Samstag 19.September 09, 19:00

Veranstaltungsreihe zur Theorie von Computerspielen 2009
im Museumsquartier / quartier 21 / Raum D, 1070 Wien

Die Vorträge finden im Raum D, dem Veranstaltungsraum des Quartiers für Digitale Kultur (QDK) am Ende der Electric Avenue statt.

Eintritt frei !
 

LIVE GAME CODE : NAKED IN PUBLIC

Heather Kelley (CAN)
computer and video game designer and interactive artist

Live Game Code is an ongoing project by Heather Kelley of Kokoromi to design and program small personal games in an open studio setting. Game making and code writing is mysterious to many people, and challenging to learn if you’re not (yet) a software engineer. Live Game Code exposes the artist’s self-education in software creation - its realities and absurdities - by making public the learning and coding process itself, through public acts of creation and symbolic visualizations of the process which are generated in real time, in the physical world and the digital realm.

In this lecture, Heather will present the results of Kokoromi’s Live Game Code: Love Letters project at the Montreal Biennial in May 2009, and introduce the second phase of the LGC project. In the first iteration of this performance-creation project, which took place inside a combined workshop and gallery space, the real-time analysis of the creation process was created using analog means only. For instance, pushpins and electrical wire attached to a tack board tracked the distracting use of social media, while toy cars were moved along an exposed pipe to represent the projects’ race toward completion. The current performance of Live Game Code debuts a suite of uniquely-created playful software-based data visualization applications. These animated and interactive analytical tools provide precision and automation, allowing for more detailed and nuanced visualizations of software events during the performance. While on one hand a richer and more precise visualization might afford new insights into the creative game-making process, on the other, every failure of the artist will be amplified and publicized to the visitors.

With the rise of digital distribution, the games industry, and especially the art game community, has seen a resurgence of the elite one-man game developer hacker held up as a romantic ideal of the artist. In the discussion of Live Game Code’s conceptual development, the lecture will serve as a philosophical and cultural examination of being a female game creator: an algorithmic ingénue and artistic generalist in the brave new world of indie art games.

 
 
Kurzbiographie

HEATHER KELLEY

Heather Kelley is moboid, a computer and video game designer and interactive artist. Her twelve-year career in the games industry has included AAA next-gen console games, smart toys, handheld games, serious games for behavioral change, and web communities for girls. Heather co-founded the experimental game collective Kokoromi in 2006 to champion games as an art form, and produces and curates the yearly GAMMA events to promote original indie games as creative expression in a social context. For seven years, Heather served as co-chair of the IGDA’s Women in Game Development Special Interest Group. Her sex game concepts Lapis and Our First Times won the 2006 MIGS Game Design Challenge and 2009 GDC Game Design Challenge, respectively. As moboid, she has created interactive video installations using game engines such as Quake and Unreal. She holds an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she is an alumna of the Advanced Communications Technologies Laboratory.

Die Veranstaltungsreihe wird durch die Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien und die Bundesstelle für die Positivprädikarisierung von Computer- und Konsolenspielen (BUPP) gefördert.