glider circuit

a post-human puzzle

• arrow keys to assume control
• wait / u to give up control

please enable sound if you're into soft machine hums

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weird yet ordinary
unfamiliar yet human crafted
animate but not living
how do things have experiences?

Despite this perceived agency, ‘liveliness’ or ‘smartness’ of many ludic systems, the understanding of what digital games are and what it means to play them, usually tends to fall back on anthropocentric narratives, placing the human player as a necessary central component of the agential experience. The proverbial state of play in how digital games are perceived and defined seems to be revealing a very binary world-view: human versus computer, organic versus the inorganic, active versus passive or player versus game.

[...] I would like to propose to rethink digital games and play, shying away from the purely anthropocentric perspective according to which humans are the active subjects and the game a mouldable object of human desire. It is precisely this alleged subject–object boundary that is transgressed in digital game play. After all, video games are actions, not only of the human players but equally so of the machines [...]. By their very nature, they break down the subject–object, organic–inorganic and player–game dichotomies. They constitute ludic ensembles, ‘inter-species assemblages’ or ‘biological–technological–informational’ collages.

- Sonia Fizek, "Automation of play: theorizing self-playing games and post-human ludic agents" (2018)

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made in collaboration with pancelor for the confunding calendar
bgm is an edit of 'track 35' from home alone by ali
dedicated to paradise