[ecrea] Serios Fun - Aarhus 2015 Workshop - Call for Participation

*Serious Fun: Designing a Game to Promote Critical Computing Practices
Beyond Capital*

*A workshop at Aarhus 2015 Conference on Critical Alternatives (August,
17-21)*


 Many of us grew up playing a game called Monopoly—it was about property,
and winning other people’s money and land. But is that really the world we
want? What if there were a different game?


 The original version of the game that became Monopoly was designed to
reward very different behavior. Its aim was to be critique of capital. The
creator, Elizabeth Magie Philips, called it The Landlord’s Game. Like Ms.
Philips, we want a different game, one that will reward a different set of
alternative, critical values. So, we need to articulate the different
values that we want to inform our future. Toward which values would we
re-orient what motivates future societies? How would we institutionalize
these values in our future world? What kinds of practices and relationships
will they encourage? If these values were to motivate people in a game,
what would the game look like?


 At the Conference on Critical Alternatives, we want to make a different
game—and we hope you will help create it.


 More information at http://computing-beyond-capital.ghost.io/


 *How to participate*


 The workshop starts with a matter of fact: that contemporary societies are
struggling to cope with the ongoing economic crisis and with the social
problems caused by a crisis of capitalism itself. This fact suggests we
need to articulate critical alternatives to capital in all aspects of
social life. While computing professionals were in many ways responsible
for the crisis, computing practices like Free Software and Participatory
Design are also suggestive of alternative values. By building on these
alternatives, people who compute can contribute to creating an alternative
future.


 The Landlord’s Game was a critique of capitalism. With this inspiration,
the workshop will identify key values and practices able to sustain the
emergence of “beyond capital” computing alternatives. For example, real
properties in Monopoly might be reversed into commons promoted by
alternative computing practices, and groups of alternative institutions
(like the groups of real properties in Monopoly). Creating a game could
create the vision of ways of living “beyond capital.


 The workshop will build upon a group discussion of suggestions from
participants about the appropriate set of values promoting critical
alternatives, as articulated in papers (maximum 1000 words). In these
papers, participants will make an argument for the inclusion of three
values they think central for a future society, define these values, and
describe their relations to actual computing practices. Group-work will
then focus on how pursuit of these computing-related values can be built
into institutions, and thus how they can be embodied in “chance” game
activities. At the end of the workshop the game ideas will be combined in a
mock-up of a Beyond Capital, forward-looking board game.


 If you want to participate please send a paper with ideas about new values
(maximum 1000 words) to the workshop organizers at the email address
(beyondcapital /at/ openmailbox.org)


 Important dates:



   -

   Deadline for position paper submission (max 1000 words): May 22nd.
   -

   Notification to authors: June 7th.
   -

   Deadline for early registration to the conference: June 25th.
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