MA @ OCAD (Ongoing)
What got me in
Here are the documents that got me into grad school:
My research proposal
My letter of intent
My portfolio
RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR DIGITAL FUTURES (M.A.)
Submitted by Roxanne Baril-Bédard, January 2017
The Sublime in Videogames - Digital Embodiment, Spatiality and the Intangible
Abstract: In my research I intend to create interactive digital experiences that explore the intersection of spatial theory, the philosophy of aesthetics, and game studies. Tackling the contemporary game studies researches regarding topology and affective design, I want to create artistic interactive pieces that explore and expand on the medium’s unique poetic potential to foster emotional interpellation through motion. The resulting interactive media productions, and the literature accompanying them, will contribute to the current trend in game and new media studies in which games are analyzed from a multidisciplinary perspective, in relation to but differentiated from other artistic and media practices.
Introduction
There are a plethora of ways to approach videogames. Many wonder about their effect on audiences, from a social sciences standpoint; others are concerned about their narrative potential, as a non-linear, participative media; others still ponder about the technicalities needed to create virtual worlds. One of the early theorists of videogames, Espen Aarseth, have stated in the editorial of the International Journal of Computer Game Research’s first edition “[the simulation aspect of videogames] is radically different to [textual] narratives as a cognitive and communicative structure” (Aarseth, 2001). There is something unique to interactive digital experiences that scholars are interested to explore.
However, this emphasis on the novelty of videogames as a medium sometimes falls short of seeing the potential parallels with other forms of design, art, and their surrounding discursive traditions. In particular, it disdains theoretical cross-pollination with the traditions analyzing the emotional experiential aspects of art, which could only deepen game scholars and designers’ perspectives of the medium’s potentiality. Because of their spatial nature, and by the plurilocative intangible embodiment they necessitate, videogames would be better understood as sensory works of art, or as immersive experiences. More so, a meta-analysis of this game studies trend can be found in “Fundamental Component of the Gameplay Experience,” published in 2007 by Laura Ermi and Frans Mäyrä. However, while they skillfully define different virtual re-embodiments, they mostly rely on psychology literature to support their arguments and their taxonomical classification of experiences, rather than philosophy or art history.
In particular, in order to understand the emotional depth of videogames and the embodiment of their interactive experiences, one should weave literature from both architectural theory and philosophy of affect with videogames studies. For example, in The Sublime and Modern Architecture: Unmasking (an Aesthetic of) Abstraction, Kate Nesbitt underlines and explains one of architecture’s ambitious leitmotif in designing affect: “In the instance of the sublime,’ she says, ‘the experience is visceral. […] The sublime is the path through which architecture achieves metaphysical import” (1995). Using definitions of the sublime posited by other fields of study, like the ones expounded by Nesbitt, I will be equipped with theoretical tools to probe digital embodiment in virtual environment. This kind of intense, mystical even, emotional response, has rarely if at all been studied by videogame scholars - maybe studying it would allow to create games, like Nesbitt says, of “metaphysical import.”
Also, much like architecture, digital interactive spaces have to be lived to be experienced. Comparing architectural experience to cinema, Giuliana Bruno states: “The changing position of a body in space creates architectural and cinematic grounds. The consumer of architectural (viewing) space is the prototype of the film spectator” (1997). It must be clear that videogames share even more characteristic with architecture than with traditional linear media, and as such, their study should be, if not enmeshed with, at least influenced by the scholarly architectural tradition. Indeed, while famous virtual spatiality scholars such as Micheal Nitsche do approach digital scapes, they are more interested by the technical problematics of rendering complex environment digitally than by their unique poetics (2008) - an angle legitimized by architectural studies tradition.
However, digital interactive experience can but be unparalleled by material productions as they alone can actualize experiences in non-Euclidian typology. In other words, virtual simulation allow players to experience spaces that can only exist outside of a materiality. Some game scholars have briefly marvelled at such abstracted spaces possibilities, like Steven Poole when he describes them even as “space purer than any that exists in the real universe […] a pure dream of unhindered movement and harmonious action” (2000). However, many of the existing definitions of them focus on their technicality rather than their affective potential. Moreover, we cannot ignore the similitude between the architectural definition of the sublime and the dream-like quality invoked to describe non-Euclidian spaces.
Furthermore, this potential for fostering the sublime is not ignored by game designers. Notably, Jenova Chen, creator of indie darling game Journey (2012), has explained that his idea has sprouted from a conversation with a NASA astronaut about their experience of the sublime resulting from seeing the Earth from space (Solarski, 2012). Works like his, critically and publically acclaimed, are few and far between, but studying them will prove a solid starting point into understanding this very intangible affect.
Research
This is where my research begins. I am interested in how we may understand plurilocative embodiment in the digital space and the potential thereof for affective environmental design, rather than focusing on narratives, on systems, or on players and their cultural background. This focus on games as experience and game as environment necessitate exploring the relation of perceptions and meaning making to motion in (virtual) space. Moreover, I want to pursue this theoretical percolation through iterating interactive experiences in a research-creation program, in order to actualize the insights gathered from different academic fields.
Naturally, the very idea of making games that explore the possibilities for experiencing the sublime necessitate an interdisciplinary approach. My work will combine procedurally generative art, three-dimensional world building as well as game systems. Although I will draw on architecture and on philosophy, my work will aim to weave their influences in a cohesive and novel whole.
In formulating an answer to these questions, I will create work and forge collaborations with other game scholars, designers, and critics. Through technical practice as well as through continuous conceptual exploration, I will keep on being involved in the booming videogame community in Montreal and in Concordia. Ultimately, I hope to create a new poetic of videogame experiences and disseminate alternative ambitions for this interactive media.
Bibliography
Aarseth, Espen (2001), Computer Game Studies, Year One, International Journal of Computer Game Research. Online publication.
Bruno, Giuliana (1997), “Site-seeing: Architecture and the Moving Image,” Wide Angle 19.4, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Ohio, OH
thatgamecompany (2012), Journey, dir. Jenova Chen, Sony Computer Entertainment
Ermi, Laura and Frans Mäyrä (2007), “Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience,” Worlds in Play: International Perspectives on Digital Games Research, Peter Lang Publishing, New York, NY
Poole, Steven (2000), Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution, Arcade Publishing, New York, NY
Nitsche, Micheal (2008) Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Nesbitt, Kate (1995), “The Sublime and Modern Architecture: Unmasking (an Aesthetic of) Abstraction,” New Literary History 26.1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Ohio, OH
Solarski, Chris (2012), Drawing Basics and Videogame Art, Watson-Guptill Publication, New York, NY
Research Methods and Specific Objectives
I will undergo readings at the intersection of philosophy, art history, and design theory. Indeed, a research program that seeks to posit a new poetics of videogame experiences and to explore the sublime would need to address, in one way or another, each of these theoretical areas. To the extent that such an in-depth look into these many areas is possible, my research will encompass them all, weaving their different influence in a cohesive and rich tapestry of academic literature.
Speaking broadly, my research will attempt to situate digital embodiment experience within the context of phenomenology as well as architectural theory. A quick investigation of both these fields reveals that, while it is rare to find references to their tradition from a videogame studies perspective, the opposite is even less likely.
Specifically, I am interested in three areas: (1) digital (plurilocative) embodiment; (2) fostering the sublime through spatial design; and (3) procedural generation to engineer the sublime in the interstices between code and luck. Percolating between these poles will allow me to triangulate most efficiently towards my greater aim of understanding the potential for the sublime in videogames.
My research has another concrete goal as well. Through these explorations towards designing the sublime, my findings will serve other multimedia creators’ ambitions in creating metaphysical virtual experiences. My experience as a double major in Communications Studies and Religious Studies, as well as my background in costume design, have convinced me that knowledge of other disciplines is nothing short of essential to create artefact of conceptual breadth. Accordingly, the course of my research will bring me into closer contact with both academicians from different fields and with videogame creators, whom will too inform my practice and my enquiries, through ethnographical interviews, as well as through a research-creation process of collaborating with creators in game and design jams.
Letter of Intent
Masters of Arts in Digital Futures OCAD
January 2017
Roxanne Baril-Bédard
I wish to pursue a Masters degree in the Digital Futures program at OCAD so that I can continue to explore the poetics of video game spaces.
I am critically concerned about how these digital spaces allow for immersion, for a different phenomenological experience of location, and how these unique experiences can foster the sublime through their environmental or procedurally generative design. On a cultural level, from a queer and a feminist perspective, I also question the semiotics of our human-computer interactions, their assumptions, and their impact on reception.
I aim to interrogate existing paradigms through speculative design, as well as through a focus on affective design, at the intersection of spatial theory, philosophy of aesthetics and spiritual art history. I also look forward to drawing on the interdisciplinary community at OCAD to delve deeper into architectural theory of design as well subtle communication through motion, interpellation and embodiment. I want to make interactive experiences that would explore the unique potential of digital media, creating animated or non-euclidian spaces. Dr. Peter Coppin and his works on ‘remote experiences’ are uniquely inspiring to my ambitions. Studying alongside him concepts like telepresence and embodiment would seem like a perfect fit. Moreover, Barbara Rauch and her unique concern for emotions in relation to design, Job Rutgers and his ambient experience design, Emma Westecott and her alternative approach to game design, as well as Stuart Candy and his civic life fostering speculative design projects - all seem like inspiring professors to be surrounded with, and among with I would feel comfortable exploring my conceptual endeavours.
Indeed, during my BA, double majoring in Communications and Cultural Studies and in Religious Studies, I’ve become a practitioner of what the department calls research-creation under Dr. Erin Gee, Fenwick McKelvey and Sandra Gabriele. It is a hybrid approach of learning through making. I am interested in the Digital Futures program because I can continue to use this approach. My thesis work will focus on making software, games, and procedurally generated digital pieces that will aim to explore the idea of the sublime, a metaphysical emotion that have been traditionally studied and tackled by architects and artists across eras. I aim for these pieces to invite
a spectrum of affect from games, and to develop a model that facilitates multifaceted environmental affective design for both scholars and designers of videogames. I want to create work that can effect change in people, creating empathy through affective knowledge. The Digital Futures program, being multifaceted and involved, will allow me to continue my path towards further Graduate studies, as I aim to continue percolating in the academia towards a Doctorate program in the future, while also aiming to create critical media in order to disseminate ideas to a wider public.
I am a strong candidate for your program with an on-going research creation practice as well as an active member of the Concordia community. Some of my pieces have explored ideas such as the techno-utopian Californian Ideology and its occulted victims; a bio-sensor responsive VR museum installation under multimedia artist Erin Gee where an AI narrator employs parodic self-help rhetoric, laying the blame of un- happiness on the individual; the remediation of a taxonomy of derailment tactics or faulty rhetoric patterns in an intersectional feminist RPG; and twitter bots that muses on intersection between identity politics, celebrities and academic theory, or that expresses ad absurdum existential dread, making emotions strange yet shared in the public twitter sphere.
I am also an active member of Concordia’s prestigious gaming research cluster, Technoculture, Art and Game at the Millieux Institute, where I organize events as the Research Assistant of Lyn Hughes, Concordia University Research Chair in Interaction Design and Games Innovation. I co-founded the Millieux Undergraduates Group, an interdisciplinary research-creation cluster that fosters research-creation and project- based learning, and organizes skill sharing workshops, as well as cross-faculty community initiatives such as game jams or curated multimedia exhibitions. This group allow academic focused students to share with people from different backgrounds and create projects at the intersections of the sets of skills.