Vortex, a Special Salon of the Cloister Project
Yang Chen: Talk about the Interactivity of Video Games and Its Politics
2023.12.28 Thursday 19:00
Location
Unit 302, Building No.5, 8 Hengshan Road, Xuhui, Shanghai
Speaker: Yang Chen
This talk will discuss video game interactivity and its politics from the perspective of the interface, analyzing why the interface is the key to the change from game to video game, and revealing how the interface both exposes the interactivity of the game as a heterochronic interaction between the game and the player in two worlds, and transforms the autotelic space of the game into the semi-autotelic space of the video game. Based on these two effects of the interface, this talk will ultimately show how video games can generate new game-player experiences through the metaphorical "drama" of the interface through the recursion of heterochronic interaction, while at the same time exposing the politics of the interface as harboring the potential for a kind of game-player realism.
About the Speaker: Yang Chen
Yang Chen, Ph.D. in Comparative and World Literature, Department of Chinese language and literature, Peking University, and Lecturer, Department of Chinese language and literature, East China Normal University. His main research interests include science fiction literature, Chinese literature of the 1980s, theories of posthumanism, cinema and media studies, and game and animation studies. He has published many academic papers in journals such as Literature& Art Studies, Modern Chinese Literature Studies, Theory and Criticism of Literature and Art, and dozens of commentaries in media such as People's Daily, Wen Wei Po, Art Forum, and The Paper Marketplace of Ideas.
About the Vortex
Vortex is a long-term project. We will update the content of performance lectures by artists and talks by experts both on- and offline. Following the fundamental approach of connecting local practice, theories, and context, we hope that this nonstandard art venue will become a place of torrents, flux, and confluence.
