[rohrpost] DIGAREC Lecture am 18.12.2008 - "Designing Wonder: Head Bumps, Dimensional Flips, and Scattered Melodies as Imaginal Labor in Some Recent Mario Games"

[Sebastian Möring | Digarec]

*** DIGAREC Lecture am 18.12.2008 ***

„Designing Wonder: Head Bumps, Dimensional Flips, and Scattered Melodies as
Imaginal Labor in Some Recent Mario Games“

James Tobias, Ph.D. (University of California, Riverside)

18.12.2008 - 18Uhr (c.t.) - 20Uhr
Haus 8, Raum 60/61
Campus Neues Palais Universität Potsdam
Am Neuen Palais 10
14469 Potsdam

Liu (2004) argues that “post-industrial” “knowledge work” requires
differentiating critical from corporatized learning; Hardt’s (1999)
characterization of resistant “affective labor” in Toyotist production
regimes has been one influential approach in that context which Stiegler
([2003] 2008) characterizes more broadly as “hyperindustrialism”: production
regimes unifying the production of goods and of "spirit" in the same,
synchronized technical processes. Perhaps where the production of work and
play intersect in terms of learning, they are to be valued and
differentiated in terms of affect. In this talk, I bring these questions of
labor, learning, and play to bear on computer-mediated recreation ("video
games") considered as a problem of hyperindustrial design; Nintendo’s Wii
console provides the primary example of recreational production of
information where learning, play, and work are historical objects of design.
Hyperindustrial appliances like the Wii design wonder for computer-mediated
recreation by deploying gestural-technical stylistics earlier prototyped in
human-computer interaction design research. I present a summary of these
historical stylistic tendencies in interaction design research, and I
suggest how the Wii deploys them to orient recreation and sociality, in
essence, as “offsites” for information production. The Nintendo Wii's
increased provisioning of bandwidth for player action orients “wonder” in
specific ways, in part to negotiate ethical claims to differentiate
contemporary play and work while emphasizing "playful learning." In this
negotiation, too, the console affords a powerful “signature effect”: an
unprogrammed temporal object diagrammed in digital recreation as conduct not
quite reducible to the functional gestures which operate the console -- and
an effect currently being extended in a range of modifications by
researchers and amateurs alike.
Keywords: affect, labor, play, knowledge work, Nintendo, Wii, wonder,
design, gesture, technics.

The talk will be held in English. Die Vorlesung wird in Englisch gehalten.

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Sebastian Möring
wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft
 
Universität Potsdam
DIGAREC
Europäische Medienwissenschaft
Institut für Künste und Medien
Am Neuen Palais 10
 
D-14469 Potsdam
 
Tel: +49 331 977 1461
Mobil: +49 177 4665360
sebastian.moering at digarec.org 
www.digarec.org
www.gamephilosophy.org