THE DATING PROJECT: (re)playing everyday life
Participatory lecture-performance
by Dan Mussett
It is hard now to imagine a world in which our everyday interactions are not in some way mediated or even manipulated by technology. The convenience that technologies facilitate in our everyday lives often overrides the impulse to criticise the values and assumptions upon which they are built. Left unchecked, these ‘technological innovations...establish a framework for public order that will endure over many generations’ (Langdon Winner).
This lecture-performance will introduce and use the software developed thus far in the research trajectory of ‘THE DATING PROJECT’ as a lens through which to reflect on notions of freedom and agency in relation to technology, the role of gaming in technologically mediated encounters, and the road to creating technologies founded upon values that are inherently inclusive, pluralistic and open. How can games ‘become...spaces for exploration of not only fantastical worlds and rhetorics of power, but also of playing with rules and their boundaries?’ (Mia Consalvo).
(Image: credits Dan Mussett and Bianca Zueneli - detail)