SUBOTRON arcademy: Pervasive Games and Public Space

Veranstaltungsreihe zur Theorie von digitalen Spielen 2013

Tassos Stevens
Agency of Coney, London

Pervasive games and play can impact on public space in many interesting ways. In this talk, Tassos Stevens seeks to outline some of the most interesting approaches for playing in public space in recent years, from various game-designers and performance-makers. He’ll examine the different dimensions of social, cultural and economic impact and how we might demonstrate the evidence for those. And he’ll raise a challenge to all of us in the thick of this new wave of playmaking: when we’re past the first flush of (re)invention of play, what happens next? Why play?

Kurzbiographie
Tassos Stevens (@tassosstevens) is an ex-psychologist, theatre-maker, and wrangler; a founder and co-director of Coney (@agencyofconey). Coney makes live interactive play with impact for people wherever they are, following principles of adventure, loveliness and curiosity; and is a network of artists, makers and players with members all over the world and an HQ in London. Coney has made play for the National Theatre, the Science Museum, and Kensington Palace, and became a National Portfolio Organisation funded by Arts Council England in 2012.
Play Tassos has helped make for Coney includes “A Small Town Anywhere”, a piece of theatre for playing audience co-produced with BAC; “The Loveliness Principle”, co-produced with BAC, and remade for places including Latitude, “Shoreham-by-Sea”, and the Junction Arts Festival in Tasmania; “RSVP” collaborating with Dublin Youth Theatre for Dublin Fringe Festival; “Nightmare High”, a BAFTA-winning commission for Channel 4 Education with Somethin Else and Player3; “A Cat Escapes” and other Adventures in Learning happening in classrooms all over the UK.
Tassos also designed the iPhone game “Papa Sangre”, with a world realised entirely in music and sound. Currently he’s developing a platform of activity for NESTA’s Futurefest. Despite calling himself an ex-psychologist, he’s especially interested in the intersections between playful practice and various strands of psychological theory, including resilience theory, group dynamics, agency, and attention.

In Zusammenarbeit mit Play:Vienna, Austria’s Festival for Games in Public Space