Mods, machinima and chiptunes: repurposing game technologies
Conference made in collaboration with the Media Design master from Haute école d’art et de design – Geneva.
For almost forty years, video games evolve with technological changes. Each new generation of consoles, computers and processors corresponds to the birth of new gaming genres. In parallel to this evolution, different machines and their technologies are constantly repurposed by artists, musicians, designers and creative amateurs. They use them in order to create various things ranging from films (machinima) to musical tracks (chiptune). The machines, as well as the production techniques employed, enable the crafting of original forms of content and intriguing aesthetics. This session will give an overview of the history of repurposing in the context of video game technologies, and discuss the upcoming evolution of this domain.
Isabelle Arvers is a French media art curator, critic and author, specializing in video and computer games, web animation, digital cinema, retrogaming, chip tunes and machinima.
Dubmood is a Swedish composer and producer of electronic, pop, rock and dance music best known for his works in the chiptune (8-bit) genre and within the computer piracy movement known as the Warez scene.
Nicolas Nova is a researcher interested in human-computer interaction. He teaches ethnography and digital cultures at HEAD – Genève and works as a consultant at the Near Future Laboratory.
