E-waste e-waste TRONs: building low-tech videogames and controllers

What is at stake when we play "Candy Crush," "Minecraft" or "The Sims"? What are the physical and environmental components behind these seamless interfaces and aesthetics of our gaming culture? How can we create alternative technologies and interactions that question what we cannot directly perceive yet powers our play? In this workshop, we will create low-tech alternative gaming consoles or controllers from a variety of elements: either natural – wood, soil, water, and so on –, or material – electronic waste and other discarded devices found in flea-markets or the streets of Geneva. Participants will thereby engage in processes of recycling, technological subversion, and hacking. They will learn how to crack open these ubiquitous devices of our computational and gaming culture and reuse old technologies for alternative aesthetics of play.

Dates

17 – 21 Feb. 25

Collaborators

Cyrus Khalatbari, Vytas Jankauskas, Afrane Bediako Akwasi

Partners

HEAD – Genève

Role

Co-organizer, co-lead educator