A cooperative initiative between the Media Lab, the GameLab, the Binational Center for Qualitative Methods and the department of Literature, Art and Media at the University of Konstanz proposes to discuss neglected aspects of gaming practices in game history and theory. I participated of the two first days of the in-person activities, which are being held in the format of a Summer Schools, bringing together students, gamers, scholars, and/or developers. Before that, participants had a self-study and three recorded gameplay sessions between April and June. This is a particularly interesting statement because such previous involvement between participants plays a key role in the observational study that is currently being conducted. In order to observe neglected aspects of gaming in history and theory, a particular auto-ethnographic method was developed. Players should record (video and audio) all their game sessions in order to produce the materials that would then be analysed at the Summer School in-person encounters. The particular focus of this study is in the cooperative and interactional aspects of gaming together. What in fact does it mean, after all, when we say we are playing "together"? What such togetherness implies? Before that: who are "we" in such gameplay activities?
Drawing from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), scholars Beate Ochsner and Markus Spöhr explored the entanglements between players and non-human processes in the act of gaming, with a special concern for what they call 'the gaming situation': the particular sets of actions, movements, materials and processes that define what we understand as the practice of gaming as such. A particularly 'tricky' question for the study of the social dimension of gaming through this perspective is how researchers should engage with digital ethnography. Originally developed as a method for the centuries-old discipline of ethnology, ethnography is widely known as a method oriented towards providing a description of human societies through a less impersonal approach than other research methods -- in fact, the consequential methodological corollary of ethnographic research is that the describer cannot withdraw her/himself from the description, and that the means of describing also interfere in the final observation. The knowledge produced by ethnographic methods does not mean to be generalisable, so we should definitely take into account how it differs in nature from scientific methods adopted in other fields: it is a different form or genre of knowledge, we should keep in mind. Furthermore, we should bear in mind how such observations are not meant to produce a self-identification with the researchers, but in the spirit of old ethologist, it tries to describe and explain a previously unknown world or process to people who are not aware of it -- it voluntarily looks for difference and interpretation instead of identity and representation. We should not think, though, that digital ethnography simply means ethnography performed digitally. From the previous short note on the epistemological quality of the knowledge produced through ethnography, we can infer that the very performance of the computer, as well as that of the observed machine-mediated subjects, impact on how digital ethnography is conducted, as well of course as on its results. Trying to grasp the gaming situation with its endemic contingencies, students at the workshop were invited to observe the recording of their game sessions while trying to describe of the practices, things, relationships, social encounters, movements, and all sorts of strange phenomena that unravel from gamers playing together in digital environments. You can check the full schedule of the Summer School here: https://seriousgamingkn.wordpress.com/summer-school/
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Another interesting workshop was held in the beginning of this month, organised by the Media of Cooperation initiative.
The event gathered scholars from media studies, the history of science and mathematics, and science and technology studies (STS) to ask what a grand narrative of the history of computing would look like if told from other perspectives. I attended the event online. The program was interest to anyone with a keen eye to digital media infrastructures and their histories: July 4 13:30-13:45 Introduction by Erhard Schüttpelz (Siegen University) 13:45-14:00 Remarks by Paul Ceruzzi 14:00-15:30 Could we structure a big story around the materialities of data, computation and networks? Roundtable discussion featuring Cyrus Mody (Maastricht University), Moritz Feichtinger (University of Bern), Axel Volmar (Siegen University) & Valérie Schafer (C2DH, University of Luxembourg). 16:00-17:30 What if we don’t center the United States? Roundtable discussion featuring Ksenia Tatarchenko (Singapore Management University). Pierre Mounier-Kuhn (CNRS & Université Paris-Sorbonne), Petri Paju (University of Turku), Elisabetta Mori (Middlesex University) & Gerard Alberts (University of Amsterdam). 18:00-19:00 Chances Seized and Opportunities Squandered: Writing A New History of Modern Computing , Thomas Haigh (University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee & Siegen University). July 5 12:00-13:30 What can we gain by reconnecting the history of computing with the histories of computer science and mathematics? Roundtable discussion featuring Ulf Hashagen (Deutsches Museum), Helena Durnova (Masaryk University, Brno), Mark Priestley (National Museum of Computing, UK) & Liesbeth de Mol (Université de Lille). 14:00-15:30 How could media theory and STS underpin new historical ways of understanding the story of the computer? Roundtable discussion, convened by Sebastian Giessmann and Tatjana Seitz. Featuring Ben Peters (Tulsa University), Till Heilmann (Bochum), Elisa Linseisen (Vienna/Paderborn), Sebastian Giessmann (University of Siegen) & Tatjana Seitz (University of Siegen, moderator) 16:00-17:30 Can we integrate issues of gender, justice and embodiment into the story of the computer itself or must these narratives remain separate and particular? Roundtable discussion featuring Elizabeth Petrick (Rice University), Valérie Schafer (C2DH, University of Luxembourg), Jeffrey Yost (Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota). 18:00-19:30 Where did the dominant scholarly narratives in the history of computing come from, and how well have they held up? Roundtable discussion with William Aspray & Martin Campbell-Kelly (authors of Computer: A History of the Information Machine) and Paul Ceruzzi (author of A History of Modern Computing) moderated by JoAnne Yates (author of Structuring the Information Age). -- The discussions dealt with updating the master narrative of computing history by drawing on new generations of studies. The panels approached subjects as diverse as digital media devices, videogames, home computing, computer networking, smartphones, cloud computing, and the evolution of the IBM PC standard. As an important aspect of contemporary historiographic approaches, the panellists asked what the grand narrative of computing tells as much as what it silences, inquiring the potential to tell other stories on a similar scale about computers and their relationship with contemporary societies. |
AuthorThis blog is meant to provide a space for discussing the geophysical as well as the the imaginary entanglements between media infrastructures and organic environments. In the coming months, it will be dedicated to my current project, Cloud Gaming Atlas, which is particularly interested in observing and interrogating the infrastructures developed for cloud gaming initiatives in regard to their environmental implications. Additionally, it should also gather information about events and publications related to my project at the Zukunftskolleg and the Department of Literature, Art and Media of the University of Konstanz. Archives
January 2024
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