The project is part of the Collaborative Research Project "Technology, Exchange and Flow: Artistic Media Practices & Commercial Application", led by Prof. Dr. Michael Punt, University of Plymouth in collaboration with the Free University Amsterdam, Prof. Dr. Bert Hogenkamp; the Eye Film Institute Netherlands and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Details available from: http://www.heranet.info/Default.aspx?ID=356, [Accessed: March 22, 2010].
The output of this research will be presented in an exhibition and conference hosted by the University of Applied Arts, die Angewandte, Vienna in 2013.
Research Focus: The aim of the project is introducing a European Research Focus: Pervasive Prosumer Plays (PPP). Artistic Media Practices & Commercial Application in Alternate Reality Games and Game Arts.
This project will explore the relationship between creativity and innovation within contemporary European advertising/industrial and artistic Alternate Reality Game productions in which there is an established yet under-explored interconnection. Artistic Media Practices & Commercial Application
The crucial question it broaches is: how can we understand the evident similarities between artistic gaming practices and a particular genre of commercial productions in the Alternate Reality Game sector? Are they determined by technological opportunity recognised by both constituencies of producers? Are they the result of an interweaving of media formats (Alt Games, funware, social networks) and cultural networks which carry reproductive and distributive possibilities? Or are they the consequence of the exchange between artists, producers and consumers? And if, as prima facie evidence suggests, they are the consequences of a melange of all these factors, what can this particular study tell us about how 'creatives' in industrial and artistic sectors might more effectively and productively collaborate in the future?
Method: Through the presentation of a survey of contemporary arts practice in Europe, game art works in the field of Alternate Realities, the project will discuss significant parts of the complex network of reciprocal influence between commercial producers, artists and consumers particularly when Internet of Things-technologies offer possibilities for recombination and creative intervention. As such it will provide an alternative to a 'hard' technological determinism. It will offer insight and guidance for a future policy that regards the arts and the creative industries as a single dynamic entity, and which factors in popular desire and imagination through the recognition of consumer/player agency in new hybrid genres of games and play as dimension of social design.
The research questions will be tackled primarily using three distinct methodologies; philosophical, historical and practice-based research. Through research into commercial intersections of games cultures and of Hybrid Arts and games it will bring together paradigmatic examples that reveal these mutual influences and intersections.
Topics: The investigation will deal with media, human interaction and the imaginary, affective dimensions of technology and gaming, and will challenge the traditional concept of a top down hierarchical flow from artistic creativity to the commercial sector triggered by the stimulus of hybrid gadget technology. Thus it will question technological determinism as a cultural paradigm in gaming, its rhetoric and its representation and seek evidence to support the concept of mutual exchange and synergy between humans and other 'actors'. In doing so it will pave the way for future analytical approaches to emerging creative opportunities that include the user/consumer/ public (prosumer) as active participants in the shaping of new forms and strategies.
Focusing on a selection of exemplary creative possibilities for intervention offered by Alternate Reality Games, Ding-politics and the Internet of Things, the presentation will examine the exchange between artists, producers and consumers relative to the flow of cultural formats. The project is expected to provide an evidence-based challenge to the presumption that artists in games are at the forefront of creative and critical (cultural/social) progress and that new technology leads their innovation. It is expected to confirm and extend preliminary research by the author which points to evidence of a flow between creativity and innovation and commercial application. The research structure and methods ultimately diffuse the boundaries between cultural and disciplinary practices and returns its findings to the public domain in a collaboration between academic and non-academic stakeholders on undifferentiated basis. This proposal of the application of Alternate Reality Games as research method shall be questioned in the presentation.
Exhibition: The output of this research will be presented in a future exhibition and Alternate Reality Game as research tool, for which participation partners are still sought-after and could be invited as consequence of the presentation. As such, the presentation is considered as networking offer for the development of practice-based research methods in game design, arts and critcism.