Research-Creation/Curation

Polished

You deserve a break. You deserve to luxuriate. You deserve…to get your nails did. Be fierce, be playful, be a work of art. And when you’re done, marvel in your creation and take those hands out into the big beautiful world.

Polished: An Intensely Relaxed Nail Salon Experience is a game that takes you to the salon to sit still, paint carefully, and try to give your nails the perfect finish–if you can be graceful enough. But don’t worry, even if you mess up, you’ll still look like a million bucks.

Polished was developed as part of the 2019 collaborative project I Will Make You a Better Person at Concordia University. The larger project was initiated by Dietrich Squinkifer, Rebecca Goodine, and Kalervo A. Sinervo to explore methods of communal care and skill exchange within an academic institution. Over the course of the collaboration, the primary thematics that emerged were burnout, self-care, and the marginalization of LGBTQIA+ folks in the academy. The team published articles, delivered a conference presentation, and produced Polished as both output and a form of group therapy. The game itself is a lighthearted illustration of the difficulties of self-care and the contradictions of creating a space for luxuriating that calls for rigid control and confinement.

Role served: developer, logistics coordinator

Interplay: Thinking Through Games

As part of the Interplay project at THEMUSEUM, Thinking Through Games explores the spaces and places of games in research institutions. This unique collaboration between the Games Institute (University of Waterloo), and the Technoculture, Art, and Games Research Centre (Concordia University) displays a wide variety of ways that academic researchers are engaging with and studying games, through play and analysis as well as through game creation. Engaging and hands-on, the exhibition serves as a space for visitors of all ages to learn about how games are made and studied, showcasing research that looks into the past, present, and future of games.

Connecting a diverse range of different games and approaches, the exhibition guides visitors through a wide array of practices, from written analytical and theoretical research, to modding and repurposing of blockbuster games like Minecraft and Fallout 4, to the creation of highly experimental alternative controller experiences. The exhibit serves as a playful invitation for visitors to reflect on and engage with possibilities outside of their preconceptions and expectations of what games research looks like.

Role served: curator, TAG

MISSING

In MISSING, coordinated technologies and performers are used to teach participants about the nuances of networked surveillance and the attendant paranoia that comes with the institutionalization of these technologies.

MISSING is a game for one player. You are the player. You are also a shadow. You have simple instructions. Your time is limited. Others can see you.
You are close to your objective. Then the objective is not what you thought it was. You are not where you thought you were. The game has changed. You can keep playing, but you can’t start again. Because you know too much now.
MISSING is a prolonged interaction between three things – a world, its rules and the people in it. It explores ways of re-experiencing public and private spaces in the city.

Roles served: script writer, developer, performer.

Comics x Games

An initiative of The Hand Eye Society (HES), Comics x Games fosters collaboration between the independent game and comic communities through a variety of projects, partnerships and events. Every year with HES partners with The Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) to present unique, game-focused content — from original games and gallery shows, to panels and talks.

Role served: programming consultant.

DRIFT 2016 Workshop

Beginning in 2016, Concordia's Technoculture, Art, and Games Research Centre (TAG) entered into collaboration with the ZU-UK Interactive Theatre Collective to produce a series of workshops, art pieces, and installations geared towards merges interactive digital media with human-centred experience. The 2016 summer workshop, conducted across the Atlantic at both Concordia University and the Games and Art Stratford London station, resulted in a range of hybridized objects that incorporated social media, salvaged board games, AI, and handcrafted art.

Roles served: developer, artist, showcase organizer.

Salon Ludique: Dreams

Beginning in 2016, Concordia's Technoculture, Art, and Games Research Centre (TAG) entered into collaboration with the ZU-UK Interactive Theatre Collective to produce a series of workshops, art pieces, and installations geared towards merges interactive digital media with human-centred experience. The 2016 summer workshop, conducted across the Atlantic at both Concordia University and the Games and Art Stratford London station, resulted in a range of hybridized objects that incorporated social media, salvaged board games, AI, and handcrafted art.

Role served: curator.

Salon Ludique: Frequencies

Feminist voices and gender critiques come in a variety forms. While work like Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency video series provides us with pointed and topical critiques of narrative tropes featuring representations of women in digital games, an array of feminist practitioners directly address similar themes and issues through the creation of new works; engaging in practices along a spectrum of 'feminist frequencies'.

In light of the rise of reactionary, anti-feminist movements in gaming and other cultural milieus, this edition of Salon Ludique offered a response to such troubling trends by exploring gender-critical practices in digital and analog games, performance, and new media. These works serve as a critical commentary on gendered stereotypes, as well as questions of consent, sexuality, and identity.

Role served: curator.

Utopia Arcade

Through the creation of imaginary and possible worlds, the medium of digital games has long been a site for the exploration of utopic and dystopic cultural themes. Join researchers Carolyn Jong, Kalervo Sinervo, and Skot Deeming, from the Technoculture, Art, and Games Research Centre, as the present an exhibit of games which touch upon these themes. The games in the exhibition feature visions of alienation through labour, unpopulated desert islands, overbearing bureaucracies, autocratic governments, the perils of capitalism, and the instability of memory. 

The works selected for this exhibition were produced by independent video game developers from around the world, each one offering their own unique perspective of what constitutes utopia or dystopia. Join the curators in a conversation about these works, take some time to play and explore, and enjoy a twilight view of downtown Montreal from the EV Lounge's 11th floor terrace.

Role served: curator.