Laboratory: Conception, designing and prototyping videogames

Date: 3, 4 & 5 December
Venue: ARTELEKU
Guest lecturers:  Mikel Calvo, André Gonçalvez
Number of participants: 12
Registration deadline: 28 November. Please send your personal details and CV to  info@arteleku.net.
   
    The videogame is a cultural mechanism that still has not been given its due recognition as a medium for artistic expression, for conveying narrative and constructing discourse. However, it is a medium trapped in a series of aesthetical, mechanical and leisure conventions despite being a relatively new genre.

    In many cases, those conventions have become clichés and commonplaces as the result of unspoken agreements between the industry and player. In contradiction to this fact, a video-game producer scene, also from the perspective of contemporary art, has been consolidated in recent years and which has questioned the classic mechanisms of the industry.

    The workshop will be run as a laboratory where the concept and mechanisms of the videogames can be explored from different points of view: aesthetic, narrative, discursive, technical and even playable. It aims to delve into discourse creation through videogames from a halfway point between the critical analysis of those game mechanisms – both from the perspective of the videogame as text and as a leisure environment-, and to foster the creation of videogames from an independent production approach.

    The workshop format will be close to the Gamejam or LudumDare sprints to create videogames.  A theme/idea will be put forward on the first day of the workshop and the participants will devise, develop and prototype a videogame during the workshop.

    This workshop is aimed at artists, programmers, illustrators, game designers, musicians, videogame enthusiasts and designers.
   
    Mikel Calvo has been a videogame developer since the java mobile era and expert in the iOS and Android platforms, where he develops natively or using engines such as Cocos2d and Unity3D.. He has co-founded Pulsar Concept, where he designs videogames and produces playable prototypes for different purposes.

    André Gonçalvez  Ph.D. Researcher in Science and Technology of the Arts at UCP, Porto, Portugal, is one of the most international Portuguese artist of his generation and has been mostly recognized for his music, performance and installation work. In the last years he has also built a solid reputation developing widly praised musical instruments under ADDAC System, a brand of Modular Analogue Synthesizers, which are now being used by many musicians throughout the whole world.

http://www.andregoncalves.info
http://www.addacsystem.com

    *Each participant must bring their own laptop.

    Technical Aspects: The development of the games is not limited to any platform of specific development environment, or even that that it has to be a traditional videogame-.


   
    Links

    http://www.mikelcalvo.com/
    http://www.andregoncalves.info/
    http://www.pulsarconcept.com/
    http://gamejam.es/
    http://www.ludumdare.com/