Speaking with Pixels: The Arts and Sciences of Digital Games

November 17, 2006
2:00 pm
Halligan 106

Abstract

Everyone and everything communicates. Over time, humans have devised and used different means of communications, surely to coexist, survive, and organize, but also to build and maintain connections with family, friends, coworkers, and so on. Some humans have sought to communicate more broadly across space and time, not so much connecting with familiar beings, but rather planting ideas. Other humans, however, sought to focus their communications inwardly in pursuit of personal discovery and growth. With technological advances came naturally new media of communications with ever increasing reach and power. The pace of technological advancement, however, has not been constant over human existence, but has rather been constantly accelerating. The most recent advent of the information age with its technologies of networking and interactivity have dramatically changed how we live, learn, work, and play. These technologies have also changed how we choose to organize ourselves – the very essence of the notion of community – as well as how we discover, communicate, and grow. Video games are a strong manifestation of the power of interactive networked technologies, and the arts and sciences that underpin digital game development open up new and exciting avenues of human thought, discovery, and growth. As we learn how to harness the coupling of bits and neurons, we will be bringing together imagination, thinking, feeling, and expression, with heretofore unfathomable consequences on every aspect of the human experience. What will we say with pixels?