Pervasive Media Studio Talk on Software Palaeontology

I’m speaking at an event next week at the PM Studio in Bristol on Wed 16th at 4pm and the event is free!

Software Paleontology – Tomas Rawlings (FluffyLogic & DCRC PhD Student)
Tomas is on a GWR PhD scholarship applying evolutionary theory to peer to peer networks. As part of this research Tomas has developed a unique methodology of ‘software paleontology’ comparing the change logs of P2P software versions to the fossil records of  biological evolution.

Nietzsche contra Caillois: Beyond Play and Games – Dan Dixon (BIT) Dan teaches in Digital Media and researches in social gaming. In this recent paper he argues that there is no continuum between the experiences of gaming and playing; these are two separate aesthetic qualities both present during the playing of games. Secondly that these aesthetic experiences map onto Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian principles, as set out in The Birth of Tragedy (1993). Following this separation, particular attention is paid to the terms playing and gaming as specific aesthetic terms and neither of which are privileged experiences of digital or non-digital games.