Immersive Call #2: Agents in Play
A collaboration between IAC & HiS
Deadline: January 9, 2023
Inter Arts Center (IAC) is happy to announce Immersive Call #2 in collaboration with Högskolan i Skövde (HiS) and Skövde Konstmuseum.
For IAC this call is part of a greater focus on immersive formats. Since June 2021, the network and gathering, called Immersive Days, has been an annual opportunity for professional artists, curators, researchers, technicians, teachers and students within a broader field of immersive technologies and artistic practices, to share their latest work and challenges, and to exchange ideas and give each other feedback.
The aim of this second Immersive Call is to investigate how games and gaming operate in culture and society today. Moreover, how can the forms of gameplay be elaborated as spaces for critique? Can we find ways to subvert or widen the scope of the dominant form of game design? As has been shown, gameplay as an experience can pose a special challenge when applied to other artforms, because in gameplay we lose ourselves into the game.
Possible approaches could be artistic practice-based projects that reflect on the cognitive mechanisms within media ecologies, the entanglement between physical and virtual realm. How can new rules and expanded forms of agency emerge through gameplay that invite interconnectivity and mutualism? Can gameplay influence and give new perspectives on the meaning of cognition, maybe by leaning into a more-than-human perspective? Or are there other ways that gameplay can function as a form of investigation into human/non-human desires, needs and wills.
We encourage artists and artistic researchers whose practice evolves around gameplay, extended reality, world building and/or immersive technologies, to apply for this open call with new projects or adaptations of existing works.
What we can offer:
- A long-term residency in a dynamic environment for artistic development and experimentation with the opportunity for both qualified audiences, meetings, discussions and feedback sessions. The residency will be split up in three parts with a midterm two weeks workshop in September (v 38-39) at the HiS playlab. See https://www.futuremediatheaters.com/playlab.html
- Technical resources (equipment and assistance), but also guidance in e.g Unity (game engine), various tools for 3D graphics and motion-capture.
- A highly professional discursive context and framework for investigating new artistic approaches to art, technology and gameplays.
- Possibilities of presenting a work-in-progress or the finished project at IAC’s Immersive Days gathering, November 2023, and/or remote for the Future Media Theaters community.
- The call covers travel and accommodation (in Skövde). Fees for 1-4 artistic presentations, workshops or guest lectures within the proposed projects will be covered.
What we need in your application:
- A motivated application which relates to the theme of the open call, describing either a new work or a suggested adaption of an existing work. The application should include a summary (max. 1 000 characters) that briefly explains the idea of the project, its vantage points and investigative approach.
- An artist bio/statement and CV (max two pages per application)
- A portfolio presenting your general/overall artistic practice (either as attachment or link)
- Examples of referential works for the proposed project (here we need documentation/samples/excerpts (as attachment or links)
- Send the application in a single PDF to info@iac.lu.se
- Title in subject field: IMMERSIVE CALL#2 – Agents in Play
Inter Arts Center (IAC) is a platform for artistic research and experimentation, and part of the Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts at Lund University. It acts as a meeting place and a work space for researchers and artists from various disciplines and backgrounds, who use the facilities for short or long-term projects. IAC also offers several residency programmes in cooperation with partner institutions.
Högskolan i Skövde (HiS) is the centerpiece of Sweden’s largest and broadest game education hubs. It encompasses about 600 students across twelve different game degree programmes and about 50 game faculty members and researchers. Högskolan i Skövde provides a first-class research environment in games at the intersection of media and information technology.