INTERPLAY: Thinking Through Games is the result of a collaborative work between TAG, Kitchener’s THEMUSEUM, the ‘Games Institute’ (GI) at the University of Waterloo, and the Personal Computer Museum. The exhibition brings together the work of multidisciplinary researchers exploring the creation of alternative games.
The exhibition is open to visitors of all ages, providing a rich platform in which intergenerational learning can emerge. The curatorial team worked collectively over several months in advance of the show to consolidate an exciting and inspiring corpus of projects that helped to illustrate the diverse ways in which games can be explored. The team hoped that this unique collection would help engage visitors in new perspectives outside of the preconceptions and expectations that are commonly embedded in games.
Jessie Marchessault and Rebecca Goodine were two members of TAG’s curatorial team who traveled to Waterloo to set up the exhibition a week before the opening. Once they arrived at THEMUSEUM, they and their team were happy to find the space in a work-in-progress stage which allowed them to make final adjustments on how the pieces were going to be displayed in the exhibition room.
Jessie and Rebecca explained: “It was not a blank canvas going in, we had previously made sketches of the exhibit’s planning, but with the in progress nature of things we could make some helpful last minute adjustments about the way the exhibit was going to be set up. It was open to taking some curatorial decisions that ultimately better helped people move through the space and see these great works”.
INTERPLAY: Thinking Through Games is part of the Digital Dynamics 2018 new media festival running from January 26 to May 13 2018 at THEMUSEUM in Kitchener, Ontario. Featured TAG works include:
SKINS WORKSHOP PROJECTS by AbTeC
Circuits by Eileen Holowka
Your Place or Minecraft? by Gina Hara
minDcraft by Gina Hara
You Can Touch: Variation II by Ida Toft
rustle your leaves to me softly by Jess Marcotte & Dietrich Squinkifer
The Truly Terrific Traveling Troubleshooter by Jess Marcotte
HAMMURABI by LabLabLab
IT IS AS IF YOU WERE DOING WORK by Pippin Barr
GUIDE by Rebecca Goodine & Reframe Games
Nagasaki Kitty by Ryan Scheiding et al.
WASTELAND MUSEOLOGY by Skot Deeming
MACHINE-MACHINE by Sylvain Payen
MSPaintAR by TAG Curation Team