UPCOMING
2011
–Talk at the Hood Museum, Hanover NH at the new Fluxus exhibition (likely May/June), “Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life.”
–Talk at the AIGA Chicago, Design Thinking 2011 series
23-25 May 2011 / Gaming as Gateway to Computing for Girls and Women, NCWIT Summit on Women and IT: practices and ideas to revolutionize computing, NYC
6th May 2011 / Metadata Games for Archives and Libraries,” American Council of Learned Societies, Washington DC May
info{at}maryflanagan{dot}com
PAST
2011
2nd April 2011 /“Developing and Open Source Metadata Games System for Archives and Libraries,” New England Archivists, Brown U, Providence April
23 March 2011 / NHIP Conference Manchester, 7:30-4:30
Tiltfactor launches its New website, and new Immunization game!
7th – 8th March 2011 / University of Maryland
Digital Cultures and Creativity (http://dcc.umd.edu), Visit and Talks
4th – 5th March 2011 / Technologies of Meaning Conference
Johns Hopkins University and Maryland Institute College of Art
Exhibition of works in the [borders] series , Maryland Institute College of Art
3rd March 2011 (11:30am Thurs March 3) / Digital Media and Learning
Designing Learning Futures Conference, LA
Workshop: Real World Games (for Civic Action Platforms) with Susanna Ruiz, Benjamin Stokes
http://dmlcentral.net/conference2011
28th Feb – 2nd March 2011 / Game Developer’s Conference
Education Summit Panel, San Francisco
Building and Growing a Game Lab
16th February 2011 / Mary Flanagan Artists Talk
Bloomfield College, New Jersey.
14th February 2011 /“Relational Aesthetics + Mediation: Rule systems” Parsons MA in Media Studies program talk
12th February 2011 / Participant, Art/Technology Global Sample, a centennial panel at the College Art Association, curated by Mark Tribe and Chris Csikszentmihályi
30th January 2011 / Mary Flanagan Artists Talk
Writing Machine Collective Exhibition, Youth Square, Chai Wan Hong Kong
15th – 30th January 2011 / Exhibition of three works in the [borders] series
Computational Thinking in Existing Art Forms WMC_e4
(Writing Machine Collective) Youth Square, Chai Wan Hong Kong
15th – 23rd January 2011 / Thinktank
METAL culture, Southend on Sea UK
with Artist, Author, and Organizer Ruth Catlow, Furtherfield.org and Rachel Lichtenstein, Artist and Author
October 8,9,10 / Speaking at Indiecade
September 6-7 / Trinity College Dublin
August 13-14/ Games for Girls WorkshopChicago
2010
May 24/ Games for Change Games 101 Workshop NYC, at Parsons/The New School
May 14 / Digital Humanities Symposium at Dartmouth College Hanover NH
June 7-9 / Trinity College Dublin
May 6-7 / Values in Design Workshop NYC, at NYU
April 12-16 / Keynote Speaker DIGITEL 2010 Taiwan, The IEEE 3rd International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning
March 14th / Keynote Speaker, Playing the City/Giocando la città, Modena Italia
2009
November 16 / Montreal International Games Summit panel
November 2 /MIT Gambit Lab and in the Purple Blurb lecture series
November 3 / Hood Museum Gallery Talk, Hanover NH
August 2009 / Show of perfect.city
South Korea
May 27-29 / Games for Change
March 27-April 1 / I will be in Hong Kong giving a series of consultations and talks
March 23-27 / Game Developers Conference 2009
March / L.A. Alumni group talk
February 2009 / Talk at the Transart Institute
2008
November / Talk at RISD
November / Talk at DIGRA NYC
October 30 – Nov 3 / Talk at Computer Space, Sophia Bulgaria
October 17 – 19 / Keynote at Future and Reality of Gaming
Sept 13 2008 / Massively Multiplayer Game Launch @ Conflux Festival
August / UC-Santa Clara Values in Design Workshop
July / Games, Learning and Society workshop
June / Games for Change NYC Panel
May / V2 Lab Talk, Rotterdam
April / Cornell Talk
March / Brooklyn Poly Panel
March / AERA Panel
February / GameLab Talk NYU
February / GDC Panel
January / Savannah Talk
January / Georgia Tech Talk
2007
October / Cinekids talk, Amsterdam
October 4 / Beall Center exhibition with GrandTextAuto folks
September 24-28 / Presentation of “A Method For Discovering Issues Around Values in Digital Games” at Digital Games Research Association (DIGRA), Tokyo
September / Presentation of “Locating Play and Politics: Real World Games and Political Action” at The Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Perth Australia
July / Maine College of Art visiting artist
June / MacDowell Colony Residency, New Hampshire
April / Game Design Heuristics for Activist Games, Full Paper, CHI (Computer Human Interaction Conf.)
April / Women in Games Conference, UK
April / Artists Talk, Rutgers University
April / Heading in Different Directions, Emerging Terrain in Games and Simulation Symposium, RPI
April / Artists Talk, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Film Program
March / Artists Talk, School of Visual Arts March
March / eVALUating Games, NYU Workshop, NYC
March / [giantJoystick] in Feedbach, [domestic] in Gameworld, Laboral Art Center Inaugeral Show, Asturias Spain
February / Feminist Visualities conference, Cornell University
January / Graduate Colloquium and Exhibition Talk, Georgia Institute of Technology January
2006
December / Women Making Science: Problem, Progress, Power with The Feminist Press
June / panel organizer, “Trailblazers” at Games for Change conference, NYC
April-Maydistinguished visiting scholar at BTH Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
April / Keynote Speaker, Code Conference Miami Ohio University
April / Artist’s presentation at the Neuberger Museum of Art
March / Serious Play presentation and Panel organizer, Serious Games Summit, GDC
March / Presentation at Living Game Worlds: Design Processes and the Future of Expressive Computing, Georgia Tech
January / American Folk Art Museum Panel, “I Taught Myself Everything I Know: Autodidacticism in New Media Art” organized by Mark Tribe, Brown U.,
December 2005 – 2006 / Residency, creative material group Portland Oregon
Speaker at College Art Association, Boston
Guest speaker at Columbia University, Women in Computing, NYC
The Virtual 2006: designing digital experience, Södertörn University, Stockholm
Nordic Games Conference, Malmo Sweden
exhibition of [giantJoystick] at HTTP gallery, London
Premier of collaborative work on Turbulence
Reading of e-texts in October
Artist’s Talk, Bowling Green State Univ. Ohio in conjunction with gallery installation
2005
October / Microwave International Media Festival Exhibition, Hong Kong
September / AIGA Design conference
June 1-10 / Guest and Keynoter at ICT summer school, Stockholm
April / Juror for Southshore Arts Center TechArt II show, part of Cyberarts Boston
March / keynote speaker at U FL games conference
February / juror on the New York State Foundation for the Arts grant program
February / speaking at St. Louis Museum
February / showing [domestic] at ARCO in Milan
Residency in December at iPark, CT
UW-Milwaukee Film Program Colloquia inaugeral speaker for critical studies program
two papers given at DIGRA
conference in Vancouver
speaking about game design for girls at the Btween International Festival in the uk, http://www.btween.co.uk/
Co-curating an art and games show to coincide with digra spring 2005
visiting speaker/visiting critic this spring at Pace University, Parsons, Georgia Tech, MassArt, nd Stockton College in New Jersey
2004
November / I’ve just been to UNIVERSITÉ PARIS IV-SORBONNE to give a paper called “Playculture: Work, Leisure, and the Digital Vernacular” at the Leisure and Liberty in North America conference
2003-2004 / I was an invited speaker at the Inter Society of Electronic Arts conference in Helsinki, University of Auckland (multiple engagements), Emerson college, Columbia University, The Art Institute of Chicago, MIT Media Lab, the Plaything Conference Keynote speaker in Sydney Australia, and the NY Law School. Upcoming engagements include University of Maine, St. Louis Center for Contemporary Art, the Steirischer Herbst festival in Austria, the British HCI conference, + the Sorbonne in Paris, among others.
October 2004 / showed work and speaking at the steirischer herbst festival in Graz Austria.
Sept 2004 / spoke at the University of Maine, “Code & Creativity IV Games: Making & Unmaking the World.”
August / Talk with collaborator ken perlin at InterSociety of Electronic Arts (ISEA) conference, Helsinki, “Cultural Softwares: Artistic Tools & DIY Networks;”
August / [ineffable] at siggraph
August / invited to BANFF canada new media summit/thinktank on mobile technologies
July / speaking at Teacher Institute for Contemporary Art at the Chicago Art Institute
June-July / [domestic] @GiganticArtSpace, NYC
June / National Womens Studies Assn conf panel
April / University of Auckland International Strategic Opportunities and Research Collaborations visit
Also article on subversive use of computer games going online at the New York Law School Review (peer reviewed journal) www.nyls.edu/lawreview
March 18 – May 16 / [phage] at the Guggenheim, Seeing Double show, panel discussion May 8th
March 24 / Presidential Roundtable, Gender and Computer Games
March 17 / Talk at Emerson College
Talk at Columbia’s Digital Media center
2003
Visit to Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergargen program, MIT Media Lab
Plaything, Sydney Australia October – premiere of [domestic] game project
December / Artist’s talk, UC-Colorado Springs
November 4-6DiGRA Conference in Utrecht
May 19 – 23 / Showing work at the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Melbourne
May 19 / [search] opening
May / Visiting Artist and Artist Presentation, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
April 16-19 / “SIMple and Personal: Domestic Spaces and The Sims” Joint meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations, New Orleans
Feb 27 – Mar 1 / “[search]-ing” 9th Biennial Symposium for Arts and TechnologyAmmerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College
February 7 – 9 / INTERACTIVE FUTURES: New Stories, New Visions Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival – http://www.vifvf.com/ University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
The State of Play: Panel at NY Law School
Harvestworks Residency
NY Law School-Information Society Project at Yale Law School State of Play conf
Carbon Versus Silicon: Thinking Small/Thinking Fast Banff New Media Summit
2002
December / Co-host at Melinda Rackham’s subtle.net
November 23 / 2002 [contamination] installation at MotelHaus, Eugene OR
November / Artist talk at U Washington
October 10 – 16 / [phage] at the Moving Image Center, Auckland
July – Aug / The Physics Room, New Zealand- Installation
May / Showed work + gave talk at Experimenting Arts and Sciences Conference, Aarhus Denmark
April / Showed work in “Northwest Documenta” in Salem OR showcasing Pacific NW contemporary art
February 7 – 9 / Gave a paper “The ‘Nature’ of Networks: Space and Place in the ‘Silicon Forest’” at the Nature and Progress: Interactions, Exclusions, Mutations Conference, University of Paris-Sorbonne
[remotion] Internet Artwork at CODEDOC, Whitney Artport
[search] Internet Artwork premiers “Mapping Transitions” exhibit, University of Colorado, Boulder
FutureScreen 2002 Sydney Australia – in the “all star data mappers” show
[collection] in the Whitney Biennial
2001
Santa Cruz Art League showcases work in arts and technology show
Talk at the UAAC in Montreal in October about transgenic art and feminism
September / [rootings] premiering at turbulence.org website
August / Showed [collection] at The Banff Centre New Media Institute
April – July / Visiting Professor, Interactive Artist Computer Science + Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1 Sec. 4 Roosevelt Rd, TaipeiWork on multidisciplinary human-computer interface projects
March / “Artist’s Talk” Reina Sophia Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Madrid
January 21 / [The Perpetual Bed] Stuttgart Filmwinter Special 3D exhibition, Stuttgart Germany
February 28-March 3 / College Art Association, “The Surreal, the Hyperreal, and the Virtually Real” Panel Participant
2000
June – December / DIGITAL2000: International Competition and Exhibition New York and Philadelphia. The exhibition of the winning works will travel to the following venues: Central Fine Arts Gallery in SoHo, NYC, the Technology Gallery at The New York Hall of Science (NYHOS) (Sept.18-Nov.26), and Silicon Gallery in Philadelphia (Dec.1-31). Showing [phage]. Juror: John Ippolito, Guggenheim.
July 23-28 / Siggraph 2000 New Orleans
July 22-27 / work going to be at VRML show at Art Gallery at Siggraph 2000, New Orleans
August 2- 4 / Digital Arts & Culture Conference, Bergen Norway showing installation
21-24 February / ACM SIGGRAPH sponsored Web3D/VRML Symposium Monterey, CA, USA
VRML Art 2000 – VRML-ART 2000 shows important advances in the content and structure possible in the Web 3D medium. The works amplify a new wave of creative output by artists and designers, who have specialized on internet
February 21-24 / Web3D-VRML 2000 Monterey, CA, USA
April 14 – 15 / Urban Girls Conference, Buffalo NY
May 21-27 / 6th annual Computer Arts Festival, Maribor, Slovenia
SOME HIGHLIGHTS
ARTnews 2011 piece on game-related art, featuring Flangan’s work and others
A 2011 video interview about the POX game
Rick Ganley’s 2011 NHPR Morning Edition interview with Flanagan on POX
Stephanie Clifford’s piece on the new Monopoly game from Hasbro in the New York Times.
A 2010 interview with Vermont television about Metadata games; also here
With E. Navas for a gallery show at CalIT2
In a Podcast with MIT for Critical Play
Speaking in podcast with the Brainy Gamer
Caught the 2008 SXSWi conference in Austin TX
In an artist’s talk at Columbia University
Glimpsed in a video about a nifty robot show she co-curated in 2004.
2011
Plenda, Melanie. “POX: Play the game, save the people.” New Hampshire Union Leader, 8 April 2011, B1
HealthNewsDigest.com spreading the word on POX, “Game Developed at Dartmouth Helps Players Understand Infectious Disease Control.”
Ganley, Rick. “POX: The Board Game.” New Hampshire Public Radio Morning Edition, 4 April 2011.
Clifford, Stephanie. “No Dice, No Money, No Cheating. Are You Sure This Is Monopoly?” The New York Times, Business Section 15th Feb 2011.
2010
Interview on Resonance FM, London Oct 27.
Barber, Bonnie. “A Humanist Approach to Game Design.” Dartmouth Now, June 5, 2010
In 18 minutes, TEDx tackles issues, By Linday Brewer Published on Monday, April 19, 2010
Profs. discuss ‘digital humanities’, The Dartmouth, by Annie Jones, Monday, May 17 2010
Sullivan, Adam. “Can Videogames Help Kids?” (Metadata games) WCAX.com (Print and Video) 29 September 2009
2009
Book Review: Critical Play, in I.D. The International Design Magazine /
October 2009
Slam Multimedia (in German) /
October 2009
Dartmouth Professor Creates Recession-Inspired Video Game. Wired Campus: Chronicle of Higher Education. /
March 2009
Games Magazine /
October 2009
Labeling Library Archives Is a Game at Dartmouth College by Marc Beja /
August 2009
2008
FLYP / Move over Whitman, there’s a new poetry in town
by Chris Bravo & Lindsey Schneider
Nashua telegraph / New endowed humanities professor at Dartmouth has got game
by Dave Brooks
NotesOnGameDev / Mary Flanagan: Designer, Tiltfactor
by Beth A. Dillon
How Video Games Can Help in the Classroom, and in the World, Chronicle of Higher Education/ Mary Flanagan: Designer, Tiltfactor
by David Debolt
Concord Monitor / ‘Social activist’ with a joystick
by Martin Downs
2007
El Comercio, Spain / Por fin, un museo del siglo XXI Part 1, Part 2
by Miguel Moran Gijon
Nueva Espana, Spain / El motor del la Ciudad de la Cultura se pone en marcha
El Mundo, Spain / La Laboral pone a Gijon en vanguardia
by Patricia Del Gallo
ABC, Spain / Gijon apuesta por el arte y la tecnologia con un pionero laboratorio de ideas
by Natividad Puldo
La Razon, Spain / Los videojuegos ganan la partida al arte
by J. Ors
La Voz de Asturias / Laboratorio para el arte
by Blanca A. Gutierrez
[giantJoystick] featured at Indycade 2007
2006
Mary Flanagan featured in “8 Bit”, a documentary film about art and video games
ABC News / Turning 8-bit Video Games Into Art (video)
We Make Money Not Art / [giantJoystick] review
by Regine
Make Magazine / [giantJoystick] Review
The Guardian UK / Giant Joystick on Exhibition in UK
GAMASUTRA / Event Wrap Up: Girls ‘N’ Games
by Beth A. Dillon
ineffable in New Media Art
by Mark Tribe (Editor), Reena Jana (Editor), Uta Grosenick (Editor)
Rhizome / A new Play-List
by Irene Wu
BBC Online / The Taking Part that counts!
by Ryan O’Riordan
Make Magazine Online / Giant Atari 2600 Joystick
Entry posted in Blog by Phillip Torrone
Creative Europe / Game/Play
Entry posted by Gillian White
Aeropause / Giant Atari Joystick
Bernie DeKovan, Of Art and Fun / The Game/Play Blog
Posted by Pat Kane
Weird Gizmos / Top 5 Strangest Atari Gadgets
Posted by Tina
Gay Gamer / Joystick Envy
Resonance / Micro Clear Spot (radio)
15 min slot on Tuesday 15 September at 13.45
Haringey Gazette / week 31
National Newspaper Supplement
Guardian Guide North and London / Preview
by Robert Clark
National Art and Architecture Magazine
Saturday 29 July 2006
Blueprint Review
October 2006 issue
2005
neural.it / ineffable review
by Eleonora Calvelli
2003
Fine Art Forum / reload Review
by Linda Carolli
Syndey Morning Herald, Australia / Quite Contrary
by Jacqui Taffel
2002
Newsweek / Are Museums Obsolete?
by Michael Rodgers
Eugene Weekly / The Space Between Edges
by Lois Wadsworth
k Reviews Archive / Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture
Reviewed by Michael R. Mosher
Afterimage / Reloading Cyberfeminism. – Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture – book review
by Katie Mondloch
The New York Times / Never Mind the Art Police, These Six Matter
by Holland Cotter
I Love You Virus Show / Virus Charms and Self-Creating Code
by Alessandro Ludovico
Looking for Art in All the Wrong Places
by Jon Ippolito & Joline Blais
2000
The Montreal Gazette /
True Role Model in Cyberspace: University Professor invents Free Internet Game to Empower Young Girls.
By Kate Swoger
2nd November 2000
The Chronicle of Higher Education / Professor Creates a Web-Based Game for Girls
By Nina Willdorf
1999
En Brief: Mary Flanagan is an innovator focused on how people create and use technology. Her groundbreaking explorations across the arts, humanities, and sciences represent a novel use of methods and tools that bind research with introspective cultural production. As an artist, the collection of over 20 major works range from game-inspired systems to computer viruses, embodied interfaces to interactive texts; these works are exhibited internationally. As a scholar interested in how human values are in play across technologies and systems, Flanagan has written more than 20 critical essays and chapters on games, empathy, gender and digital representation, art and technology, and responsible design. Her three books in English include Critical Play (2009) with MIT Press. Flanagan founded the Tiltfactor game research laboratory in 2003, where researchers study and make social games, urban games, and software in a rigorous theory/practice environment. She is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College.
http://www.maryflanagan.com; http://www.tiltfactor.org
+ + +
More Information:
Known for her theories on playculture, activist design, and critical play, Mary Flanagan has achieved international acclaim for her novel interdisciplinary work, her commitment to both theory and practice, and her ongoing pioneering contributions to the field of digital art. Her research examines the boundaries between the personal and the public, perception, power, and what technology can teach people about themselves. Using the formal language of the computer program or game to create systems which interrogate seemingly mundane experiences such as writing email, using search engines, playing video games, or saving data to the hard drive, Flanagan reworks these activities to blur the line between the social uses of technology, and what these activities tell us about the technology user themselves. Her artwork ranges from game based systems to computer viruses, embodied interfaces to interactive texts; these works are exhibited internationally at venues including the Laboral Art Center, The Whitney Museum of American Art, SIGGRAPH, Beall Center, The Banff Centre, The Moving Image Center, Steirischer Herbst, Ars Electronica, Artist’s Space, The Guggenheim Museum New York, Incheon Digital Arts Festival South Korea, Writing Machine Collective Hong Kong, Maryland Institute College of Art, and venues in Brazil, France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia.
As a researcher, she focuses on popular culture, digital studies, and computer games to look at issues of representation, behavior, equity, and process. In the field of creative writing, Flanagan is known as a writer of electronic literature, and she is also a poet, with work in The Iowa Review, Barrow Street, Saranac Review, Mudfish, and other books & periodicals. She has written more than 20 critical essays on digital art, cyberculture, and gaming in periodicals such as Art Journal, Wide Angle, Intelligent Agent, Convergence, and Culture Machine, as well as several books. Her books in English include reload: rethinking women + cyberculture (2002), re:SKIN (2007), and Critical Play (2009), all with MIT Press. She writes about popular culture and digital media such as computer games, virtual agents, and online spaces in order to understand how they affect and reflect culture. She is also co-author with Matteo Bittanti of Similitudini. Simboli. Simulacri, on the game The Sims (in Italian, Unicopli 2003).
Flanagan is the founding director of he theory/practice laboratory she founded in 2003, Tiltfactor, focused on the design of and research on computer games, board games, urban games, and other software that fosters a joyful commitment to human values. She is also the creator of “The Adventures of Josie True,” the first web-based adventure game for girls.
Mary Flanagan holds MFA and MA degrees from the University of Iowa, a BA in Film from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in Computational Media from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London UK. Flanagan’s work has been supported by commissions, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, Microsoft Research, and she has been PI or co-PI on six National Science Foundation research grants. Flanagan is the founder of techARTS, a not-for-profit program in Buffalo to encourage girls’ use of technology by exploring the arts with computers. She is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College,. http://www.maryflanagan.com; http://www.tiltfactor.org.
Flanagan on wikipedia here.
Blog: the lovely GrandTextAuto.org
See more at Mission to Learn+ Games4Change
My creative practice investigates human relationships with systems — technological, representational, linguistic, and experiential — from my position in a technologically-infused society. In my work I explore the relationship between such systems and their intersections with everyday life. Therefore, games, computer viruses, search engines, cell phones, email — seemingly boring or ordinary computationally-driven systems — become for me extraordinary and revealing artifacts representing themes of human desire, intimacy, secrecy, language, and the conceptual spaces of machines themselves.
I use technologies such as computer game engines and networked databases as materials by which to explore the cultural impact of digital technology as it permeates everyday life, while it in turn is continually reshaped. The process of creating the work feeds from ‘internet culture’ and ‘computational customs’, investigating how flippant trends become ongoing conceptual and physical ‘truths.’ Making these works is a way of creating alternate systems which reach a peace with the both the impermanence of the medium and its forms: the simultaneous fleeting nature of bits and bytes and conversely, the way these forms forge more lasting conceptual systems. The work manifests in a variety of forms: web-based media, computer applications, games, software, and social convention — forms governed by rule sets which render possible worlds, yet each system involves serendipity and accident as aleatoric, experiential interventions. These eruptions of chance operations work entirely within the way systems offer flexibility in their construction of rules. within the very code that paradoxically is to create can be programmed to create situations of extreme variability. To me, works based on algorithms need such accidents to ‘humanize’ the planned, calculated precision of the program in the development process, even if this results in a very precise final outcome. Each of the works represents a blend of research, process, procedure, and performance/execution. In this way these conceptually driven works form a hybrid of research, process, and performance.
—Eric Zimmerman, game designer and co-author of Rules of Play
“Mary Flanagan has written a marvelous book in Critical Play. As an artist and scholar, Flanagan examines play through sources that range from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and Johan Huizinga to Marcel Duchamp and the often-overlooked Roger Caillois. Flanagan examines games and play from dollhouses to board games, from Alberto Giacometti to Fluxus, enabling us to see what it is that makes play critical. The core issue of the book is creating forms of play that ask important questions about human life. After a grand romp through the territory and history of play, Flanagan provides a crisp practical theory in her game design model. What a book! I’m ready to shake the dice and start again.”
—Ken Friedman, Professor, Dean, Faculty of Design Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
CRITICAL PLAY: RADICAL GAME DESIGN
2009
For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry—and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture.
Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of “playing house” include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims; her discussion of language play includes puns, palindromes, Yoko Ono’s Instruction Paintings, and Jenny Holzer’s messages in LED. Flanagan also looks at artists’ alternative computer-based games, examining projects from Persuasive Games and Gonazalo Frasca and other games created through the use of interventionist strategies in the design process. And she explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns—among them Darfur, worldwide poverty, and AIDS—can be incorporated into game design.
Arguing that this kind of conscious practice—which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium—can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.
Read the first chapter and see more at the MIT Press website.
re:skin
2006
re:skin is a collection of fiction and theory engaging with issues that surround the technological manipulation of the body. From plastic surgery to fur implants, from illegal tattooing to skin grafts, the use of technology to alter the physical body is, for women writers, less a tool for empowerment than a means to construct alternative, multiple selves. Bodily boundaries are malleable, and bodily markers which distinguish bodies are reprogrammable. The pieces gathered reskin claim that the technologically mutable body is neither simply liberating nor limiting, but offers instead narratives of ways of living in, and adapting to, a technological culture.
Preview the table of contents, and see more at the MIT Press website.
reload: rethinking women + cyberculture.
2006
Cambridge MIT Press, 2002
The co-edited collection reload is a volume which mixes
women’s cyberpunk fiction with theoretical investigations into
cybercultural aspects such as web communities, fan culture, subjectivity in computer games, cinematic representations of cyborgs, and artists’ technological projects. MIT Press website
Similitudini. Simboli. Simulacri:(SIMilarities, Symbols, Simulacra)
Bittanti, Matteo + Flanagan, Mary
Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2003
This co-authored book, in Italian, explores domestic space, player experience, and the fan culture of The Sims.
Values At Play
2011
The book Values at Play with Helen Nissenbaum is in production with MIT Press.
Book of Jing: Withholding Agent
2011
The Book of Jing: Withholding Agent is Book One of The Book of Jing graphic novel series, with Jonathan Jay Lee.
Exploring the Creative Potential of Values Conscious Design: Students’ Experiences with the VAP Curriculum. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
with Jonathan Belman, 2010.
Designing Games to Foster Empathy.
Cognitive Technology, 14(2).
with Jonathan Belman (in press).
Instructional Methods and Curricula for Values Conscious Design. Loading: The Official Journal of the Canadian Games Studies Association, 3(4).
with Jonathan Belman and Helen Nissenbaum (2009).
Play, Participation, and Art: Blurring the Edges.
Context Providers.
Margot Lovejoy, Christiane Paul, Victoria Vesna, eds. Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2010
An Appreciation on the Impact of the work of Sonia Landy Sheridan.
The Art of Sonia Landy Sheridan.
Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2009, 37-42.
Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games: A Case Study for Critical Play.
Proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association
with Anna Lotko, Uxbridge UK, 2009
Creating Critical Play
Artists Rethinking Games.
Eds Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, and Corrado Morgana. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010, 49-53.
A private correspondence to David Theurer: Written by H. P. Lovecraft, 12th January 1919, released by Mary D. Flanagan.
Well Played.
Ed. Drew Davidson. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon/ ETC Press, 2009
The Sims: Suburban Utopias.
Space Time Play. Synergies Between Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism
Eds. Friedrich von Borries, Walz, Steffen P. Walz, Mattias Böttger. Birkhauser Publishing, Basel Boston Berlin, 2007, 150-152.
RAPUNSEL: How a computer game designed based on educational theory can improve girls’ self-efficacy and self-esteem.
Proceedings of the American Educational Research Association
Plass, J. L, Goldman, R., Flanagan, M., Diamond, J., Dong, C., Looui, S., Hyuksoon Song, H., Rosalia, C. & Perlin, K.
Chicago, April 2007
Locating Play and Politics: Real World Games and Political Action
Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference
Perth Australia Dec 2007
A Game Design Methodology to Incorporate Social Activist Themes.
Proceedings of CHI 2007
Flanagan, Mary, and Nissenbaum, Helen.
New York, NY: ACM Press, 181 – 190
Rethinking the F Word: A Review of Activist Art on the Internet
National Women’s Studies Association Journal (Special Issue: Feminist Activist Art) Volume 19, Number 1
Flanagan, Mary and Looui, Suyin
Spring 2007, 181-200
Feminist Art Activist Roundtable
National Women’s Studies Association Journal (Special Issue: Feminist Activist Art)
Volume 19, Number 1, Spring 2007.
My Profile, Myself in Playculture
Exploring Digital Artefacts
Johan Bornebusch and Patrik Hernwall, Editors. M3 Publication, 2006, 20-29
Making Games for Social Change
AI & Society: The Journal of Human-Centered Systems
Springer London: Springer, 20(1), January 2006
The ‘Nature’ of Networks: Space and Place in the Silicon Forest
Nature et progrès : interactions, exclusions, mutations
Ed. Pierre Lagayette. Paris : Presses de l’Université. Paris-Sorbonne, 2006
New Design Methods for Activist Gaming
Proceedings from DiGRA 2005
Mary Flanagan, D.C. Howe, Helen Nissenbaum
16-20 June, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Troubling ‘Games for Girls’: Notes from the Edge of Game Design
Proceedings from DiGRA 2005
16-20 June, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Values at Play: Design Tradeoffs in Socially-Oriented Game Design
Proceedings of the CHI 2005 conference on Human factors in computing systems
Mary Flanagan, D.C. Howe, Helen Nissenbaum
CHI 2005, 2-7 April, Portland, Oregon
Une Maison de Poupee Virtuelle Capitaliste? The Sims: Domesticite, Consommation, et Feminite
Consommations & Sociétés: Cahiers pluridisciplinaire sur la consommation et l’interculturel
Ed. Mélanie Roustan et Dominique Desjeux
the bride stripped bare to her Data: information flow and digibodies
Data Made Flesh
Thurtle et al. 2003
Next Level: Women’s Digital Activism through Gaming
Digital Media Revisited
Edited by Andrew Morrison, Gunnar Liestøl & Terje Rasmussen, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003, 359 – 388
Developing Virtual Performance Spaces
American Puppetry
Ed. Phyllis T. Dircks. New York: Theatre Library Association, 2004
Hyperbodies, Hyperknowledge: Women in Games, Women in Cyberpunk, and Strategies of Resistance
reload: rethinking women + cyberculture
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002, 425-454
navigable narratives: gender +narrative spatiality in virtual worlds
Art Journal
Vol 59 no. 3, Fall 2000, 74 – 85
Response to Celia Pearce: About Computer Gaming
First Person
Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge: MIT Press
Mobile Identities, Digital Stars, & Post-Cinematic Selves
Wide Angle: Issue on Digitality & the Memory of Cinema
21:3, 1999
Digital Stars Are Here to Stay
convergence: the journal of research into new media technologies
Eds. Julia Knight + Alexis Weedon, University of Luton, Summer 1999. Print and Internet
Spatialized MagnoMemories
Culture Machine 3 – Virologies: Culture and Contamination
Eds. David Boothroyd and Gary Hall. 2001
[search]
2002
software / network / computer
When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure… At that time it was also hoped that a clarification of humanity’s basic mysteries […] might be found. …
There are official searchers, inquisitors.
I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words.
Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.
–Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (1)
Information technology has become an indespensible element in communication, play, and work. For example, a recent study shows that a typical office worker relies more on e-mail communication than face-to-face contact to share knowledge.(2) Almost every computer user relies upon Internet search engines to gather information, seek entertainment, and find pleasure. Search engines are deeply embedded into daily activity-they are the primary way people in the 21st century seek information …”we depend upon them so utterly.” (3)
Searching the internet, however, is regularly confusing and chaotic. Like Borges’ inquisitors mentioned in the passage above, searchers are regularly besieged with lists of thousands of results, and no systematic keyword system has yet developed to standardize the language of the search.(4) Searching can be frustrating, and the material discovered is often inaccurate. Searchers themselves offer to the mix complicated requests, misspellings, and odd X-rated content descriptions; the kinds of things people search for might seem disturbing, petty, or peculiar.
Search engines map, through phrase-like inquiries, our desire to find knowledge. Monitoring such desires allows us to read and live through other people’s interests.(5) To further explore this very critical aspect of Internet life, I developed [search]. [search] is an internet-based application which explores the human desire for information and knowledge through real-time monitoring of internet search engine inquiries from around the world. This research ties in specifically with my internet-based artistic practice, pushing the performative, live, and user-influenced aspects of pieces such as [remotion] (2002), [collection] (2001) and [rootings] (2001).
The work conceptually explores everyday life: how do people use technology in their daily lives? What are the commonalities of human desire? How is the desire affected by the internet’s inherent immediacy? What kinds of language do people bring to search engines? Does the kind of language used by searchers tell us something about how people view the internet and technology? Do people search for material or experiential items? How much time do people spend searching for sex, drugs, or money? Do people spend an equal amount of time searching for friends, god, and spirituality? Are our human values exposed through search engines? What is the data most sought after?
[search] is programmed using the Lingo programming language. Users click on words in the live search feed as they find words in others’ searches which interest them. These words separate, and conduct their own searches on themselves. Users can drag two words together which interest them to produce associative searches.
At this point, who is the searcher? What is being searched?
Acknowledgements:
-This project was funded by a commission from the University of Colorado @ Boulder.
-Special thanks to Brian Brantner, software engineer on the project. He can be found at http://www.marcotte.com.
-AskJeeves.com is used for the search engine feed
-EAT: Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus, a psycholinguistic database, is used to search joint searches from dragged “wordcloud” items
____________
1 Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” Labyrinths. New York: New Directions, 1964, 55.
2 “Survey Shows Office Workers Rely More Heavily On E-mail Than Face-to-Face Contact to Share Knowledge; AIIM Attendees Surveyed on Work Practices.” Business Wire March 7, 2002, 2393.
3 Toto, Christian. “Web Wise.” Insight on the News, Dec 10, 2001.17:46, 32-34.
4 Guernsey, Lisa. “The Search Engine as Cyborg.” The New York Times. Technology Sect. Jn 29 2000.
5 Garrity, Bronwyn. “Some Cyberspace of Her Own: Escapes From the Dark Horrible Sucking Trail of the Lost Voice.” The Nation, March 19, 2001. 272:11, 25.
[rootings]
software / computer
[rootings] is a collection of experimental games in which player participants explore experiences of time and memory within a set of game/narratives.
The individual components in the work are loosely based around different life episodes that have to do with time-passing, skipping, rewinding, time travel, and memory.
Elements of quantum mechanics and string theory open the door to scientific inquiry about time in the 21st Century, inquiries which can begin with our daily domestic, personal experiences. We can think about remembering an episode in one’s life within the context of scientific theories of time, for example, as more like a simultaneous event, parallel world, or constant, not simply a memory or a past happening. This project uses scientific background in perception of time and the physics of time in string theory to tease out ideas about time in narrative, mental order/disorder, and interactivity.
In [rootings], we encounter time in unusual ways; each string or episode itself is a recurring or cyclical event which takes the form of an abstract yet interactive “arcade style” game. Here, I am using game systems as materials and methods by which to explore these boundary zones, involving both intellectual hypotheses and the commonplace as locations and manifestations of socio-technological phenomenon-both the conditions of time and memory are extremely difficult to study and are heavily subjective.
The main interface of [rootings] is based on a reverberating circuit diagram. The brain, an organ composed of over 50 billion nerve cells, is connected by axons and dendrite conduits. Any type of activity in the brain (hearing a sound, problem solving, reading) sets off neural circuits throughout the nerve cells. While every experience creates new pathways, some of the circuits created repeat over and over, marking out a fixed location and becoming part of memory. These reverberating circuits start with input which produces a signal, which in turn becomes encoded within a neuroloop, producing a short-term memory function. A reverberating circuit, for example, creates physiological memory.
[rootings] encourages players to begin digging around in these circuits, using the physiological actions of clicking, tracing, and the repetitive process of game play to reinscribe memories from maker to player.
The heart of this research project is based around recent readings in physics, neurology, and most notably, string theory, which support the idea of tangible simultaneities, much like real, visceral memories or deja vous. The work deals directly about time and memory through rich imagery and sound and through the perspective of a woman maker and through the use of stories and relationships in personal, everyday, almost mundane occurances to show that such slips of time are equally everyday happenings.
[rootings], like other web art projects, is not “created” unless users are interacting with it. The work becomes a blend between research, process, and performance. Like Andre Breton and other critic/makers, I celebrate lapses in time, perhaps because in the very act of making creative work one loses oneself to time utterly.
[meme.garden]
2006
software / network
[meme.garden] (2006) is collaboratively created software which allows participants to search words, find clouds of associated words, and “plant” their word searches to create “forests” which may or may not have relationships with other participants in the system. Participants’ plants grow through time and reflect network changes through time about their interests. The [meme.garden] software was commissioned by Turbulence.org and created by Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, Chris Egert, Junming Mei, & Kay Chang.
[meme.garden]
[unnatural elements : avatar portraits]
2003
created by Mary Flanagan, Wu Fu Che, + Ho Chien Chang
Cyberspace is a socially mediated construction, made clear through the use of avatars, or personal representations in virtual worlds. By putting ourselves into digital worlds, we lose the self and become one with virtual spaces’ new elements. It seems that an aspect of identity is released as an electronic element. By putting ourselves into digitally constructed realities, we call into question the nature of the self in a digital culture and the ways the new selves are created. What are the elements which construct that reality? What is our relationship with the virtual personae and figures we create in online space? What is our relationship to our own data, our bodies sampled with the latest digital technology?
But what is, in fact, natural? Digital culture’s dominance, and ultimately, construction of landscapes and bodies has been a way to create new cosmologies, new elements. The creation and discovery of elements is a fundamentally human endeavor, as are the creations of new systems of representation, identities, and experiences in VR. We work to abstract and distort reality in order to apprehend it. Like language, we name, categorize, and quantify our surroundings.
[unnatural elements] presents images of researchers/artists from Taiwan and the USA which demonstrate that the conversion from the image of the physical body to the image of the virtual is not the typical smooth computational process Hollywood would have us believe.
The images featured in [unnatural elements] show the effects of the creation of a digital nature and digital elements. Most researchers working in 3D technologies strive for “perfection.” However, our team was interested in sampling one real and watching the translation between earthbound identities and virtual ones. What would human data create in cyberspace? The images were created by using 3D head scans of the artists from composited images produced by a video camera and stitching them together with custom software. Interestingly, the process generated “natural” eruptions inherent to the heads, and each scan seemed to take on forms reminiscent of “natural” eruptions we see in earth, fire, water and wind.
Here, our new bodies erupt with artifacts and take on unexpected resemblances to earthbound natural elements. The “random” patterns we see in rocks, water, and other natural elements are not random at all but naturally occurring algorithms. Thus the computer, in creating artifacts, is effectively doing nature’s work. In a sense the computer is much more “real” (disturbingly so) than WE are – when it creates artifacts it is acting on “natural” algorithms.
Offering us a way to critically examine the body in cyberspace and our conventions and ideals of interactive avatars and the drive for 3D art “realism,” these pieces work to provoke a dialogue about the real and “natural” our media is trying so desperately to produce in digital space.
This collaboration was made possible by funding from the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program and the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange, 2001, and took place in Dr. Ming Ouyoung’s CML, NTU, Taiwan.
[arborescence]
2006
software / paper / models / computer
[arborescence] is an interactive installation using the gradual growth patterns of forests and trees as a metaphorical structure to map time, space and language. Making physical the routine internet actions of searching, tagging and streaming RSS feeds [arborescence] creates a contextual time-scape in which interests grow and change over time.
Participants enter search terms and the software forms virtual trees on a large screen based on these terms. The type of tree or leaf varies by the word or theme entered and participants are encouraged to explore the myriad of shapes and sizes available. Participants can find clouds of associated words and “plant” their word searches to create forests which may or may not have relationships with others in the system. These trees and forests “grow” over time to reflect network changes about their interests.
The [meme.garden] software included in the exhibition was commissioned by Turbulence.org and created collaboratively by Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, Chris Egert, Junming Mei & Kay Chang.
