It’s a wrap! Gundolf S. Freyermuth & Björn Bartholdy thanked the organizers, the program board and everyone who made this year’s conference possible and turned it into such a great experience!
Last week, #CoR2021 concluded with its Game Studies Summit. The third and final day of the conference started with an introduction by Tom Apperley “The Changing Stakes of Gaming’s Material Culture in the era of Live-Streaming”, followed by Hanns Christian Schmidt (University of Cologne) with his talk on “Ludo Lego Literacies – Exploring Game Literacy, Brick by Brick”.
In his talk “Adventure Soil Life – museum4punkt0” Willi Xylander (Senckenberg Museum for Natural History) showed how to raise positive emotions for the relevance of a neglected ecosystem using a VR animation on scary animals. Anna Riethus (Federation of the Blind and Partially Sighted Nordrhine / Neanderthal Museum Foundation) & Thorsten Unger (Founder and CEO of Wegesrand GmbH) present the inclusive mobile game “NMse” that addresses visually impaired visitors at Neanderthal Museum by using a multisensual approach.
Martin Thiele-Schwez (Playing History) presented the mobile game “Hidden Codes” about radicalization in the digital age that was developed in cooperation with Bildungsstätte Anne Frank. Our presenters Katharina Tillmanns & Raven Rush then announced the “Teddy Talk”: Katriina Heljakka (University of Turku) talked about sharing, coping & uniting in the face of the pandemic using teddies and other toys: “Playing for Ludounity”.
The highlight of the conference was the keynote by Nathalie Pozzi & Eric Zimmerman on “Samples, Prototypes, and Storage Rooms” that answered the question why they “stopped building games”. The artist duo revealed how they went from creating game installations in new artificial spaces to create playfulness within the messiness of our world.
The YOUNG ACADEMICS WORKSHOP, focusing on “Atmospheric Propositions: Creating And Thinking the Aesthetics of Playable Atmospheres”, also take place again. It was not open to the public, though, as it was the follow-up event to last year’s conference where the participants met again to share new findings and insights on their respective topics.
The 11th International Conference on the Art, Technology and Theory of Digital Games is a three-part event. The first two parts took place in November 2020 & July 2021 as a digital conference that included the Young Academics Workshop, several introductions into the summit topics, and international Keynote speakers.
The research conference provided a virtual space for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. Experts from the academy, science and research, economics, politics, and the game industry addressed pressing issues concerning artistic design, technological development, and economic aspects of the game industry, as well as learning opportunities through digital games.
Part III will be presented online in November 2021 via Vimeo. The conference is again co-organized and co-hosted by the Cologne Game Lab (TH Köln) and the Department for Media Culture and Theater (University of Cologne).
Part I | November 18-19, 2020 | all digital
Part II | July 7-9, 2021 | all digital
Part III | Planned for November 17-19, 2021