module will form an integral part of the new MA New Media to start in 2005.
Future plans include:
A series of seminars supporting the MA Game Culture module
A one-day conference with invited speakers on theorising and studying videogame players, in conjunction with the School’s Research Forum
Discussions are underway with Spike Island for a games / modding / art exhibition in the near future.
