The LAN Party Summer School is a webinar series that focuses on artists and practitioners that integrate video games in their practices. The series covers a range of topics, such as a brief history of video game art, modding and custom hardware, ecology, subjectivity, and performance.

The programme consists of four weekly online sessions via Zoom that consist of 1 hour of lecture/performance, followed by 30 minutes of open discussion. Sessions will be recorded so conversations and experiments can be revisited or repurposed later. In addition, each webinar leader will be sharing a further reading list to allow participants to expand their research within a given topic. Resources, recordings and a discussion space will be provided for via the LAN Party DFOS Space.

We hope the programme leads to shared documentation, cross-disciplinary connections, and practical takeaways for artists and researchers.

𝙎𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙡 𝙎𝙮𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙗𝙪𝙨

𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝟏: '𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲/𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲/𝐀𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝𝐬' 𝐛𝐲 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐥

Video games are a relational technology; they throw us into an encounter with the world that's permeable, intraoperative and open-ended. This talk explores the affective and ecological possibilities of indie and artist-made games that handle the world as an agent, allowing us to embody swarms, wildfires, wind, pollinators, dark matter, even the Earth itself. It asks after the existential and epistemic changes that happen in this altered state—where agency is shared and redistributed, where embodiment becomes a knowledge system, where communication becomes nonlinguistic and nonhuman. What other ways of relating with the world emerge when we cross back over from the magic circle of the game?

𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝟐, '𝐖𝐨𝐓 𝐭𝐨 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐀 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟎-𝐍𝐨𝐰' 𝐛𝐲 𝐒𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭

Viewed as rhetorical systems, video games are inherently political propositions, since Michael Smith's Mike Builds a Shelter (1983) artists have embraced this potential and subverted genre expectations. From the confrontational political stratagems to more discreet environmentally narrated commentaries, this lecture aims to approximately identify two periods of art games that can be read in relation to predominant emergencies and technological affordances of their time. We begin with the war on terror and a period of modification- and performance-based projects that overtly wore their politics, before positing a shift afforded by increasing access to sophisticated game engines and reacting to hyper-object conditions such as climate change.

𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝟑: '𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐖𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄: 𝐀 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠' 𝐛𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐚 𝐀𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐚

When We Love is a dating simulator where you date everything: a massively multiplayer online loving game. Consisting of a browser-based dating simulator in-progress and many companion works, you work, pick flowers, copy poems, bet, gamble, hike, stargaze, and walk to the corners of a low-fidelity world with many small approximations of real-world systems—rewarding intimacy for prolonged attention.

In this session, Chia invites the audience to a participatory playthrough of their dating simulator. Inspired by games like Tokimeki Memorial and Pacthesis' flash games, the complexity & brokenness of world systems and economies like in Neopets, and simulationist systems like Versu, and what it might mean to make a game that continuously evolves, attempting to contain everything and slowly deprecating itself.

𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝟒: '𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐝- 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞' 𝐛𝐲 𝐉𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐥

In this session, we will talk about user produced game modifications and how they negotiate the meaning around gaming as a participatory culture, the cultural and environmental implications of computer hard- and software design and the mythology of modern technology.

𝙎𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙡 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙙𝙪𝙡𝙚 10th July, 6pm CET - Alice Bucknell 17th July, 6pm CET - Side Quest 24th July, 6pm CET - Chia Amisola 31st July, 6pm CET - Janne Schimmel

Special thanks to our community partner, Gray Area, and the Metalabel & DFOS squad for their support on this project. ❤︎⁠