Welcome to “Gaming Moms”

Welcome to the site for “Gaming Moms”, a three-year research project partially funded by the Swedish Research Council. The project investigates gaming practices in the everyday life of families where the mother is a gamer. If you wish to participate – our online questionnaire is still open – but you need to be able to understand Swedish. Klicka här för att komma till enkäten !

Contact Jessica Enevold and Charlotte Hagström

Välkommen till sajten “Gaming Moms”, ett treårigt forskningsprojekt finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet. I projektet undersöker vi spelande och vardagsliv i familjer där mamman är spelare. Vill du delta, så är vår nätenkät fortfarande öppen. Klicka här för att komma till enkäten!

Kontakta: Jessica Enevold and Charlotte Hagström

 

Crossroads 2012 in Paris

And here is a third missing post:

Last summer July 2-6 we went to the Crossroads 2012 conference in Paris where we presented a paper titled  What’s the use of gaming? Mothers, computer games and everyday life. It was a huge conference with lots of parallel sessions and papers, from early morning to late evening. As at all conferences there were some really interesting things and some not so interesting.

The opening was held at the UNESCO campus and Sarah Ahmed gave the first keynote. The sessions were then held at the Censier Campus, within walking distance from our hotel, which was next to Le Jardin du Luxembourg. Since it was really hot a walk in the park was a relief. The last plenary  of the first day was held in La Sorbonne followed by a reception. We got to see the Le Grand Amphitéathre which was indeed impressive.

It turned out our friends Hanna Wirman and Olli Tapio Leino were also at the conference. They’re usually in Hongkong so it was great meeting them.

 

Swisch om projektet

Another missing post is this:

I november 2012 medverkade vi med en swisch om vårt projekt på en informationsdag riktad till gymnasister. En swisch är en raketsnabb föreläsning med 20 bilder som visas i 20 sekunder vardera. Det går undan som bara den men är väldigt kul att göra! Kanske tycker du att du känner igen det här men under ett annat namn och det stämmer. Det har ett japanskt namn också men det visade sig att det fick man inte använda hur som helst. När planerna för att ha med snabb-snabba föreläsningar på dessa informationsdagar tog form bestämdes det därför att utformningen och namnet inte skulle var exakt detsamma. Swisch heter det alltså nu i Lund. “Gaming moms” hette vår swisch.

 

Rum för spel på konferens i Norge

We suddenly realised some posts are missing. One is this:

Den 18-21 juni 2012 hölls den 32:a nordiska etnolog- och folkloristkongressen i Bergen, Norge. Konferensens övergripande tema var ”Dynamics of Cultural Differences” och jag deltog i sessionen Kvinnor gör rum där jag presenterade ett paper med titeln ”Rum för spel. Att få, ta och skapa utrymme”. Det är nu publicerat under samma titel i tidskriften Nätverket.

 

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Gender-Technology Relations: Exploring Stability and Change. Seminar with Hilde G. Corneliussen

INVITATION TO HEX DIGITAL CULTURES SEMINAR SERIES

Lecture by Dr. Hilde G. Corneliussen, associate professor in Digital Culture, University of Bergen, Norway.  In her lecture she will explore the question of stability and change in gender-technology relations in a historical perspective.  Among the examples you will meet cultural discourses warning women against being “sent back to the kitchen sink” unless they develop an interest for computers; recruitment initiatives inviting women to computer science because they are good at communicating with people; female computer experts presented as not-(masculine)-nerds; and computer competent women using femininity to surprise their environments.

• Date: Tuesday November 27
• Time: 15.15-16.45 followed by film and discussion 17.00-18.00
• Place: Room 201, Kulturanatomen, Biskopsgatan 7, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences

More info at the HEX site. Welcome!

 

Friending the Prime Minister: seminar with Lisbeth Klastrup

Friending the Prime Minister – The Culture and Use of Political Interaction on Social Media

INVITATION TO HEX DIGITAL CULTURES SEMINAR SERIES:

WITH: Lisbeth Klastrup who works as Associate Professor at the IT-University of Copenhagen, where she is affiliated with the Digital Culture and Communication and Media Research Groups.  She has studied the culture and use of online worlds and social media format since 1999, and is currently working on a book on social network media.

LECTURE: What happens when people start friending their prime minister and politicians wash all their dirty laundry in front of a curious social media audience? In recent years, politicians and political parties have started to use social media extensively as part of their political campaigning in relation to local and national elections for parliament.  What does “political life” in social media look like currently and historically, and how do users in fact engage with politics and politicians? Is there such a thing as a “political culture” in the social media sphere and if so, what does it look like? This lecture will discuss these questions and more, primarily based on the study of use of social media in Danish election campaigns from 2005 to 2011.

LAB: In the lab, we will follow up on the lecture, first by short group work where you discuss your own use of social media in a political context, and then followed by joint discussion and commentary.

WHEN? 4 October, 13.15–16.00 13.15-14.45 Lecture + Q & A ** short break ** 15.00-16.00 Exercises in the computer lab

WHERE? Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 201, 1st floor, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7.

HOW: Drop in. It is not mandatory to announce your participation ahead of time, but it is much appreciated! Please email: jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se

Welcome!

 

Nordic Digra 2012 Tampere

Just a quick note on past events. June 6-8, the second Nordic Digra Conference was held in Tampere, Finland. Right after Nick Montfort gave his keynote, I presented my article “Domesticating Play, Designing Everyday Life” as the first presenter in our panel, which was a very interesting one overall. I also got to  enjoy both the presence  and presentations of many of my  great colleagues/friends from all over Europe AND delicious carrot-beetroot cake served during the coffee break! All papers are accessible from the Proceedings, published in the Digra Digital Library.

Unfortunately I had to hurry home to the MACA graduation, (which NB was a great event!) and had to miss most of the second day. But Nordic Digra 2012 was a great event the organizers can be proud of and it is always great to listen and mingle with  game studies people who tend to come from all kinds of disciplinary corners. An anthropologist, Minna Ruckenstein,  even got to give one of the keynotes – on  gambling. For those of you with Facebook, some additional info and pics can be found here. Linderoth has also written, in Swedish though, about the conference and a few of the papers on his blog Spelvetenskapliga betraktelser.

And here I thought Game Studies was NOT male-dominated :). In any case: a glimpse of the game scholars attentively listening to Annika’s talk.

Annika Waern “framing games” in a full room of critical game scholars! Program Chair Raine Koskimaa listening to the left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next on this site, we should hear from Lotta’s attendance and presentation at the 32nd Nordic Ethnology and Folklorist conference in Bergen, Norway, where she gets to hang out with all our great ethnology-colleagues. Yes, I wish I were there!  But, then we are soon both off to Paris to present at the huge conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2012 – which btw must have the most boring website ever… they rely totally on the attraction of Pareeeeh. Aah, but soo do we.  Alors, brioche et vin, la semaine prochaine !! See you there perhaps!

 

Project update – xmas card, happy new year, february article bash & conference summer

November and December 2011 were extremely busy months for us.  We handled a lot of course and teaching administration. After concluding a very successful research week with visitors from all over the world for the Game Love Reader project in October, Jessica presented her work on ludic structures in “The Biggest Loser” at a health and humanities conference at Lund University in December. Lotta has lectured in Copenhagen on on-line sources. In addition, we both went travelling. One went West and one went East. And both planes and countries provided more digital materialities for our playful scrutiny, purchase and general amusement.

Most of January was spent writing, writing, writing and we presented a summary of the entire project for the ethnology group at the Ethnology Research Seminar on Feb 8. Last week we were interviewed by a journalist from a Swedish gaming magazine, and then Lotta lectured some more. We have now entered the final stage of the gaming mom project, and have submitted papers and abstracts  to three international conferences this summer: Nordic Digra in Tampere, Finland; The 32nd Nordic Conference of Ethnology and Folkloristics in Bergen, Norway, and Crossroads in Cultural Studies in Paris, France.  The past two days we have worked almost around the clock to finish our article on qualitative methods. We have previously left town to work undisturbed, but decided this time to stay in Lund. We have been very productive and that makes us  very happy 🙂

 

Games and digital cultures researchers Wirman and Leino visit our dep at Lund U and HEX Nov 14 -17

Welcome to a week of research on digital aesthetics and culture at the Department of
Arts & Cultural Sciences, Lund University
November 14-17, 2011!

On Monday November 14, Dr Hanna Wirman from HongKong Polytechnic University will give a lecture for all MACA student from Lund and Copenhagen on Virtual Ethnography.  Wirman wrote her Ph.D on female computergame players and skinning practices in the game Sims 2. Please contact jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se for inquiries and details.

On Tuesday, November 15, Dr Olli Leino, from HongKong City University, will give a HEX-lecture at 15.15 on what makes playable artefacts motivating to play. More info in the invitation to the lecture and lab below.

 

Wirman and Leino will also take part in the international symposium “Playing with Affection” on Game Love Aesthetics and Culture that takes play November 16-17, at the Department of Arts & Cultural Sciences. More on this later. I hereby extend an invitation to the HEX -lecture. A description of HEX and the Digital Cultures and Games Lectures and Lab,  and links to previous lectures and conferences, can be found at the end of the invitation.

—

INVITATION TO HEX DIGITAL CULTURES AND GAMES LECTURE AND LAB:

How are computer games experienced as meaningful?
Playability and Experienced Significance.

WHO: Dr. Olli Tapio Leino, City University of Hong Kong.

WHAT: How are computer games experienced as meaningful?  Playability and Experienced Significance.

Why are in-game monsters frightening? What is erotic about erotic Tetris? Are the decorative stickers with which the players can decorate their virtual cars in Need for Speed: Undercover (2008) a waste of (in-game) money? In short, how does significance emerge in computer game play? Furthermore, what is the role of technology in this signification, and, how do computer games compare to other forms of new media in this regard? While the answers to these kinds of questions related to interpretation and experience are presupposed by critique and analysis of computer games and other playable new media forms, they are seldom explicated in detail. In this lecture, I discuss the ways in which meaning emerges in interactions with playable media forms. I will discuss also the challenges these forms of signification pose to the paradigmatic methods of interpretation, analysis, and critique of new media.

Conceptualizing computer games through the traditional “game” metaphor has been at the heart of the emerging tradition of game studies for the past decade. Computer games have been described using concepts like “rules”, “winning” and “losing”. In this lecture, however, I argue that for understanding how significance emerges in computer game play, i.e. how and why players find details in computer games meaningful, the game metaphor is slightly problematic. This is because computer game play, more than “traditional” game play, is underpinned by the involvement of technology. Admittedly, computer game play, too, is a human practice, but it is a practice defined by the involvement of technological artefacts rather than rules governing human behavior. These technological artefacts, are not simply at the service of human players like pawns on a Monopoly board, but assume an active role alongside the human subject in co-shaping and transforming the experience of play.

To complement the game metaphor, I identify “playability” as an affordance of a kind of audience engagement characterized by a duality of freedom and responsibility. By introducing themes from existentialism and post-phenomenological philosophy into a game studies framework, I focus on the ways in which playable technological artefacts, like computer games, social media applications and electronic artworks offer themselves to be experienced as significant. Contrasting playability with “playfulness”, considered as a set of aesthetic strategies, constitutes a position from which contemporary computer games and other playable artefacts, and our attempts at making sense of them, can be related to preceding forms of art and culture like participatory and performative art on the one hand, and to the contemporary forms of interactive, perhaps playful but not necessarily playable, art and media on the other.  The ensuing lab session, led by Dr. Hanna Wirman and Dr. Olli Leino, we will look at examples that illustrate the themes of the lecture in more detail.

WHEN: Nov 15, 2011. 15 – 18

15.15-16.45 Lecture + Q & A
** small break **
17.00-18.00 Exercises in the computer lab

WHERE: Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 109, ground floor, to the left, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7 . The ensuing lab will be held at Biskopsgatan 7, in basement game labs 022 and 019. We’ll lead you there.

HOW: Drop in. It is not mandatory to announce your participation ahead of time, but it is much appreciated! Please email: jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se

Welcome!

Jessica Enevold
Seminar coordinator HEX Digital Cultures and Games Series

PREVIOUS LECTURES IN THE SERIES:
Dan Pinchbeck – Preserving Digital Games – Immaterial Cultural Heritage
Annette Markham – Remix Ethnography – Digital Material and Virtual Ethnography
Olli Sotama – What Makes Gamers Tick? – On Player Motivation, Production & Consumption
Esther MacCallum-Stewart – The Street Smarts of a Cartoon Princess: Female Avatars, Female Players
Miguel Sicart – Play, Interrupted: On the Ethics of Computer Games
Patrick Williams – What people do in Fantasy Gameworlds and How They Do It: User Interfaces and MMOS
Espen Aarseth – What are Games Anyway? – Introduction, Digital Cultures & Games Lecture Lab Series

CONFERENCES
Folkhälsoinstitutet och Lunds Universitet samarrangemang. 10-11 december, 2010. Spel om pengar och datorspel – Fokus på kvinnor och unga.
[Collaboration with The Swedish National Institute of Public Health; Games and Gambling – Focus on Youth and Women]

Upcoming International Symposium, Nov 16-17, 2011. “Playing with Affection” on Game Love Aesthetics & Culture. Stay tuned for more information.

HEX...
is a cross-disciplinary experimental humanities and social science research platform funded by the Faculty of Humanities and Theology, at Lund University.The aim of the experimental research group, HEX, founded in 2005, is to make possible the organizing and creating of events and products (books, films, installations) that are academically and artistically innovative. HEX serves as a think tank and a breeding ground for new research projects incorporating formats that go beyond the ordinary lecture or publication format; for example, in November 2010, Sweden’s first Science Slam was arranged by HEX  – for all activities concult the website:
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex

The Digital Cultures and Games Lecture and Lab…
is a HEX-funded seminar series that features international scholars of various disciplines well versed in the various fields of digital culture. The seminars consist of a lecture and a hands-on laboratory session in order to illustrate and make concrete what the research lectured on is truly about. The seminar series aims to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines with the goal of familiarizing a wide culturally interested audience, including scholars, professors as well as students, and laymen to various digital cultures including games. The seminar series is open to all and conducted in English.

 

Spelande mammor i radio

 Förra veckan medverkade vi i Vetenskapsradion Forum i P1. Vi berättar om projektet och de utgångspunkter vi hade när vi började, om populärkultur och stereotyper, om kvinnor och föräldraskap, om spel och vardagsliv och om vad vi kommit fram till. I inslaget, som sändes måndag 10 oktober, intervjuas också Susanne Möller, spelande mamma och spelkritiker. Klicka här så kommer du direkt till inslaget.

 Är du en spelande mamma – besvara gärna enkäten som du hittar här på bloggen!