The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Visual Arts and the Council on Science and Technology at Princeton University will present GAMES &&, a symposium featuring artists, designers and researchers who explore and experiment with the tools and techniques of game design and development. Organized by Lecturer in Visual Arts Tim Szetela, the symposium will be held November 12 from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the James Stewart Film Theater and other spaces at 185 Nassau St. on the Princeton campus. GAMES && is free and open to the public, however registration is required. Register through the GAMES && symposium page.
Image from Invisible Roommates (2021) by Nicole He, game developer and creative technologist, who will be one of the speakers at the GAMES && symposium. Photo courtesy of Nicole He
Szetela will open the symposium at 11 a.m. following a 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. sign-in and morning refreshments. The first set of speakers will convene immediately following the opening and a second set at 2:30 p.m. with a lunch break scheduled in-between. A wrap-up at 5:15 p.m. will be followed by a reception for speakers and attendees at 5:30 p.m.
Each of the speakers at GAMES && will highlight varied and innovative practices with games, connecting the processes of game design and the technologies of game development to a compelling range of artistic practices, research methods and approaches to engineering and design. Presenters will include Salome Asega, director of NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology; mattie brice, visiting assistant arts professor at the New York University’s Game Center; Nicole He, game developer and creative technologist for the National Film Board of Canada and Google Creative Lab; Robert Vinluan, lead product designer of games at The New York Times; and Luke Caspar Pearson and Sandra Youkhana, founders of You+Pea architectural design studio and the Videogame Urbanism studio at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
Map of Katamari Damacy, from Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds (Thames & Hudson, 2022), by Luke Caspar Pearson and Sandra Youkhana (You+Pea), who will be two of the speakers at the GAMES && symposium. Photo courtesy of Luke Caspar Pearson and Sandra Youkhana (You+Pea)
Szetela is a designer, animator, and digital artist, who makes moving images, games, and assorted interfaces to visualize location, language, and other patterns. Rewordable, the game he co-designed using computational linguistics, was published by Penguin Random House. His short films have screened at numerous international animation festivals, including Anima Mundi, Annecy, Ottawa International Animation Festival, and Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films. He has shown work at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, the Museum of Fine Arts and Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, as well as a variety of digital art, game, and technology festivals and exhibitions. Szetela began teaching at Princeton in fall 2017. He also has taught at Harvard University, New York University, School of Visual Arts, and the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Querétaro, Mexico. He has an M.P.S. from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University.
Image from The New York Times Spelling Bee game, with design by Robert Vinluan, who will be one of the speakers at the GAMES && symposium. Photo courtesy of Robert Vinluan
GAMES && symposium is supported through Princeton’s John Sacret Young ’69 Lecture Series fund. Sacret Young (1946-2021) was a 1969 graduate of Princeton and an author, producer, director, and screenwriter. He was nominated for seven Emmy Awards and seven Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards, winning two WGA Awards. He is perhaps best known for co-creating, along with William F. Broyles Jr., China Beach, the critically acclaimed ABC-TV drama series about medics and nurses during the Vietnam War, and for his work on the television drama The West Wing. Young also received a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award, and his original mini-series about the Gulf War, Thanks of a Grateful Nation, was honored with his fifth Humanitas Prize nomination.
On the Friday before the symposium, two of the guest speakers, Luke Caspar Pearson and Sandra Youkhana, will lead a workshop on the production and design of unique game world experiments for 18 Princeton students at the Council on Science and Technology’s StudioLab, a creative technology space for all members of the University community that nurtures interdisciplinary networks of arts, sciences, and humanities practitioners.
185 Nassau St. is an accessible venue. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
All guests must either be fully vaccinated, or have recently tested negative (via PCR within 72 hours or via rapid antigen test within 8 hours of the scheduled visit) and be prepared to show proof if asked, or wear a face covering when indoors and around others.
Visit the Lewis Center website for more information on this event, the Program in Visual Arts, or any of the more than 100 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings and lectures presented annually by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free. Visit the Council on Science and Technology website for more information about CST courses, programs, and opportunities.
