13.04.2023: Games Talk: Utopian Audiovisions in the Future’s Modern History

From a decades-old and moderately popular science fiction dystopia, the “metaverse” recently evolved into the technological and economic master plan of global high-tech corporations such as Meta (formerly Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia, and Epic Games. They have invested billions in integrating virtuality and reality into a persistent “new world” for entertainment and work.

Historically, the metaverse concept emerged at the intersection of three intertwined developments. First, since the dawn of the modern era in Western culture, secular futures have been envisioned in an accumulating number of media. Secondly, existing media have constantly imagined entirely new media, above all immersive audio-visuals, beginning in modern times with the longing for the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk,’ the total work of art. Thirdly, the most popular of these imaginary media—whether technologically possible or impossible—have been pursued sooner or later in practice, i.e., they became an aesthetic ideal for artists and not infrequently also the guiding principle for the actions of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

In his lecture, Prof. Freyermuth (author and founding director of the Cologne Game Lab) will situate the metaverse and its constitutive components in the modern process of inventing, within media, the future in general, as well as future media. Special attention will be paid to the metaverse’s relationship to two other digital media utopias, namely “cyberspace” and the “holodeck.”

About the speaker

Gundolf S. Freyermuth is a Media and Game Studies professor and (founding) director of the Cologne Game Lab at the TH Köln. He also teaches Comparative Media Studies at the ifs internationale filmschule köln. Outside of academia, he worked as an editor and reporter, amongst others, for the monthly TransAtlantik, edited by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and as a head reporter for the Zeitgeist magazine Tempo. Freyermuth is the author and editor of more than 20 books of fiction and non-fiction, as well as some 500 papers, essays, features, and reportages. His most recent publications include Games | Game Design | Game Studies. An Introduction (2015) and as co-editor Playing Utopia (2019), Paratextualizing Games (2021), and Playful Materialities (2022).

The event is a cooperation project of SUBOTRON with the Vienna Business Agency.

The lecture will be held in English. Participation in the lab is possible without registration and free of charge.

Image © SUBOTRONai