Ways of Worlding

What is a world and how is it made? How do the worlds we co-create with emergent technologies shape our shared speculations on worlds to come?

This talk offers an immersive look into Alice Bucknell's expansive worlding practice, which combines speculative fiction, game engine design, and nonhuman narratives to envision worlds that move beyond the false binaries of utopia vs dystopia and self vs world. Drawing on feminist science fiction, queer theory, new advances in game art and posthuman game design, the talk will delve into Bucknell's recent and current projects, which, among other topics, reconsider notions of individual identity and agency through ecological frameworks. The talk will address emerging strains in media theory and critical game studies that triangulate the ecological urgency of the present across new forms of embodiment, temporality, and futures thinking that game worlds enable. Bucknell will introduce inroads into these topics taken by their four-level video game The Alluvials, set in a not-so-speculative future of environmental disaster in Los Angeles, though a real-time playtest of the game. Illuminating the design decisions that went into the game mechanics, level and character design, and the possibilities of environmental storytelling through interactive media, the talk will expand the map of worldbuilding through new media arts and encourage students to experiment with such tactics in their practice.

Ways of Worlding considers the political valence of storytelling as a cultural technology and explores the game engine as an affective interface for generating new ways of being with the world.

This event is supported by the Teaching, Learning, and Campus Life Committee.