An event
by the Department Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The symposium collects the contributions
made to the Ludic Method, ludic research practice lectures hosted at the department by Margarete Jahrmann.
The
yearly symposium brings together contributions to the Ludic Method, a principle that is elaborated in Experimental Game Cultures.
The event features diverse speakers, who engage in ludic research practice, new insights into cooperative and viable experimental
game art, future society dynamics, artistic research, science and epistemic things.
The gap between
our childhood bedrooms and experimental systems in artistic research seems big at first, but underlying is a deep desire to
engage with our world and our own existence. The LUDIC METHOD puts play as strategy into the center. In this symposium
we bring together two topics: Drama and Playthings, which connect the processual, the dimension of agency and small agency
in play, new forms of agency beyond the introduced understanding.
Ludic insight is caused by an
ongoing psychophysical play with discourse objects/artifacts. But what are these objects, and what is the significance of
the diverse research questions and topics tackled in experimental art using game mechanics and cultures?
Experimental
systems designed as performative practice and installations are only steps that lead to the next level in ludic method research:
to generate artistic artefacts as epistemic objects that enable a sustainable flow of discourse.
Hosted
by Margarete Jahrmann and Clara Hirschmanner.
The Symposium will be streamed via Zoom.
Access
via Zoom
Programme
13:00 – 13:30 Opening & Introduction by Margarete Jahrmann
and Clara Hirschmanne
13:30 – 14:15 machina eX: Artifacts as Interface: Props and Interaction in machina eX’ Drahtwolken
14:15
– 15:00 Only Slime: Building game worlds as artistic practice and existential play
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee Break
15:30
– 16:15 Mikko Meriläinen: Art, fantasy, toys, junk: The meanings of gaming miniatures
16:15 – 17:00 Ugo Dehaes:
How to breed and train robot dancers in your basement?
17:00 – 17:15 Break
17:15 – 18:00 Total Refusal:
Noclipping through Corporate Subconsciousness
18:00 – 18:15 Closing Remarks
machina eX:
Artifacts as Interface: Props and Interaction in machina eX’ Drahtwolken.
Lena
Vöcklinghaus, member of the Berlin-based collective machina eX, will talk about the use of props in the game theater productions
of machina eX. Props play a special role in the artistic practice of the collective: they not only contribute to atmosphere
and narrative, but also function as playing devices — objects that can be touched, moved, and interacted with, serving as
a crucial interfaces between the players, the room, and the story.
Drawing on the 2025 production
Drahtwolken — a play about forced laborers in Nazi Germany, created in Weimar — Vöcklinghaus examines how machina eX deploys
props across two registers: as narrative devices that carry and deepen the story, and as playing devices embedded in the game
mechanics. The talk provides insight into the dramaturgical and design process of machina eX, as well as into the technologies
deployed when turning objects into interactive props.
ONLY SLIME: Building
game worlds as artistic practice and existential play
The
artist duo ONLY SLIME will share from their artistic practice, building digital and IRL game worlds in their stage pieces
and installations, as backdrops and catalyzers for existential play.
Combining strategies and materials from theatre,
opera, digital art, electronic music and immersive technologies, such as live motion capture and extensive use of game engines
in various artistic contexts, the duo will elaborate on their philosophies of immersion and gamified worlds as contemporary,
ritualistic storytelling devices.
The talk will cover various aspects of their day-to-day engagements with technology
as worldbuilding- and storytelling tools, the impact of growing up in a hyperconnected age on contemporary social rituals
and storytelling formats, and the implementation of compositional thinking in shaping engagement with an audience in an artistic
context.
Mikko Meriläinen: Art, fantasy, toys, junk: The meanings of gaming
miniatures
In
a world with almost limitless digital entertainment available, what is the appeal of physical gaming miniatures - or in other
words, toy soldiers? How and why do hobbyists engage with these tiny objects, and what meanings and value are assigned to
them? Drawing from both his research and three decades of miniaturing, game scholar Mikko Meriläinen discusses how miniatures
are often much more than gaming pieces and considers the value of material play in our digital era.
Ugo
Dehaes: How to breed and train robot dancers in your basement?
Belgian
choreographer Ugo Dehaes spent nearly two decades creating work for expensive, but also fragile and opinionated human dancers.
When
subsidizers started demanding efficiency, cost-cutting, and optimization, he did what any rational artist would do in our
neoliberal society: he fired all his dancers to replace them with robots. But without proper investors, Ugo had to breed his
own robots in the basement.
In this lecture, Ugo reveals the dirty secrets of the trade: how to hatch slimy cocoons
into cute, but utterly dumb caterpillar-like creatures. You’ll get practical tips on robot upbringing, movement training,
and the fine art of off-loading unpaid labor onto enthusiastic audiences who think they’re “participating”. Tapping into the
"World Wood Web" you can even give some AI to your robots.
The only catch? Once they mastered choreography themselves,
even your job becomes superfluous. Efficiency, after all, must be optimized all the way to the top.
Total
Refusal: Noclipping through Corporate Subconsciousness
While
in most games produced in the 'West,' capitalism defines core mechanics, story, and worldbuilding. Consequently, they tend
to reproduce rule-affirmative, militaristic, hypermasculinist, authoritarian meritocracies. This is crucial to discuss, as
video games are essential hegemonic machines, and democratic ideologies are rarely channeled into game design. By playing
them against type and injecting left theory, Total Refusal explores methods to subvert these hegemonic machines.
Total
Refusal is an artists’ collective which appropriates contemporary video games in order to both shed a critical light on their
dominant narratives and their political significance as well as to misuse their resources to tell radical narratives that
ignore the gameplay mechanics intended by the game developers.
