The 2024–2025 ASCA Cities seminar will approach the city through the lens of play. Taking up the theme of ‘Playable Cities’, we are interested in how play functions both as a concept and method in representing, designing and building the urban. 

From the use of simulation games in city planning (cf. Lammes 2008) to urban installations that invite playfulness, from alternative cityscapes in video games to activist interventions for more public spaces: Play can be understood both as a way to imagine the city – and a way to disrupt it. It is often positioned as an alternative to a more constraining and utilitarian form of “smart” urbanism, one that emphasizes contingency and freedom (De Lange 2015; Gordon and Walter 2016). What makes a city ‘playable’? How is play rendered (in)visible in the city? What forms of play and playing are possible/desired/designed in the city? How are urban environments represented in virtual games? How can activist interventions in public space draw on or be framed through play? And what happens when cities are compared to – or even built upon – games, toys, playgrounds, performance spaces and the like?

Engaging with and expanding on such questions, the seminar seeks to bring together perspectives from media and game studies, environmental humanities, cultural geography, anthropology and technology studies as well as architecture and design research. 

Co-organized by Carolyn Birdsall, Linda Kopitz and Alex Gekker. For more information and registration, please contact Linda Kopitz (l.kopitz@uva.nl) 

Programme

Fri. 14 Feb. 2024: Introduction/Reading and Discussion Session, Location: room 0.16 (E-lab), Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam, Time: 3-5pm.

Fri. 21 Feb. 2024: Ekim Tan (Independent Researcher), “Play the City: Representing Non-Human Agents”, Time: 3-5pm, Location: room 0.16 (E-lab), BG1 Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam, Time: 3-5pm.

Fri. 14 Mar. 2024: Sam Hind (University of Manchester), “Playing Domains: Competition in Machine Vision Challenges”, Time: 3-5pm, Location: room 0.16 (E-lab), BG1 Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam, Time: 3-5pm.

Fri. 25 Apr. 2024: Paul O’Connor (University of Exeter), “Play through the Grey Prism: Addressing Chromatic Leisure in Cities”, Time: 3-5pm, Location: room 0.16 (E-lab), BG1 Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam.

May exact date tbd.

Co-organized by Carolyn Birdsall, Linda Kopitz and Alex Gekker. For more information and registration, please contact Linda Kopitz (l.kopitz@uva.nl)

References

De Lange, Michiel. 2015. ‘The Playful City: Using Play and Games to Foster Citizen Participation’. In Social Technologies and Collective Intelligence, edited by Aelita Skaržauskienė, 426–34. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University.

Gordon, Eric, and Stephen Walter. 2016. ‘Meaningful Inefficiencies: Resisting the Logic of Technological Efficiency in the Design of Civic System’. In Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice, edited by Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis, 243–66. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Lammes, Sybille. 2009. ‘Spatial Regimes of the Digital Playground: Cultural Functions of Spatial Practices in Computer Games’, 11, no. 3: 260-72. https://networkcultures.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PlayfulMappingInTheDigitalAge.pdf