artificial animals games intelligence
A lecture for year 1 BA Games Design & Art, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton more…
ethno-video
A short video introducing the ethos of my ethnographic ethology, made for the Lived Research Experiences event, organised by Southampton’s Debating Ethnography research group more…
Toy Theory
My book, Toy Theory, will be published by MIT Press in 2023. Here’s a section of the proposal: Headline Rethinking culture, media, technology and the human through play with objects and materials. Placing toys at the centre of the postdigital era through a philosophy and genealogy of play with objects, of toying and being toyed with. […] more…
the game economy
Video of my keynote talk ‘The game economy: designing for, and playing with, the digital era’, for ICOFEP 4: Economics, Finance and Management in the Digital Era, Poznań University of Economics and Business, November 19th 2020 Slides and text here if you prefer. more…
economic imaginary
Economic imaginaries are no mere abstractions or illusions, they shape the design and reception of games as technologies and as commodities, facilitating and scaffolding certain kinds and parameters of play whilst never fully determining them. They mesh the material characteristics and operations of the game (as both interactive media software and operationalised business model) with […] more…
ethology of AI
What are the implications of taking the animality of AI and A-Life entities as real and not metaphorical or symbolic? This question in turn demands ontological questions of the synthetic animal itself: what kinds of speciation gives rise to it, what habitats and what kinds of behaviour shape its existence, and how might the status […] more…
not not animals
Does it make any sense to consider virtual animals as animal in any serious way? Both the naturalistically-rendered wolves of Legend of Zelda: the breath of the wild and the chatty anthropomorphised citizens of the Animal Crossing games are inorganic abstractions, assemblages of animated drawings, behavioural algorithms and audio clips. Their material substrates – digital/electronic […] more…
Unbox: The speed and slowness of Lucy, Batman, Batman, Gandalf, and Dumbledore
Microethology of toys-to-life (from proposal for Toy Theory book) – I’m going to build Dumbledore [sings:] Dumbledore, Dumbledore… – Technically, you’re building Gandalf [They rip open the small plastic bags containing LEGO pieces and minfigs] – [In a gruff voice] I only use black and very very very dark grey… Why am I quoting […] more…
game | death | worlds
I compiled this sometime in the mid-2000s, as a curated list for Furtherfield. Riffing on gameworlds and lifeworlds, it resonates nicely with my current writing, but with a morbid twist… a study of the materiality and imaginary of artificial life in which most of the links and projects, and hence their animate entities, are now […] more…
one or several artificial wolves
Link encounters a group of animals on a green, grassy hillside, beautifully animated in the rich landscape. Large birds, and a wild boar, promise meat if successfully hunted. As the player-avatar approaches, carefully, to within range of his bow and arrow he spots a wolf tracking a wide A* path through the immediate environment. Proximity […] more…
AI and the future of play
Placeholder for a position statement on my current research and teaching on the genealogy and emergent dimensions of artificial intelligence in play and technoculture. more…
AI & the achievement of animals
A stork and a wild pig in Breath of the Wild are distinct species only in a decorative sense, as mise-en-scene of the open dynamic world. As prey however they are simply the same: moving targets and soon-to-be raw meat. At first glance, a horse in Breath of the Wild is defined primarily by its vehicular potential. it is […] more…
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