What role do videogames play in our lives today? As the boundaries between the virtual and the real blur more and more in the new gaming worlds we have come to inhabit, new conditions arise. Videogames encompass ideas, narratives, points of view and ideologies.
They form images, they develop new aesthetics and offer new ways of understanding. Videogames express and reflect todays world they are a part of it. New identities appear, new roles are defined, new mentalities are being born.
With the theme Gaming Realities Medi@terra 06 aims to explore the different dimensions and developments in the gaming fields and the impact they have on the different fields of society today. This years programme features the following activities and events
Conference Gaming Realities: the Challenge of Digital Culture
A 3 day conference with guest and participant speakers [game designers, artists, researchers, developers, journalists, writers, theorists] who are invited to adopt a stance and express their thoughts on the crucial issues and concerns about videogames today.
Key topics:
Gaming Identities * Gaming Worlds * Game politics * Gaming environments * Gaming Narratives * Gaming Technologies * Game as Art & Gaming Art
Keynote speakers:
Espen Aarseth – Matt Adams (Blast Theory) – Tom & Vicky Arundel (Introversion Software) – Adrian David Cheok – Julian Dibbell – Gonzalo Frasca – Margarete Jahrmann – Kristian Lukic – Frans Mayra – Micheal Mateas – Julian Oliver – Celia Pearce – Eric Zimmerman
Exhibition Alter Gaming
Game installations * Political games * Game mods * Text adventures * Game multiplayer environments * Machinimas * Sound based games
30 game projects by independent creators and artists from the international field that work on the new media and explore the possibilities given by the videogaming platforms. Different unseen sides of todays gaming realm are proposed with games characterised for their interdisciplinary character, the socio-political messages they convey, the technical and aesthetic innovations they introduce and the subversion of game standards imposed by the gaming industry.
Featuring games by:
Christoph Anthes – Blast Theory – Benjamin Chang – Dimi Christopoulos Devart – Eastwood Group – Sylvia Eckermann – Gerald Nestler – Christof Cargnelli – Oliver Irschitz Fiambrera – David Gauthier – Henri Marino – Laurie Prevot – Jean Batiste Spieser – Troy Innocent – Introversion Software – The Ludic Society – The mamayans – Michael Mateas & Andrew Stern – Panagiotis Koutlemanis – Dimitris Dinieas – Axel Stockburger – Persuasive Games Molleindustria – Nick Montfort – Personal Cinema – Persuasive Games ATI – Prof. Marie-Helene Tramus – Cedric Plessier – Orna Portugaly – Daphna Talithman – Sharon Younger – Serious Games Interactive – Axel Stockburger – Tale of Tales – Julian Oliver – Steven Pickles sheismartha – Alexandros Plakidas Dasios – University of the Aegean
Screenings/ La petite Anthologie de Machinimas
A compilation by Xavier Lardy (founder of machinima.fr) presenting some of the most interesting machinima works created in the last years. A collaboration of Paris Cinema, the Forum des Images and Machinima.fr that premiered in Paris last July.
Including projects by:
Ethan Vogt – Bernie Burns – Dave Lloyd and Matt Kelland – Pierce Portocarrero – Hugh Hancock – Ezra Ferguson and Terran Gregory – Katherine Anna Kang – Paul Marino – Friedrich Kirschner – G Hoffmann – Alex Chan
Special Sound performances & parties
by the Videogame Orchestra
Mathias Fuchs & Oliver Farshi
that mix old video game tunes with contemporary electronic sounds offering a different unique navigation in an audiovisual environment