Come join us for a weekend of presentations by and for artists who use digital games and play as a means for artistic expression.
This Playful Sessions weekend is curated by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, with sessions led by Brian Cullen, Paloma Dawkins, Liane Décary-Chen, Fili 周 Gibbons, and Isabella Stefanecu.
The sessions will take place at Fresh Ground Café at The Working Centre (256 King St E, Kitchener, ON N2G 2L1). Events will run on Saturday, January 27th and Sunday, January 28th, from 10:00am — 5:00pm.
Register here.
SCHEDULE
Saturday, January 27, 2024
10:00 am. Welcome
10:15 am Session by by Liane Decary
11:15 am BREAK
11:30 am Session by Paloma Dawkins (On Playful Animation)
12:30 pm LUNCH
01:30 pm Session by Fili 周 Gibbons (On Playful Connections to Sound & Presence)
03:00 pm SANDBOX
05:30 pm End of day
Sunday January 28, 2024
10:00 am Session by Isabella Stefanescu (Musical Crayons)
11:15 am BREAK
11:15 am Brian Cullen
12:00 pm LUNCH
01:00 pm TBD
02:30 pm BREAK
03:00 pm SANDBOX
05:30 pm End of day
Talk overviews and bios
Marie LeBlanc Flanagan is an artist working in the playful spaces between people, especially related to connection and community. Marie builds experimental video games, playful installations, and cooperative experiences and has an enduring fondness for the possibilities of trash.
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Liane Décary-Chen is a creative technologist and community organizer who works with digital media and cultural intervention. Her work utilizes interactive technologies, such as e-textiles, installations, web, and games, to address topics related to agency, sentience, and intergenerational knowledge exchange. In her practice, she prioritizes decolonial and disabled approaches. Décary-Chen co-runs the Cyber Love Hotel in Montreal and leads the Things+Time community archival project.
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Paloma Dawkins is a cartoonist and animator turned virtual-reality and video-game artist. Dawkins' previous games have been featured at world-renowned festivals and museums such as Factory International, Victoria & Albert Museum, MUTEK ,Garage Museum of Contemporary art, and more. Dawkins won awards at the Canadian Screen Academy Awards, Fantasia, FIVARS, Cinekid, NUMIX, and North Bend Festival. Dawkin’s games are praised for being digital spaces that celebrate natural life and rhythms and the worlds she creates in her games are spaces that incite creative thinking and wonder. Dawkins games and VR spaces carry on these themes and further invites us to be inspired by otherworldly scenes and scenarios.
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Brian Cullen will discuss his early influences, fine art work, academic work, video game projects, and future plans. His talk will cover a range of topics relating to game design, narrative design, music/sound design, and animation. Brian will exhibit playable builds of his games and examples of his experimental animations.
Brian Cullen (Ph.D., M.Phil, B.A.) has spent 25 years studying art, music and media technology, sound design and video games. Brian received his Ph.D. from the Queen’s University, Belfast (2010). His research explored how computer sounds and imagery fuse with everyday experience. Since moving to Canada, Brian completed three post-doctoral positions at the University of Waterloo, during which he created educational animations, researched audio’s impact on stereoscopic 3D, and explored video games as art. In 2014, Brian founded Fluxscopic Ltd. With Canada Media Fund and Ontario Creates funding, Brian worked with local talent, releasing Mayhem in Single Valley in 2021.
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Isabella Stefanescu will talk about the Euphonopen, an instrument for the live performance of drawing, and its possibilities as a toy used by children of all ages as a box of musical crayons, and the artistic game of musical improvisation.
Isabella Stefanescu is a painter, a visual, media, and interdisciplinary artist based in Kitchener-Waterloo. Originally from Romania Stefanescu immigrated to Canada and continued her education in mathematics and fine arts at the University of Waterloo. She is a former artistic director of Inter Arts Matrix, a co-founder of Globe Studios and the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area (CAFKA). Stefanescu has been Artist in Residence at the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab,and the Banff New Media Institute. She was also awarded the Ontario Arts Council K.M. Hunter Award for interdisciplinary art.
