Diolch yn fawr iawn am wylio'r fideo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, yeah. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another session of the Expanded Animation Symposium. The next 19 minutes will comprise two talks dealing with the topic Games and Art, where play and digital space are examined from an artistic perspective. The first talk will be held by Margarete Jamann. She is a Lattic artist and a media theorist, a professor and head of the department of experimental game cultures at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In her talk, hybrid Lattic assemblages, Margarete Jamann will focus on the conscious change of established game dynamics in LADDIC arrangements between human and non-human actors. So without further ado, please welcome Margarethe Yaman with a warm applause. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael Lachis, for the kind introduction. And also to the introduction and also to the Expanded Animation Symposium in general for the possibility to show a talk and several exchanges on the topic of games and art. And I'm announced as an artist and scholar in games and expanded games, so to say, but I'm also focusing on experimental game cultures, also in academia as professor for the new study department with the same name at the University of Applied Arts. So this is a bit to expand also my introduction, that there is a context also with the exchange among different institutions with the FH Hagenberg and for the initiators of this symposium. Thank you very much for this opportunity to get into a deeper networked exchange on topics of the experiment with LUDUS, the game. That's why I say LUDic, your pronunciation is better than mine, Michael, I always call it ludic, because ludus, the Latin term, shows us this hybrid ludic play. It's the ludic something where playfulness is inherent. This image that you see here was the kick-off of the first year of the study department where we have now a virtual walk through the environment of PSK of a former saving banks in Vienna which is a Gesamtkunstwerk of Otto Wagner which is the home of our study department but it also shows the hybrid ludic assemblage, the play and combinatory forms of hybrid objects that deal with nature and the deeper understanding of the world. In the base you already see now installation from Marlene Mautner decolonizing the decolonized Mars. It is using AI generated environment where the textures mirror the interface. So this is also a 3D interface where the audience interacts with a physical gesture with the environment and also a retro bacteria play a role in this environment where the bacteria change later on the environment of a fictional planet B let's say on Mars but they don't want to colonize it wants to decolonize how is it possible maybe with a sound environment that is from Sebastian Schultz another student who is actually now doing a piece together with a writer Bobby Markovitch you see her in the virtual PSK in this work walkthrough of the saving banks Hall which is transparent like a spaceship so this is really mirroring our real space going into the texture of Malini again a collective playable environment also and they made an audio piece with a connection to different topics, clouds. So GPD2 generated cloud animators that mirror also certain developments on the planet, but in physical space and in virtual space, with bacteria resistance and a hybrid interface. That's the hybrid ludic play, not only analog, physical, digital, but also the nature and environment. So a collective play through a prototype of the first year students of experimental game cultures something that I show as intro work from Daniela Weiss little you see with a mirror on the left and Maxim Sharpov modeling the Kreml seeing how hollow it is inside Daniela shows performances in real space where she walks through environment with a mirror on her face, where she mirrors reality with a simple analog mirror, but also with an augmented reality show and a museum, the artificial museum project that she also co-developed with Jascha Ehrenreich. The last statement I give to the to Bobby Markovitch, a writer of an interesting book she showed at the Ludwig Mettler Surrey, mirroring the Belgrade waterfront, which is more for virtual beings than for real humans. It only is for ideal people in Belgrade. Normal people cannot afford it. Only the successful blonde kids of some people, whom I don't know. Yeah. So you see mixing environments and mirroring realities, point one. This is part of the hybrid ludic assemblage. The concept of assemblage, it's not exactly what Manuel de Landa is writing, where he is referring also to an expanded Marxist concept that connects different social realities also with a natural reality. It also means the assemblage of situationism, dataism, of artistic strategies. This assemblage allows the connection of art, scientific approaches, and socially relevant action. In hybrid game assemblage, in prototypes of experimental game culture, we focus on the conscious exchange of established dynamics of world, of the game. I don't use the term mechanics, I use game dynamics because dynamics, a dynamic system is in a game, but it's also mirroring the world. It's also in a living system, in ludic arrangements between human and non-human actants. This is an interesting configuration, the actor network theory, the Ector Network Theory, the Ant Theory, where you have humans and non-humans. Who are these non-humans? It can be AI, it can be robots, but it can be also other non-human animals, livings, bacteria. What you want to see is a question. Where you want to go with that, the second one. So the preparation and the kickoff of the real space with the situative drone game that started in October last year. So we are very new at the Ange-Monte Vienna with that, where I'm usually curating pieces, facilitating pieces. I see some of the students also here. I will also show some works then. But this was the kickoff where we had a drone play. The idea was new students come, everyone gets a play drone, and there is only one rule in this Gesamtkunstwerk, take the drone, but don't touch the ceiling, and then improvise a situated game. Play with the situation and play with the space. Touching the Gesamtkunstwerk, don't touch the ceiling. And also what does it mean to look through a throne and to use the device of war as a toy. It was before the war started that we have now, but in June we did a second version of the drone game with drones and rabbits where we were taking up the topic to develop game changer concepts. Game changing is a word play, but game changer concepts are aimed to achieve with hybrid ludicrous assemblage. Processual play and epistemic objects form a new method of inquiry. So the process of play is also a method to question, to question realities and to question certain topics that you want. Play itself is a research method in times of global challenges especially. The ludic method, as I call it, sheds light on dynamic change because we deal with complex, very subtle dynamic systems, both in politics, as in nature, as in life, as in play. There is a link for this free play within science and society that opens economic zero-sum games. Because very often an aim is a zero-sum game. In the end, the winner takes it all. If somebody wins, somebody has to lose. What happens if we want to introduce different forms of economics, of economic play. We say equilibrium. That is possible also in Wirtschaftstheory, in economic theories, in mathematical game theories. The Nash equilibrium was introduced quite early, but nobody took up other Wirtschafts economic theories. There was only one capitalist logic that is mirrored in, I'm looking forward to Isabelle afterwards, in the non-colonial, decolonial play mechanisms. That's what I want to touch also with this group of young artists that we start here to analyze. In this, we change the game rules in democratic negotiation into game changer concepts of cooperation and entanglement with matter. Sounds abstract, but you have seen an example already how we can connect with the matter, with living matter, the vibrant matter of everything, of a controller for example. A new experimental game culture explores, what do we explore? Rules of play. It develops artistic research systems of investigation and knowledge acquisition, an open-ended micro and macro cosmic dynamic that replaces game mechanics in the artistic research process. The fundamentals of perception, experience and cognition are equally considered as elements of fact-finding and forming essential questions on the condition of world and verträgliches Sein. I don't translate it as sustainability, as the term sustainability itself is problematic. Because sustainability means you regrow a wood because you need new trees to fire a steam engine. That's how the word sustainability was introduced in the 1900s as economic concept. That's why I use Verträgliches Sein, which means we understand each other's. Not sustaining necessarily a system that we don't want to have anymore or shouldn't have anymore at the time of Planet B again. A new angle on all these players is showed in this approach that I present here. The movie I'm showing now is a piece I did with Thomas Wagensommerer where we were using this location that we are having as home of our endeavor of the Experimental Game Cultures project. This is this Jugendstil saving banks and by flying over the photogrammetry we are using of course a ready-made photogrammetry of Google. So it's a question about using and using appropriated material. We aim here on certain keywords. At the same time, innovative game concepts and approaches shall be developed. Realities often need to collapse in order to further develop something in a historical societal context that cannot so quickly be changed but needs to be reflected to better understand this democratically shape these futures. Non-colonial play games, games for non-humans, developing content, and here this topic environment hits the reality, which is much more beautiful. This is the team of experimental game cultures at the moment. We started with a 3D scan of all the collaborators in the group, and each, I see Jogi Neufeld here, I see some of the team members as well. Every, each of you stated what is experimenting with game and cultures. What is it in terms of politics, economics and play? And why is this so central in the present time? So new forms of future society and politics might emerge with a very powerful tool that we all hold in our hands. Each of us becomes a game figure in this environment and has an iconic object that we associate with. And the film was also showed in Hellerau at the Hybrid Play Festival. So hybrid is a term very present in the last year, I noticed. Our way there is the game. So der Weg ist das Spiel. Our way to is the game, so der Weg ist das Spiel. Our way to achieve these interventions, these activist points, is the game itself, and to develop new artistic and playful concepts. So what does it mean if we are all scammed into our avatar that is linked to our body? These are topics that I also want to discuss with the colleagues. If we excuse me, are we human then anymore? What does it mean if we mirror ourselves in reality and merge with our fictional avatars? It's very interesting that there is a quest for consistency often also because you want to be sure, for sure you want to be safe in a virtual environment. What does it mean if I'm really linking it to the real names, to the real bodies? Is this necessary? Is this derivative to a more of this freedom not even better if we are those prosumers? I stop here and go to the next thing, what we do. So after one year, the first year, what I did, I was entering the Kassenhalle again with a PhD student of mine, with Sarko Aleksic, a young writer and emerging artist from Zagreb, and we were doing nothing. Zero actions in the saving banks, a sweet little do-nothing performance without rules in unconscious and unintentional, passive, ludic, neuromatic art. A simultaneous hyperscan with the EEG, the electroencephalogram, was part of the game device, of the performative device. So you see the space itself becomes a game space. We are lying a bit, mirroring, I don't know, Abramovich performance or so, looking to each other in different positions. Of course, hierarchy empowered. Is it the PhD student? But is he the artist mirroring me or what position I am there lying down on the bed? And then also seeing the unintentional micro-movements of the feet, of the heart, and do we synchronize with our brain activity if we are lying there? The configuration was monitored. What you see here is then the activity, the brain activity of the two curves. And if certain areas of the cerebral activity are synchronizing, so I also synchronize different areas of my brain. But I also connected certain moments. So that's the same moment here, with the brain of the other protagonist, of the other player, with a, that's called a passive interface. You have seen some of these brain computer interfaces are passive interfaces. I think that's an interesting concept. It was developed together with Stefan Glashauer, a neuroscientist at the BTU Cottbus, so computational neuroscientist at the BTU Cottbus, a computational neuroscientist professor who was writing the visualization and analyzing the big amount of data that we also connected here. But it is a low interaction game. It only has the minimal interaction of starting being there. And then also that's what speculators do in the saving banks, doing nothing. That's what speculation is. And that's what's the symbolic statement in the saving bank, in the place where we have the hybrid ludic assemblage, where you have nature games beyond commercial games industries experimenting with world and reality, with the economic, biologic concepts and also with game changer concepts where we want to focus on an empathic living together. At the moment with the same title there is a show at the Parallel Art Fair, if you're still in Vienna, the students are showing pieces there, where the hybrid ludic assemblage is essential, at the Semmelweis cleaning, which is a Semmelweis, Ignaz Semmelweis was developing also concept of antiseptics, it was very important for the birth giving because the women died because they didn't know about the antiseptic thing. And that's what Semmelweis was changing. And in this Semmelweis clinic, we have no installation. A birth clinic is giving place to the Vienna Art Fair parallel and also to the nascent experimental game cultures out of the young colleagues there. So you see some of the pieces I mentioned already. You see the little system collective, the mirror on the wall. What is the future of us all? That's an augmented reality piece on the left hand where she analyzes what is the future of us all. A game over replay is a virtual voting system asking visitors to predict future. Check out the virtual reality. It's a very interesting piece. Also, I picked out the water bottle dream from Adrian Heim. It is a mixed machine in a digital game. The work focuses on the impossibility of imagining an alternative world in the current historical situation. That is something that is described also in Capital Realism. Adrian is also a member of the Total Refusal group, showing here also at the Ars Electronica. I mentioned already the erythrobacteria piece, but here you see it's not only a virtual piece, this is a symbolic piece mixed with a machinima. You have a water bottle standing there exemplarily for water as a problem. You press the game button. Press X to change the water. Press X to change the water. The water will be changed after 4 minutes and 12 seconds. This is the artificial museum, the game over replay of Lito. So the art fair visitors, not knowing that they are in a game environment, but then knowing if they also see the lunar lander, again, Mars lander. The Mars escape is very present here. But yeah, it is a topic that you have at the end of times to escape the planet, very obviously. So before you enter this installation, we have a Kopfgeld installation, also a bit announcing the learning mechanisms or the deep learning mechanisms. It is a face recognition system, which I set up with the research group that we call Neuromatic Game Arts group. It is about eigenfaces, the Mittelwert image, the eigenface is calculated out of all visitors. It were over a thousand visitors at the Parallel 2019, this inspired us for the piece where we generate a new image, a new image of all visitors, a fake face, so to say. It resembles the ludic eigenface, transfers into score, it resembles the visitor, but it is fictionally made, so it's not the real visitor. visitor, but it is fictionally made, so it's not a real visitor. It is like an AI method that you compile of a database an artifact that resembles a reality. So we also cannot be really sued for taking the images of visitors, but if somebody does, it would be very good, then we would have some publicity. On the other hand, the ludic eigen face is transferred into a score. The score is derived from the face of the visitor, from the art collector. The score is then calculated into euro and then with the life currency of bitcoin. And this is the price that the visitor can pay for the art pieces. So you are paying anyway with your face and then you pay whatever is your score. So your reward is that you are allowed to pay a certain amount of bitcoins. That's the installation view. You check out, you see it resembles my face. Probably it's not really me, but it's my eigenface. It's the middleware images. And you are mixed with a database of AAA game characters. So the faces you are rendered out are not only visitors, art collectors, but also AAA game characters. art collectors but also AAA game characters. They give the prize of pieces from the students exhibiting in this environment. So that is the aspect of the critical view on games where the neuromatic game art research labs is exemplary to develop these not expanded but deep animations with neural interfaces as source and constant feedback tool or toy. We aim to introduce game changer games. I give to you also this invitation with an image of Clementina Ristova. She has an installation about skins and the skins also as a, and the skins in games, as a form of prejudice, as a form of discrimination. I give it through the audience and you can take one afterwards. She is present as well here, so Klimantina, she's going to explain some of these works if you want to know more about it. We think hard and reflect deeply also in live sessions at art contexts, like this performance with the pink noise brain jam session to see something of my background. There are also pink noise is a term that is like white noise or grey noise, pink noise has a science fiction connotation at the Vienna Art Week last year where we also mirror the reflection as visual material. So this is the direct visual feedback to the interface of optimizing and analyzing yourself. What does it mean if I have the impression that I can measure and optimize also my very deep inner thoughts and self with neurointerfaces that are available for consumer markets? That's a vibrant question to see all the interfaces at the brink. It's such a vibrant question to see all the interfaces at the brink. And the point here was that this is based on a comm-stemmed series, as not only performative settings, as we had lockdown. Here I'm washing the electrodes at the end. This is a beautiful wet electrode, which is different to other electrodes that you cannot wash. And it is a reference to the WEC, to the Women's Action Coalition, where you are doing like housework, sustainable work, washing electrodes. That's what the PhD students normally do, I do it at the performance myself. And it gives a very good sound. This is broadcasted and you are forced to listen to that if you check the broadcast of the Noromatic Game Art Channel. We did Noromatic Chess Madness with student participation with Regina Teisel-Bocorner. Regina is a grandmaster and she was playing a European grandmaster of chess and she was playing against 24 players simultaneously and we were changing a film about chess madness from 1924 with the data of the player Enrique Torres who founded the Entstehung einer künstlerischen Tatsache he is also a student at the Angewandte but an initiator of an art science program in Jena. He played against her and 24 other players with him. And they not only played, they were shifting the rules of a game that you... You cannot shift the rules of chess if you still want to play chess. But you can generate a movie while you play chess if you still want to play chess, but you can generate a movie while you play chess if you are equipped with the right attitude and the right interface, so to say. Generating mind clouds with electrodes, backgrounds of my mind cloud pieces, this I want to say is final statement i would say five okay so i'm good in time where um with mild cloud climate change last year in june at the angewamte festival before the experimental game culture started i did a meditation in the office it still was locked down but i could generate certain number of clouds following the alpha beta gamma, gamma, delta, theta frequency bands in like different rainbow colors. It was bright months also of the clouds I generated in the performance in my office. So that was an office performance. But it could be transferred into public spaces, also problematic public spaces. I finish with the mind cloud clearing in times of war and peace, experiment in March, shown at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and also referring to the fog of war that Clausewitz is mentioning. As soon as war breaks out, everything is indeterminate. This nebulous inter-terminacy is in the challenge to which we must respond. It's what Alexander Kluge said on the 1st of March of this year. And at the Biennale de Havana, I started together with Stefan here, an installation with this interface with an Odra deck, an object that is animated. Franz Kafka introduced this. This is an object which gets life and this object, the copper sword helmet that we developed here with Talos Kedl, the fog, the clouds of war and physical realities that we are confronted with in a symbolic level. That is at the Fundación Ludwig de Cuba this year, where you see the public performance. I would love to show more art pieces to you from the students and colleagues, but I think more will come up. The exhibition at Parallel is still open. We connect also with mycelium words. This is from Ramon Ijajal, a nerve cell, but it also reminds me very much of a mycelium cell. That's why I overgrew the electrodes with mycelium of reishi fungus in the lab, in the office and we were also evaluating these signals that came out of the interfaces between life and death and that's what also fungi do, they are between life and death connecting the different hybrid play realities. Thank you for this collective performance watching. This is the performance at the Fetch Spielhaus Hellerau in October of the last year, where we started the MindCloud Copper Helmet meditations, I think. Here you can see the group more clearly. This is the audience trying to influence on stage the instruments. And I would say, as a tribute to Laurie Anderson, as a tribute to Laurie Anderson who saw yesterday the presentation of a vocoder performance that I had there last year. In October. Now, Bob clouds the roof. This is an instruction for the man in the back. Thank you. Mind cloud growing, MindCloud clearing, the global LudiGuard is critical reflection, animation, and ambiguity as a quality in play. A new understanding of the global challenges of our time can emerge out of it. Thank you so much. Yeah. of it. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, Margarete, for this inspiring talk. We have now a couple of minutes for questions. Yeah, so are there questions from the audience? Please raise your hands if you have one. Please raise your hands if you have one. Okay, I have a question. In the meantime people can think about other questions. What I was thinking about since you mentioned this kind of EEG, these brain interfaces, and you mentioned that they enable some kind of passive interaction. So how do you... As I see it, this kind of passive interaction entails a little bit of lack of control. So there are certain signals that you cannot perfectly control. Do you see all the dangers behind this? So when the user, so to say, or the player doesn't have the full control over a game, or how do you see this kind of situation when you're using some kind of a brain interface? Yeah, that's an interesting take, I would say. Let's get ludic with the experimental EEG. Showing the EEG again, it entails some possibilities if we have these passive interfaces it teaches us something I had to learn when doing these installations that I cannot control what happens really that's the wrong I have to say it's the wrong approach trying to move a ball with the EEG why should to move a ball with the EEG. Why? Why should I drive a plane with the EEG? There is also a project which is doing that. It is much better to understand that even if I cannot control and if the aim is not to control an environment, then I can also learn there is a different approach to reality, a different approach to human brainwaves, and to the connection to lay down, to reflect, and that you don't always need to control environment. You need to become aware of it. And it looks like a state of meditation because it partly is a state of meditation. That's why I walk in the wood with the EEG. No, it's no danger, it is a potential that you understand that you are not following the command, control, communication guideline. Not necessarily if you want to change an attitude to the world. We don't have to change the world all the time. There are many interesting examples that you utilize this piece of technology. That is working. Any other questions? So can I follow on your thought maybe that lack of controllers may be not a game anymore. So you have interesting performances, but I'm wondering when you say maybe not a game anymore. So you have interesting performances, but I'm wondering when you say this is a game and this is a performance, is it the same for you? Because I think lack of control is no game. It's a strategy, some scores or something. Well, I would say there is a tendency also, low interaction games. They are really entering the markets. There's a reason for it. Because we want to change the pressure of you submit, you are, you prosumer, you upload. It's no more a game, but it's for sure an experimental game or a ludic intervention. That's why I was so much worth playing also with it. It's not the same, but it's not also just the performance. It is having more rules and dealing with the rules. And having this experience, what does it mean if I follow a rule, I can gain something sometimes, and it still is playable. I don't agree that art and games necessarily means that I can no more play. Yeah? Also, this, I'm not... If people say, oh, it's not playable. Okay, it's art. No, that's not the case No, it's not the case. It's playing with the game system, but you're right It's no more a game in the sense of achieving that goal in that way. It has a new way of achieving some things But not only about interaction. Interaction doesn't necessarily reflect the rules so much that you give. So it's a bit therefore hybrid. It has, interaction doesn't necessarily need the dynamic or does it? Does it need that? It's an open question. We can discuss, you're right. But a bit more focus on the dynamic of getting deeper into the dynamic. Expanding the interaction maybe, expanding the animation maybe. Thanks, yeah. I think one more. I was wondering, a few of the projects that you showed had a bit of a lo-fi, sort of low-poly aesthetic, the student projects. I was wondering if there was any artistic intent behind that that you could care to explain. Yeah, maybe Clementina you want to explain? I think she should say something to it. Do you hear me? Okay, so on one hand, many of us started without any previous experience with game engines. And just for a year, we already were able to create games and play with the interactions and be able to program them. And when you're trying to learn how to use game mechanics, sometimes the very hyper-realistic aesthetics are not your purpose because you're trying to achieve some sort of interaction and follow your concept rather than creating a beautiful image, if that makes sense. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Clementina. At least Clementina's is very much dealing with not polygon surfaces, so it's much advanced. It is not, if you are asking, it's not a given that I would say or somebody else, polygon is the thing to go. Because this is also a tendency. I love the pixel aesthetics, of course, because you feel cozy at home. I feel cozy at home. I don't know. Okay, maybe that's a question then of your personal history also, but it's not like a program. As Clementina said, I would support it. It is like a secondary question. The aesthetics that suits your purpose best would be the answer. But you like it, the pixel aesthetics, personally? Right. I agree with you. Okay, thank you. I think we have another question. Yeah. I'm Alexandro. I think we have another question. Yes. I'm Alexandro. I was curious. It's here. So you showed at the end of the presentation some performances, I think, where the EEG headset was used on not on the head. I was curious if you could explain or what's the meaning or the purpose of this? The one not on the head or those on the head? Not on the head. Of course, it's playful, but what's the meaning? Or what would we get out of it? Yeah. Stefan? So this is the neuroscientist answering. To a certain extent it's a kind of a repurposing of a device. So you have a device which is made for use, to be used to record brain waves, but you can also use it for other things. You put it on something else, you try to influence it with your hands, basically with the magnetic fields that are created by your hands, so you can turn it into a different thing. You are repurposing it. So that's the kind of thing which we wanted to do. We wanted to see what comes out of it if you put it. We tried to put it on a plant, for example. We wanted to try to see what does it do. But is it like a special meaning in EEG? Why not use specific? Because it's about electric potentials. And I'm curious if you relate this type of work with some neuroscience studies, like doing fMRIs on dead fish and showing significant results. I think there's one also on EEG with spinach or something. That could be. I know the study from the fMRI with the dead fish, of course. Yeah. It was not the primary intention here, but it is one of the intentions here also to show that if you do that EEG stuff, you're not always recording brainwaves of course. You're recording a lot of other things too. So you're recording muscle activity, you are recording other kind of artifacts, so all that stuff which you actually don't want to use, but in this art context you can use it again. In this art context it's something different. You don't have to rely on just recording brainwaves. You can do something else with it. Yeah, so thefact becomes an artefact. You are factoring out as scientists and working with, even with fMRI and the electrodes, you are factoring out artefacts. Artefact is the term for disturbances in all the data. You have to get rid of the artefacts in the data. And here in the art context we have the neuromatic game art research group. We work with the artefacts in the data. And here in the art context, we have the neuromatic game art research group. We work with the artefacts, so also with the noise and the muscle data, etc. And of course, you're right, we could have used other electrodes, but it was symbolic using this expensive EEG data also on a symbolic level, which is meant to analyze brain data. Stefan is working also with dead fish brain, yes, but it was not about this as a core topic. It was about this intervention to develop a sort of a play with a scientific instrument that has a meaning for us. I was criticized and attacked at the last art fair when I was showing this, I didn't show the whole installation, but we made a physical game over three spaces, over three rooms, where you had the first room, a measurement, and then it was used as a stimulus, the face, with an oddball experiment, so it was a game of prejudice if your brain would react to a strange face, to an AI face, or a real face, but I was accused, do you have a neuroscientific degree, are you allowed to use that? I was at the post-gradual school at the LMU Munich at the Neuroscience Institute, but I don't have a neuroscientific degree. I collaborate with neuroscientists. I had Sarah Sharizian. She was doing the experiment at the last art fair. But it is a symbolic artifact, that object also that we use. That's why we use it. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the question. Thank you for your input. I feel we are now out of time. I really like this vivid discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you, Margarete, one more time for this cool talk. Thanks. Okay. We get to our next talk in the Games and art session. This talk will be held by Isabelle Aruera, a French artist and curator whose research focuses on the interaction between art and video games. And in her talk, Reoccupy the Digital Space, she introduces games as a tool to criticize games themselves and to raise awareness on post-colonial political and social issues. Thanks. Merci. Je suis Isabelle Harvey, je suis curateur d'art et de jeux. Et aujourd'hui, je vais parler de l'idée de réoccuper le espace digital. Et je suis vraiment heureuse d'être ici et merci à Jürgen pour m'inviter à l'expansion de l'animation. for inviting me at Expanded Animation, because for me, to be part of the digital art mecca is really important when you speak about the idea of reoccupying the digital space. So just to give you a little bit of context, in the 90s, while I was discussing with teenagers, they told me that they were dreaming in video games, that they loved so much video games that they would prefer to live inside games. And when I heard that, I realized that games were a very serious matter and that if they were able to shape our imaginary, they would be also able to manipulate people's mind. So from that time, I started to highlight and promote alternative, artistic, and more experimental games in order to show the other side of video game production, aside from the big names, the big AAA games industry. And that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years, mostly in Europe, in the US, in Canada, in Australia, and showing content from the same part of the world. And also I'm known for my interest into machinima. I gave a lot of machinima workshops around the world. And while I was traveling, more I saw that everywhere in the world, we were playing the same big name of games, the same AAA games. So that's why, to celebrate my 20 years as an art and game curator, I decided to start an art and game world tour in the Global South. It was in 2019. And the idea was to meet and interview game makers and artists who are using games as a medium in global South countries with a focus on female, queer, feminist, and decolonial practices. So so far, I've been in Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, India, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, then in Nigeria. And I was in Ghana when the pandemic started, so I succeeded to pass to Togo. And then I did a project in Kenya and then in Senegal, where I've been most of my time this year. Along my journey, I gave a lot of lectures, machinima workshops, whereutilisais les jeux que j'ai rencontrés pendant ma journée pour travailler sur l'interculturel storytelling et aussi pour disséminer au long du chemin et promouvoir les jeux expérimentaux et alternatifs au monde entier et aussi games around the world, and also to have the chance to meet creatives during the workshop. So why the colonial perspective? The global gaming market is still very dominated by the US, Europe, and Japan. And so my idea in adopting the colonial perspective was in order to promote works conceived at the periphery of this global and globalizing culture, in order to allow us to immerse ourselves in other types of representation, cities, landscapes, stories, cosmogonies, also conceived and expressed, not all the time, but in other languages. So my point was to accompany and to promote the emergence of a market of contents from the global source, which is a recent phenomenon, let's say pouvons parler des derniers 10 ans, qui est lié au rythme du téléphone et de l'Internet, mais aussi grâce à une très grande population jeune dans les pays de la source globale. Grâce à cela, de nouvelles voix émergent et sont capables de réapproprier les narratifs sur eux-mêmes afin de ne plus être un contexte exotique, mais plutôt leur propre dénonciation de leur représentation. Donc, très rapidement, les arts et jeux du monde 2 en numéros. J'ai déjà dit que je suis allée So very quickly, the Art and Game World Tour in numbers. I already said that I went in 15 countries. In every country I visited, I did around 20 to 30 interviews. So, so far, I encountered more than 300 persons. I wrote articles, gave machinima workshops, conferences, but also curated exhibitions. The last one was in Nairobi, in Kenya, where I showed only VR experiences and games from the African continent. I also tried to do artistic collaborations, because the idea was also to find other ways to exchange and to work with local artists. So I was VJ, showing games in another type of context. And lately, I did a collaboration with a game designer in Senegal. And I'm just back from it two days ago. L'année dernière, j'ai fait une collaboration avec un designer de jeux au Sénégal, et je suis juste de retour depuis deux jours. Et nous travaillons sur un film en 3D qui s'appelle Virtual Tree, et il s'agit des pouvoirs supernaturaux et médicaux des arbres. Donc, en parlant de Planète B, il y a beaucoup de choses là-bas. Donc, l'objectif est de pouvoir créer un autre type de cartographie de jeux de l'art et des jeux de l'art queer, féministes et décoloniales, et de souligner les territoires négligés, et d'identifier et valoriser les circulations culturelles, sociales et économiques et les transferts, et à créer un corpus de réseaux de jeux vidéo créés au sud. Alors, reprenons le domaine des arts et des jeux numériques. Je dirais que nous assistons à un contre-attaque des minorités space. So I would say that we assist to a counter-attack of the minorities which paves the way to a reappropriation of the image and of the representation and the identities. And thanks to that it counters the screen globalization of a globalized imaginary. I take cette idée de Joseph Tonda, qui est sociologue de Brazzaville. Au lieu de parler de la société du spectacle, c'est aussi un moyen de décoloniser la pensée. Cette décolonisation de l'imaginaire invite une nouvelle génération de créateurs de jeux et de digitales à questionner d'autres cosmologies and cosmogonies. And I will try to show you some games that are mixing supernatural and everyday life, because fantasy is not only from the West. There are also other des fantasies possibles de l'extérieur. Je vais commencer avec un jeu créé par Daniela Fernandez, argentinienne, mais aussi descend of the Guaranis, who are an indigenous population in the north of Argentina, but also in Brazil. And she wanted to do an autobiographic game about her family, her ancestors. And she says that all the creation comes from her dreams, and also that her ancestors are talking to her through her dreams. And that's where the que toute la création vient de ses rêves et que ses ancêtres parlent de lui-même à travers ses rêves. C'est là que les inspirations viennent. Vous parliez de non-humains. C'est aussi une discussion avec des non-humains. Daniela a aussi fait un autre jeu, plus récemment, Light Axe Eye. And she refers to the Toba mythology. Actually, it's a platformer game that she did around the story of the Black Tree. And the Black Tree in the Toba mythology had to be climbed by shamans in order to save and to help their community. So in Laidak Sai, Laida wants to become a shaman in order to be able to find a way to save her village from a very, very strange disease. It was done during the pandemic, sauvait son village de la très, très étrange maladie. C'était réalisé pendant la pandémie, donc nous pouvons aussi, de quelque façon, lier le jeu au contexte. Dans la même idée, j'aimerais introduire the game Huni Queen that was done by Guilherme Pinho Menenés with the Huni Queen who lived in Brazil. And for me what is interesting is that, again, Huni Queen are not the context of the game, but it's really a game done by the persons themselves. So they did the drawings. All the stories were written by them. They also played the music. And it's not only about doing a game with Huni-Quen, but it was also part of a larger project in order to sustain the Uniqloin and to avoid too much deforestation and extractive economy. Still in Brazil, I had the chance to meet Ricardo Ruiz, who did a very interesting project, again in terms of the process of how it was done. Contos de Ifa is about all the Yoruba deities, the beliefs imported by the slaves from West Africa in Latin America. And when I say that the process was quite interesting, this game, which is an online game, was done during workshops mixing elderly people, talking about their beliefs, the Yoruba deities. qui mélangeaient des gens âgés qui parlaient de leurs croyances, des déities de Yoruba, et de l'ancestralité. Et puis les jeunes faisaient le jeu après. Et je pense que c'est assez intéressant en termes de processus de travail. Encore au Brésil, et encore Brazil and still about the Yoruba deities, I met a group of students from the Alumbi Morumbi University in Sao Paulo. And they were also working on jeu d'Ifa. Le Ifa est... Comment dire? C'est... D'accord, je ne me souviens plus du mot en anglais. De toute façon... Donc, ce jeu est... Donc, ce jeu est... C'est un... Non, mais ça ne me vient pas. Donc, c'est un jeu qui est plus proche de Metroidvania. Et cette fois, les étudiants, seulement quelques-uns étaient afro-descendants, donc ils sont allés à une maison de Candomblé pour produire le jeu. Mais l'objectif était aussi de Afro-descendants, so they went to a house of in order to produce the game. But the aim was also to make more known these beliefs. So the idea also behind the reoccupying the digital space is to propose other type of gameplays, which are less about confrontation and competition, but more about collaboration and maybe the idea of symbiosis with different forms of life and collective sharing of different modes of reality. et la partage collective des modes de réalité différents. Mais aussi, de voir d'autres types de corps femmes, moins gendrés et plus sexualisés, moins violents, et plus de personnages féminins. Je vais commencer par le jeu Awa, Je vais commencer par le jeu Awa, qui est en développement par le studio Kaifo au Sénégal, qui est un jeu basé sur la cosmologie des Serres. Les Serres sont une des populations principales, ils ont fond founded Dakar. And their cosmology is really related to the stars. And Awa, the main character, has to fight in between the bad and the good. And also, when I talked with the script of the scriptwriter of the game, she said that she really wanted to represent a character that is not, let's say, too gendered and not sexualized at all. And also like a common woman who is trying to do her best to help, again, her village. Everyone is losing. In Kenya, something interesting, there are like two trainings for games. One is at the Kenyan Technical University. And from what I saw, the curriculum is quite focusing on cultural and political project. And I met Agnes Ndewa, who was working on Lika the Journey. And the idea is to raise awareness on woman conditions, first in Maasai tribes, but also in other different cultures in Africa. So this game is about excision, but also the condition of women. And it's also still in development. And again, with a main character, female game character, I interviewed Lomé Studios à Madagascar. Je n'étais pas capable d'y aller. Ils ont produit le jeu D'Ahalo. C'est un jeu basé sur des vérités. Il y a un énorme problème avec les Zébou Zivs au sud de l'île. Maintenant, c'est presque devenu un guerre civil Zebu Zivs in the south of the island. Now it's almost becoming a civil war, and the villages are destroyed. And when I asked them why they choose the female character, they told me that most of the men are dead, and now it's the women who are defending the villages. And also they told me, so it's a team of four persons. They wanted to do a triple A game, but maybe there weren't enough people to succeed. So they also told me that they put a lot of attention on the body and on the representation of this main character because they really wanted to make a change because most of the time, as you know, in mainstream games, we have big tits, but it's changing, hopefully. It's not only about raising awareness on political or social issues, but also on environmental issues. And it goes very well with the green gaming movement that is somehow rising nowadays. rising nowadays. Maybe it's about greenwashing, but still it's quite interesting because there are more and more call to actions in the favor of the environment inside game. So in some part of the global sauce, games are dealing also with the question of the environment. And I also think that games are a good tool to raise awareness on the idea of to desalinate and to rehabilitate the history. And not the story of the winners, but the stories of those who lived the event and are now able to tell them. pas la histoire des gagnants, mais celle des personnes qui ont vécu l'événement et qui peuvent maintenant leur raconter leur histoire. Mais pour pouvoir raconter d'autres histoires, la chose à se rappeler, c'est que la plupart Remember, most of the game engines, like if we think about Unreal or Unity, as most of the games are done in some part of the world, if we think about the assets libraries, most of them are dealing with Western representation and Western history. So when you want to create a game outside of this world, avec la représentation et l'histoire occidentale. Quand vous voulez créer un jeu à l'extérieur de ce monde, vous devez, je ne sais pas si ça existe en anglais, réinventer le pouvoir, parce que vous devez créer tout de suite. Quand je suis allée à Lagos, au Nigeria, j'ai rencontré Ushena, qui voulait travailler pour tous les autres designers de jeux en créant, avec la photogrammétrie ou les scans 3D, beaucoup d'assets liés à la culture africaine. Mais si on pense à ça, et si vous voulez, par exemple, scanner en 3D une sculpture ou un masque, la plupart du temps vous ne pouvez pas faire cela, parce qu'ils sont dans des musées européens et ils ne vous permettent pas d'avoir accès à ces artefacts. C'est donc une question plutôt politique. Aujourd'hui, Hushena fait de l'animation et du design de jeux, mais à l'époque, il pensait que c'était important de développer des assets pour d'autres personnes. On peut revenir au Brésil. Je vais citer Jamila Ribeiro when she said that it would be quite interesting if the history of slavery could be told from another point of view, and not from the one who conquered, but from the one who had to live with the situation. So this game, Angola Janda, is made by a duo, they are in Sao Paulo, and it's based on the book Angola Janga, a story of palmares. And it tells a story of these slaves who escaped from the plantation and went to the Quilombos, some villages. And the idea is also to represent the slaves not as victims, but also as heroes, and to change the perspective and to change the narrative. et changer la narration. Pour désaliener et changer le point de vue, quand je suis allée à Dakar, j'ai rencontré le studio Amani Renas. Ils travaillent actuellement sur un jeu VR, Langaburi, qui signifie « Dans le monde de la chute et de la mort ». working on the VR game Langaburi, which means in Wolof, hide and seek. And this game is happening on the island of Gorée, where you have the house of slaves. And it's all about the story of slavery. But this time, it's not told again by the conqueror, but it is totally inspired by true stories. Actually, one of the art directors of this game still has a good voice and her head and everything. So she's able to tell all the stories from the colonization, from the post-colonial era. And so this time, it's not the big story, but all the little stories that made the story. pas la grande histoire mais toutes les petites histoires qui ont créé l'histoire. Et c'est lui qui m'a dit que ce proverbe africain « Jusqu'à ce que les lions auront leurs propres historiens, les histoires de chasse ne peuvent seulement chanter la glorie du chasseur. C'est la même chose. En Ghana, il y a un des premiers studios de jeux. Je crois que Leti Arts était le premier studio de jeux en Afrique. Il a été fondé par Eran Aaron Tawa and another person in Kenya. And they are producing a franchise, Africa's Legend. And when I met Aaron Tawa, he told me that when he was a kid, he was really into Marvel heroes and into comics. But then he decided that maybe it was time to invent and to create heroes that wouldn't be linked to American culture, but based on African history and mythology and cosmology. And so, for example, here you have a character that he's wearing kente. And very often when we speak about African material, fabric, the wax, actually it's not African because it's made in Holland. la fabrication, le mouillage, en fait ce n'est pas africain, parce que c'est fait en Hollande. Donc, Kente est une fabrication ghanéenne, donc c'est assez intéressant. Et puis, ils ont créé les héros basés sur la culture messiaque, sur la culture zoulou, et ainsi de suite. Car, comme il m'a dit, les jeunes en Afrique ont vraiment besoin d'apprendre que c'est aussi possible d'être un héros, et d'avoir des histoires de succès. C'est donc l'un de ses objectifs. to be a hero there and to have success stories. So it's one of his aims. Then still in Ghana, I had the chance to meet Afrane Makov, who was at the art school of Kumasi at the time when I met him. And if we think about the planet B, in Ghana, you have the biggest e-trash. So he wanted to address that question by doing some mobiles like that from e-trash and electronics, defunct objects. And then he modellised these mobiles into 3D and he did like an AR, VR project and this one is a game in which you can wander it's more like an explorative game where you can meet and apprehend the story of these defunct objects où vous pouvez rencontrer et apprendre la histoire de ces objets défunts parce qu'ils sont intéressés par la relation entre les humains et leurs objets. Encore à Ghana, parce que nous sommes dans le planète B. J'ai documenté un jeu créé dans le cadre d'Enter Africa, un projet de l'Institut Goethe. Chronicles of Klinu est un jeu mobile géolocalisé que j'ai eu l'occasion de jouer. Nous sommes allés dans ce gros délire, is a geolocalized mobile game that I had the chance to play. So we went in this big e-trash. And they did a whole story about Klinu, who is a god who wants to save the planet from not to disappear. And so we went in this place. And the aim of the game is to raise awareness about the burdens of garbage and pollution. and yeah it was really an experience to be able to share this project with somehow this name is Prince Andrew who was the project manager of Chronicles of Klynum. In the Nairobi exhibition,,, I also presented this game, Semblance, I think. Yes. Oh, sorry. Yeah. No, it doesn't work anyways. I also presented that game, Semblance, that deals with African culture, nature, and also spirits, in which all the trees are portals. And in this platformer game, which où tous les arbres sont des portaux. Dans ce jeu de plateforme, qui est l'un des jeux qui a pu atteindre le marché global, on peut réformer tout. La gameplay est donc intéressante car on peut réformer soi-même et toutes les plateformes. reshape everything. So the gameplay is quite interesting because you can reshape yourself and you can reshape all the platforms. And finally, I will end with two other projects that are not games. But it's because I had this conversation with Pomplemousse, who is a creative from Dakar. When he told me that when I saw that Germans were modeling carapids, carapids is one of the main means of transportation in Dakar. So that's what you can see here. So when he saw that Germans were modeling carapids to put them on sale, he decided that it was urgent to reappropriate this space. And that's thanks to this interview that I wrote this paper about reoccupying the digital space. And that's him who toldhistoire de Linda Dunia, qui est encore dans Dakar, et qui a créé ce premier défilé NFT, il était en 2021. Son nom est CyberBat, parce que Bat signifie voix. Elle utilise les NFT pour trouver d'autres moyens de fondation voices. And she's using NFT in order to find other means of funding and access to the metaverse for African artists. So really, it's thanks to that interview that I had the idea of this text and paper. And I will end with a slide that could be a transition for the next talk, but Philippe Pasquier with a project that is really starting now in Senegal. The name is GRIN. And it's about gender and responsible artificial intelligence in Africa, made by African people for African people. So when we talk about decolonizing the digital space, it's quite interesting to see how initiatives like that are starting. And you can see behind an artwork generated by artificial intelligence made by Gbosama Gosa in Nigeria. en Nigeria. Donc, pour conclure, au lieu de demander plus de représentations dans les jeux de mainstream, je pense que c'est nécessaire pour nous, comme scolaires, nos entrepreneurs culturels, nos curateurs, de souligner le contenu produit dans la source globale pour mieux appréhender les réalités à l'extérieur du centre hégémonique produced in the global source in order to better apprehend realities outside the hegemonic center and global cultural imperialism in digital content and to be able to offer more diverse stories, representations of women, bodies, environment, and nature. And also, I didn't speak so much about it, but in order to occupy the virtual space, it's also interesting, and it's part of my current research, to mix ancestral knowledge and digital creation in order to allow different layers of realities and modalities of presence. Thank you. Thank you. et les modalités de présence. Merci. Merci Isabelle. Très intéressant discours. J'aime vraiment les exemples que vous nous avez donnés. Beaucoup de différents jeux de différentes cultures. Il y a beaucoup de choses que je n'ai pas entendues. Très bien. Est-ce qu'il y a des questions de l'audience? games from many different cultures. So there are lots of things that I haven't heard of. So very nice. So are there any questions from the audience? Yes, please. Hello. Thank you for absolutely wonderful content. I have a question. I have a question that is talking about knowledge, ways of knowing. Thinking about the ways of knowing, the sensing, the sharing, the being, what would you or what could you say about how the various cultures that you're encountering, how they are trying to create games which have already very stylized mechanisms, while bringing in ways of knowing and ways of experiencing that reflect their own sort of concepts and ways of being and knowing. Yeah, some people told me, oh, but why going on the direction of Western culture with doing games and digital games? But I do believe that we can use digital technologies in order to highlight some cultures and beliefs that have been invisibilized. And it's a good way to make them visible and also to be able to reach younger generation who are totally colonized, who don't speak their language anymore, who, for them, their culture is becoming a folklore and not their own. So the point is to use these technologies, but in order to reach a younger generation. And I'm thinking about, for example, a game that was made in Taiwan, Detention, that is dealing with, so it's a horror game, but it's dealing with white terror. And now it's used by educators in schools to help the new generation to understand how it was when Taiwan was not a democracy. So, and I just showed digital games, but of course there are like many, many board games that are produced and that are not like digital. So yeah, they try to imagine other type of gameplays, as I said, but still it's using the, I don't know if I answered your question. Sorry, I have the next one. answered your question. Sorry, I have the next one. First of all, also thank you so much for an amazing presentation. I want to play all of the games. I think I took a picture of every single slide you had. My question is maybe continuing a little bit from the previous question. The example you gave about the lack of non-Western focused asset libraries I thought really was so striking to me and made me also think that this may be a problem that is pervasive in a bigger sense that the computational logic of the game engines or of the workflows in the industry, all of them are not representative or maybe not aligned with the indigenous voices and ways of knowing or storytelling. So do you see as a longer term goal or development or need also something about a different type of software or approach to developing software or interfaces, interaction interfaces and things like that. Yeah, so I forgot to say that I'm currently doing a PhD on art and games decolonization. And through my encounters, I also try to see how we can decolonize the ways of representation. Because of course, each software comes with its own representation. And there are people who are working on maybe some kind of representation that are more linked to Asian culture, for example. So I couldn't show everything, and also I tried to show other types of games that I am showing in different conferences. But, for example, there is a game, Raji, made in India, which is really trying to show other types of representation. For example, of course, it's jeu hack'n'slash, mais il utilise les mandalas, mais aussi la façon circulaire de représenter les scénarios, et aussi la sculpture inverse. circular way of representing things, and also in vast sculpture. I was also talking with people in Korea and Taiwan about the fact that, for example, we come with the landscape and the portrait representation the landscape and the portrait representation in the Western culture, which is not linked, for example, to the fan that you can find in China. So I also met in Mexico, but his name I cannot remind it now, but a person who is also a descendant of indigenous population and who developed an operating system that wanted to be different. And his father also created the first computer, which was an answer or counter-answer to IBM or Apple. So of course, of course. And I had a discussion with someone, again, in India who was working on the game, but he was trained in the UK. And then when he did his first iteration of the game, he realized that he was totally colonized by his education. So he decided to totally deconstruct that. And then he redid a project with his mother, who is a dancer of traditional dance. And he created a project in between games and opera. So I would say, yes, it's the next step. We have time for one question. Yes, please. Do I speak up with that? OK. Thank you. Thank you for a really amazing talk. And you are like a walking companion compliment. It was really content that is important and I look forward to your written thesis as well. But this leads me also to one point. I'm very curious about the piece or the pieces you showed about Condomble and the Orishas in Brazil when I was doing my PhD on Art and Politics of Play. Iishas in Brazil. When I was doing my PhD on art and politics of play, I was also in Brazil. And I was participating at the Condomble ritual. And I was impressed by all the different Orishas, like a whole system of game characters also representing human needs, et cetera. And so thank you for your excellent answers already why it is important to use also digital games to connect these. My question would be here, do you know these games, are they also connecting to this kind of, again, performative practice of a,, as in real life in physical space? Are they connecting the hybrid? Are they connecting the hybrid? Are they connecting the digital games with the really lived experience of connecting with Orisha? Which you can. I don't know. I don't know if they are like for example, performances, playing with games and Orishas. I'm not aware of, but what I wanted to tell you is that when I arrived in Nigeria, which is where you have most of your Yoruba culture, not only in West Africa, I could only find a game about the Bible and how to win thanks to the Bible. But it is changing because I was there two years ago, and I know that they are now working on games more related to the culture. But I'm not aware of something that could. Then when I was in Lagos, I did a workshop and many people came, like game designers, architects, and even dancers, and one of them was really interested to make the connection between the game world and dance. And he's also into Yoruba culture. And he was working on a very interesting project that has nothing to do with games, but with decolonization. He was working on a database of dance movement, because dance movements are not protected. of dance movement, because dance movements are not protected. And it's also a lot about reappropriation. So it might come soon. KAMPUNG KAMPUNG Thank you.