Lead Curators for Joue le jeu / Play Along

La Gaîté Lyrique invites Lynn Hughes, Heather Kelley, and Cindy Poremba as Curators for Joue le jeu / Play Along. The three women met in Montreal, home of the kokoromi game collective co-founded by Heather Kelley, and the Technoculture Art and Games (TAG) Research Centre, co-founded by Lynn Hughes. Cindy Poremba is a key member of both of these groups.

LYNN HUGHES

Lynn Hughes is a digital media researcher, artist, and designer who holds the Chair of Interaction Design and Games Innovation at Concordia University in Montreal. She was instrumental in the founding and financing of the Hexagram Institute for Media Art and Technology, which is the largest new media hub in Canada. More recently she co- founded the Technoculture, Art, and Games (TAG) Research Centre, which fosters game research and design both at the university and in the broader independent games community. Her own production currently focuses on the design of full body, sensor based games.


HEATHER KELLEY

Heather Kelley is a media artist, curator, and game designer. She was named by Fast Company magazine as one of 2011’s thirty most influential women in technology. Ms. Kelley is co-founder of the experimental game collective kokoromi. She heads her experience design studio Perfect Plum, whose original product is the OhMiBod Remote app, an intuitive and beautiful iPhone interface to control a connected vibrator. She holds a Master in Communication from the University of Texas at Austin.


CINDY POREMBA

Cindy Poremba (shinyspinning) is a digital media researcher, creator, and curator, exploring the intersection of documentary, video games and interactive art. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Concordia University, and currently works as an Assistant Professor in Digital Futures, at OCAD University in Toronto. She organizes non-traditional exhibitions, workshops and “new arcade” events as an independent artist/curator and is a key member of the kokoromi game collective.

 

Sub- Curators

The lead curators have invited the following individuals and groups to sub-curate various themed spaces and events in Joue le jeu / Play Along.

Babycastles (NY), Thu Tran, and Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt

Curating and Fabricating: Meowton: A Whole Town

Meowton is a physical town build out of cheap material, electronics, lighting, and computer hardware: just a gigantic fun, interactive sculptural environment taking up the entire 4th floor exhibition space.

The town will, of course, function as a gigantic arcade cabinet experience for cat video games.

Curationally, we were going to break up the towns into some identifiable RPG town locations, like home, grave yard, pizza shop, jail, hospital, forest, cave, post office, and it goes on, and Babycastles will curate a cat video game for each area.   This cat video game will be embedded into the physical experience of Meowton, turning the entire town into an architectural arcade cabinet.  For example,  computer monitors will be built into structural sculptures, and custom individual controls will be embedded in the environment, high score boards.  Some games may be reinterpreted to be social and cooperative, other games will be retain their original player controls , depending on our architectural intuition of the game play experience for inhabitants.

Games featured in Meowton include (by location):

Most often, these are cat video game works of renowned video game artists, including Cat and the Coup by Peter Brinson (who also worked on Night Journey with Bill Viola), and Cat Got Lost by Increpare.  The final curation would be tighter than this list, which is to help illustrate a physical cat games town experience.

Included in this curation will also be a debut of a new game by Babycastles: Me0wtr0n V.


The Patroller is Present – Brandon Boyer/Venus Patrol

Venus Patrol is a new videogame website in search of beautiful things, from former Offworld.com editor and IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer.


Espace jeux video 

Sony Exclusive weeks

The Espace Jeux Video is a dedicated public space within the Gaîté Lyrique featuring playable videogames—particularly console-based games. This highly visible and well-trafficked area will feature six (6) Sony platform games with spectacular architectural environments, or unique spatial interaction, including Journey and Uncharted.


Board Games (Will Robinson)

A collection of architectural and spatial-themed board games, curated by Will Robinson, will be available in the Library.