User:Berna Bereit Master Thesis

Notes

Context

• find a context for your thesis
• try to get out of the XPUB bubble
• who are people/collectives/institutions that are working on a similar topic

Format of Thesis

• project proposal (1500 words)
• thesis (7000 - 8000 words)

01 Project that may or may not be made

What?

"I wonder if it is not time for game design to start being a spatial exercise tool through which we, protesters, can practice and acquire urban tactics that stand against the state’s oppression?"

[Bashady, Hamza (2022). A Passive Mob: How Video Games Silence Dissent. Online. URL: https://futuress.org/stories/a-passive-mob]

Why?

Exploring (video) games as tools.

02 Project that may or may not be made

What?

"Club Stahlbad takes a stab at the dysfunctionality of the established spaces of entertainment, where “fun” is obligatory as a ritualized counterpart to “labor” - subordinating both work and “free time” to the logics of capital accumulation." [Total Refusal (2023). Club Stahlbad. Online. URL: https://totalrefusal.com/home/club-stahlbad]

"NPCs are digital Sisyphus machines that have no perspective of breaking out of their activity loops. In the moments when the algorithm shows inconsistencies, the NPCs break out of the logic of total normality, and appear touchingly human." [Total Refusal (2022). Hardly Working. Online. URL: https://totalrefusal.com/home/hardly-working]

An observation on female labour in video games - concentrating on NPCs and storylines of games.

Why?

hyper-realistic aesthetics – play reality – society projected in fictional games

03 Project that may or may not be made

What?

Take Action - a guide on how to borrow stuff from Action, use it for your project and then return it. 100% effort but 0€ costs.

Why?

Being a group of 14 people that all have great (great in this context also means big) ideas, the given budget is not always enough to handle all of our ideas. This small action enables us to act on a small budget and still make our concepts reality.

Workflow

Testing different stuff to see what is easy or not possible to return.

Timetable (Sept*)

Maximum duration is 14 days - that's the time by which you have to return the item.

Relation to previous practice

For my last project I used a security camera - since I didn't have any need for it afterwards nor the money to keep it, I returned it and got the full amount refundet directly to my credit card.