Designing Human-Generated Gameplay for the Playbox™️ v.0.1
- Torien Cafferata
- A
Join us for an open rehearsal presenting outcomes from the workshop series, Designing Human-Generated Gameplay for the Playbox™️ v.0.1, led by Torien Cafferata and A of Playbox Studios. Together with eight participants—Inès Allegra, Neal Moignard, Angelo Moroni, Manuel Muñoz, Haruki Takeuchi, Zion Wang, Rafael Zen & Khalil Alomar (Why Whisper Studio)—they have explored input-output game poetics, or “controllography.”
Playbox Studios describes the workshop:
Everybody and your mom says video games are not real life. But what if we told you that real life could be video games? What if you could delegate any activity, no matter how impossible, to a human avatar? Or be guided through new real-world experiences (that you may or may not get to choose) as an avatar yourself?
Throughout the series, participants rotated between roles as designers and human avatars, using everyday materials to invent controllers, game mechanics, and avatar identities. Now, you are invited to experience their creations firsthand: an experimental arcade of live, human-generated mini-games—each a window into the poetry of play, the choreography of control, and the art of delegated experience.
About the Artists
Torien Cafferata is an AuDHD interdisciplinary artist originally from Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territory (Saskatoon, Canada), and based in Vancouver, Canada. Before receiving their MFA from Simon Fraser University, they trained as a performer, playwright, director, dramaturge, and educator. Cafferata’s practice spans a host of forms: devised creation, social practice, site-specific, mixed-reality, game design, ludology, and Pochinko clown. Cafferata is an avid trifler of digital platforms and lo-fi aesthetics, often using them in explorations of mad/disabled labour, play, interactivity, interpassivity, non-places, and hauntology. As co-Artistic Director of It’s Not A Box Theatre, they have toured performances and installations to the Prague Quadrennial, SummerWorks, and across Fringe Festivals.
A is a games and new media artist-organizer working on sustainable, life-affirming cultural infrastructures.
Accessibility
The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of 26 stairs. Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.
Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.