Philosophy of Computer Games Conference 2016 Keynotes
Following what is now a decennial tradition, we will open each day of the conference with a keynote address. Our three invited speakers are prominent figures whose work occupies the intersection of philosophy, game studies and game design, and whose stimulating contributions on the theme of knowledge and computer games should spark new ideas and rekindle old ones.
Keynote 1: Prof. Jos de Mul
Jos de Mul is full professor of Philosophy of Man and Culture at the Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University of Rotterdam (the Netherlands). He has also taught at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), at Fudan University (Shanghai), at Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto), and is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. His book publications in English include: Romantic Desire in (Post)Modern Art and Philosophy (SUNY 1999), The Tragedy of Finitude. Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life (Yale University Press, 2004), Cyberspace Odyssey. Towards a Virtual Ontology and Anthropology (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), and Destiny Domesticated. The Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology (SUNY, 2014).
KEYNOTE TITLE: 'Games as the True Organon of Philosophy: On Schelling, Huizinga and Playful Ontologies'
Keynote 2: Dr. Dan Pinchbeck
Dr. Dan Pinchbeck is Creative Director at The Chinese Room, a Brighton, UK-based game development studio specializing in experimental first-person perspective games. He has acted as writer, producer, and designer on a number of acclaimed and influential games, including Dear Esther (2011), Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013), and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (2015). Dr. Pinchbeck is also Visiting Professor in the School of Creative Technologies at the University of Portsmouth, where he teaches Game Design and Game Studies. He is the author of the monograph DOOM: scarydarkfast (University of Michigan Press, 2013).
KEYNOTE TITLE: 'The Unreliable Philosophics of The Chinese Room'
Keynote 3: Prof. Katja Kwastek
Dr. Katja Kwastek is professor of modern and contemporary art history at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Prior to this, she has been teaching at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (Munich), the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI) the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research (Linz, Austria), and at Humboldt-University (Berlin). Her research focuses on processual, digital and post-digital art, media history, theory and aesthetics, and digital humanities. In 2004, she curated the first international exhibition and conference project on “Art and Wireless Communication”. Her international publications include Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art (MIT Press, 2013).
KEYNOTE TITLE: 'Aesthetic Experience as Game Changer: Understanding Through Interaction with (Post-)Digital Rule-Based Systems'
