Alternate Reality: A Pervasive Play Project

Play as Inquiry was an experimental practicum at the University of  Chicago's Gray Center Lab and Logan Center for the Arts that asked how artists and scholars might construe their practices as play. This three-day practicum hosted by the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry features distinct and experimental approaches to research and production in various fields including game design, transmedia installation, public health, music composition, choreography, political science, experimental writing, and anthropology.  The practicum took place Nov 1-3, 2013.

Practicum Schedule and Participants

Fri Nov 1

7-10:30p / play as inquiry: welcome event w/ Patrick Jagoda (Gray Center Fellow & UofC), Dr. Melissa Gilliam (UofC), the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab.

location: performance penthouse, 901, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637

Sat Nov 2

10–11a / speed-ideating w/ Sara Thacher (experience designer, CA)

location: gray center lab in midway studios, 929 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637 (enter through the courtyard next door to logan center)

11a-12p / playing with the future: collaborative narrative in authentic fiction w/ Ken Eklund (writer/game designer, CA)

location: gray center lab in midway studios, 929 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637 (enter through the courtyard next door to logan center)

12:15-1:30p / experimental writing workshop w/ McKenzie Wark (media theorist, New School, NYC)

location: gray center lab in midway studios, 929 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637 (enter through the courtyard next door to logan center)

1:30-2:30p / lunch break (available for purchase at logan center cafe)

2:30–4p / foundings: a constitution-building game w/ Michael Dawson (UofC)

location: performance hall stage, logan center for the arts, 915 e. 60th st., chicago, il 60637

4-5:30p / listening + collaborating = improvising w/ George Lewis (scholar & composer, Gray Center Fellow & Columbia Univ) and featuring even in arcadia, there i am, a sound installation by Seth Brodsky (musicologist, UofC)

location: performance hall stage & north stairwell, logan center for the arts, 915 e. 60th st., chicago, il 60637

5:30-7:30p / dinner break

7:30–8:30p / gray play, a reading by & w/ Michael Taussig (anthropologist, Columbia Univ)

location: gray center lab in midway studios, 929 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637 (enter through the courtyard next door to logan center)

8:30-10p / ice time candle time water time tissue time time alkemie and music for lamps, a performance installation w/ Alkemie Altelier (multidisciplinary collaborative, Montreal) and Sha Xin Wei (experimental phenomenology, Gray Center Fellow & Dir. Topological Media Lab, Montreal)

location: gray center lab in midway studios, 929 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637 (enter through the courtyard next door to logan center)

Sun Nov 3

12-3:30p / REPLAY: an afternoon of responses via planned and spontaneous revelations of play inside research & production practices w/ Michael Montanaro (choreographer & media artist), visiting participants, University of Chicago faculty, independent artists & practitioners of all  kinds

location: gray center lab in midway studios, 929 e. 60th st., chicago, 60637 

 

About Play as Inquiry

Play as Inquiry is being conceived and organized by Patick Jagoda (faculty member in the Department of English and co-founder of Game Changer Chicago Design Lab at the University of Chicago), and Sha Xin Wei (Canada Research Chair in New Media, Associate Professor of Design & Computation Arts, and Research Director of the Topological Media Lab at Concordia University, Montreal) in association with Alkemie Atelier, a Montreal-based multidisciplinary creative collaborative.  It serves as culmination of their year-long Mellon Fellowship for Arts Practice & Scholarship at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.