Gameon

Stagen

11. - 14.3.2020

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WELCOME TO

GAME ON STAGE!

Theatre turns into virtual reality more and more frequently these days, audiences become protago-nists experiencing a theatre eve-ning as a self-designed adventu-re. In this manner, narratives on social change through digitisation become easier to convey, in a new manner. So, they open the theatre space for new “playmates” while also confronting it with new chal-lenges.

Experts from Germany, Austria and Belgium worked at the cross-roads of gaming and theatre for a duration of three days, at the FFT. They have scrutinised questions on open source solutions for game theatre, possibilities for playful formats in cultural education or queer gaming in theatre, through open workshops and laboratory groups.

Everyone today is invited to be part of the discussion. We will open with an impulse lecture tit-led “Empathy Challenge” by Rahel Spöhrer (The Agency), dramatur-ge and stipendiary at the Academy for Theatre and Digitality in Dort-mund.

Games are the new

theatre plays! „`Bleed´ is the name given by larpers to the crossover between player and character. Your real-life experience bleeds into the game, and what happens in the game likewise bleeds back into your real life...

Every larper knows that bleed is inevitable. The game happens in life, not outside of life; it starts long before you enter the larp and ends long after you leave it. While game bleed can cause problems when unmanaged, the experience of bleed - the blurring of the line between your self and your performed identity, between the narrative of your life and the nar-rative of the game, between power play and power reality - is the whole point of the larp.“

Rahel Spoeher sent us her love and

this text for inspiration b

n

Elvia Wilk - Ask Before You Bite

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#

Labor IOPEN SOURCE + OPEN ACCESS

Performance games and theatre encounters are based on a set of skills, tools and scripts. Moreo-ver, they produce a certain kind of knowledge sometimes within self-made hardware and software buil-ding blocks.

How can we preserve and share this knowledge and also the princi-ples, tools and technologies of our performances with others? What can we learn from Free Hard-

and Software Communi-

ties to create an Open Source

Strategy for theatre games?

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Software

Hardware

Was ist der

Open-Source-Gedanke?

Warum das deutsche

Stadttheater derzeit eher

proprietärer Software

ähnelt

Warum ich ein Umdenken

nötig finde

Woraus besteht der Kul-

turwandel?

Ausblick: Was kann dar-

aus entstehen?

WAS IST DER

OPEN-SOURCE-GEDANKE?

Open Source ("offene Quelle/offe-ner Quelltext") ist zum Einen eine Praxis und ein Lizenzmodell, zum Anderen aber auch eine politische Bewegung. Die grundlegende Idee dahinter ist gar nicht unbedingt al-truistisch, sondern hat vielmehr arbeitsökonomische Hintergrün-

de: Man muss das Rad nicht un-entwegt neu erfinden; manchmal haben andere schon dieselben Probleme gelöst, die man selbst hat, und man kann sich an deren Arbeit bedienen und sie weiterent-wickeln und an die eigenen Pro-jekte anpassen. Daraus entstehen Tools, Skripte und ganze Betriebs-systeme in gemeinschaftlicher, oft örtlich und zeitlich unverbun-dener, kollaborativer Arbeit. Die-ser Ansatz postuliert, dass viele Wege zu einem Ziel führen, und dass es nicht nur erlaubt, sondern gewünscht ist, auf Ideen und Lö-sungsansätze anderer zurückzu-greifen. Die daraus entstehende Kultur ist eine sehr offen kommu-nizierende, unterstützende, er-klärende. Wissen wird nicht wie eine endliche Ressource gehortet und geheimgehalten, sondern es herrscht die Überzeugung, dass im Gegenteil Offenlegung und offene Debatte und die Weiterentwick-lung des ursprünglichen Codes zu einer stärkeren Codebase, zu bes-ser nutzbaren Tools führt. Grade auch, weil viele Leute viele Per-spektiven mitbringen. Dass das

Wie man den

Open-Source-Gedanken im

Theater implementiertText in progress by Tina Lorenz

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nicht zu erbitterten Konkurrenz-kämpfen um Deutungshoheit, "die beste Lösung" und Machtkämpfen um Besitzansprüche führt, liegt an der Open-Source-Kultur, also dem grundlegenden Gedanken, dass Dinge offen und gemeinsam besser sind als alleine und undis-kutiert. WARUM DAS DEUTSCHE STADT

-THEATER GESCHLOSSENER

SOFTWARE ÄEHNELT

Das Gegenstück zu Open Source ist Closed Source - proprietäre Software, also Code, in den man keinen Einblick erhält, den man nicht kopieren, verändern, er-weitern darf. Obwohl es sich erst mal unintuitiv anhört, hat das deutsche Stadt- und Staatsthea-tersystem viel mit dieser Art von Software gemein. Dahinter ste-hen zwei zentrale Gedanken: Zum Einen die bürgerliche Rezeptions-haltung, also die von mindestens Schiller herrührende Idee, dass im Theater "von dem denkenden bessern Theile des Volks das Licht der Weißheit herunterströmt, und von da aus in milderen Stralen [sic] durch den ganzen Staat sich ver-breitet"[1], also die Kunst und die Gedanken wortwörtlich von de-nen, die im "Licht der Weisheit" auf der Bühne stehen, an die runter-gereicht wird, die im Dunkeln des Zuschauerraums den Staat ver-körpern, den man erleuchten will.

Meine Güte. Also ist erstmal nicht jede:r Mensch Künstler:in, nicht jede Stimme lohnt sich, gehört zu werden, nicht jeder Code darf Teil des Systems werden, weil ge-meinsam ein Ding bauen explizit nicht der Ansatz ist. Das immersive und partizipative Theater löst die-se Seh- und damit diese Produk-tionshaltung langsam ab; dennoch sind große Teile des institutionali-sierten Theaters immer noch klas-sische Bühnenproduktionen.

Zum Anderen ist das Stadttheater auch immer noch durchdrungen vom Genialitätskult der Kunst: Das Rad MUSS jeweils neu erfunden, es MUSS immer ein völlig neuer Ansatz, eine ganz neue Idee prä-sentiert werden - Originalität um jeden Preis ist das Mantra. Projek-te, Ideen, neu gefundene Arbeits-weisen oder technische Lösungen können so niemals aufeinander aufbauen - alles bleibt im "proof of concept" Stadium, weil man gute Ideen eher als verbraucht einord-net, denn als guter erster Schritt in eine Richtung, in die es sich zu gehen lohnt. Daraus entsteht eine Kultur, in der ein offener Aus-tausch erschwert wird; wo "Ide-enklau" befürchtet und Projekte in erbittertem Konkurrenzkampf um endliche Ressourcen in einem geschlossenen Rahmen durch-gezogen werden, wird eine Sha-ring-Kultur verunmöglicht.

WARUM ICH EIN UMDENKEN

FÜR NÖTIG HALTE

Die Stadt- und Staatstheater haben als große Maschinen der Theater-produktion in Deutschland einen deutlich größeren Handlungs-spielraum für kulturelles Umden-ken als freie Künstler:innen, die von Förderinstrumenten abhän-gig sind, die auch noch im Kon-kurrenz- und Originalitätsdenken verhaftet sind. Die Situation der stabilen Finanzierung ermöglicht Experimente in Kulturwandel. Und das ist wichtig, denn das Theater als Arbeitsort ist längst antik: Wo remote work, kollaboratives digi-tales Arbeiten, flache bis gar keine Hierarchien und sharing culture im zivilen Sektor längst üblich sind, schotten sich die einzelnen Häu-ser immer noch möglichst stark ab und profitieren möglichst we-nig von den Überlegungen und Strategien anderer Häuser - ob in der Kunst, den Arbeitsstrukturen oder auch schlicht der Disposi-tion. Weshalb man beispielsweise in München grade in gleich zwei Häusern "Tosca", "La Bohème" und "Don Giovanni" sehen kann.

WORAUS BESTEHT DER KUL-

TURWANDEL?

- theater als hacker space? halb-of-fene werkstatt?- weniger Endergebnis als Zwi-schenergebnis orientiert? (Zwi-

schenergebnisse anstelle von Pro-zessorientiert was wiederum nur für Beteiligte da wäre und zu gern in der freien Szene propagiert wird und da oft zu einer anderen Varian-te der Schillerschen Bürgerlichkeit führt --> bildungseliten, tribalis-tische systeme, junges akademi-sches milieu only)

[0] Creative Commons CC-BY-SA Lizenz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode[1] Friedrich Schiller, "Was kann eine gut stehende Schaubüh-ne eigentlich wirken?", 1784. https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Was_kann_eine_gute_stehende_Schaub%C3%BChne_eigentlich_wirken%3F

DIESER TEXT IST UNTER DER CREATIVE COMMONS LIZENZ CC-BY-SA[0] LIZENSIERT. HAPPY SHARING!

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Labor IHACK YOUR SCHOOL

Gaming attracts young audiences in the theatre and gaming is an attractive strategy for transport-ing content in educational frame-works. It can be the perfect inter-face between school and cultural practice for the digital natives. But it also challenges institutions such as theatres and schools be-cause it often provokes a genera-tion conflict.

How do we design and influen-ce the intersection bet-

ween school and theatre

games? What can teachers do and what do they need to imple-ment gaming into their curricula, theatre or other cultural activities at school? How can we cooperate with and support them in that chal-lenge as artists and game makers?

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Digital Natives

Labor IINVOLVE ME

Participation is en vogue in theatre, urban planning, political processes. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about partici-pation? In theatre it is often used as opposition to classic, frontal theatre plays performed on a stage with the audience seated.

But can a seated audience not par-ticipate? How do we imagine, de-scribe and manipulate the activity of the audience? And how is our role as artists being influenced by that? What are strategies and prin-ciples of participation? How do we invite people to participate? How does our audiences participate and to what impact they are crea-ting their own experience? Is the-re or should there be an ethics of participation?

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Labor IHACK YOUR SCHOOL

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Labor IINVOLVE ME

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Labor IMIXED REALITY

#Theatre before all digital techno-logy is a Mixed Reality. Every en-counter in the theatre means mi-xing realities between different people, crafts, narratives, media and spaces. The shared spatial ex-perience mixes the realities of de-signers, performers and audience.

The theatre playfully rearranges the digital and analog spheres of their encounter. How do we con-ceptualize this mixture of rea-

lities and how can it inspire and influence the use of todays VR and AR technology?

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PARTICIPANTS LasWFY

Invisible Playground was founded 2009 in a series of artistic collaborati-ons between Sebastian Quack, Daniel Boy and Josa Gerhard. With Jennifer Aksu, Viktor Bedö (member until 2013), Anna Hentschel and Christiane Hütter a firm-ly formed collective was created. Invisible Playground explore the interface of game and society both in theory and practice - as game developers, urbanists, curators, authors, musicians, artists, scenographers and much more.Projects are developed in agile, independent cooperations between individual members of the network, other artists, designers, technicians, city administrati-ons, cultural and scientific institutions and civil society initiatives. The network serves the purpose of mutual consultation and the exchange of good practices.

Sebastian Quack is an artist, game designer and curator from Berlin. His work focuses on games, participation and the politics of urban societies. He is a member of the "Invisible Playground" Network.

Christiane Hütter, or "Mrs. Hue," is a "world builder”. She explores, questi-ons and (re)invents systems with the means of art, game design and storytelling - using social cooperation. Her works cover a wide range of formats from urban games, fictive organizations, citywide revitalizing festivals and playful settings for urban participation. She is a member of the „Invisible Playground“ Network.

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komplexbrigade - consisting of Hannes Kapsch, Caspar Bankert and Moritz Schwerin - is a game theatre collective that has been creating interactive thea-tre and immersive live experiences between theatre, game and installation since 2016. Their game concepts combine pop culture and current social discourses - game as a tool of knowledge. They believe that, according to Schiller, (theatre) audiences are only fully human when they play: Everyone in the audience takes on a role and discovers the rules of a fictional setting, whether in space or in a post-apocalyptic future. Every performance is different, every solution is a new experiment. In these temporary creative communities with the audience, they search for political, social and technological utopias for the 21st century - with the possibilities of new media as well as those of classical theatre.

Hannes Kapsch is theatre dramaturge for Digital Media at “tjg. Theater Junge Generation Dresden”.Together with Caspar Bankert and Moritz Schwerin, he is part of komplexbrigade. Since 2016, the game theatre collective has been rese-arching theatre and digital games and their potential for a contemporary art of community life. In their current project „Willkommen im Multiversum” (“Wel-come to the Multiversum“), they explore the question of multiple identities in parallel worlds together with 20 young people.

Luise Ehrenwerth is a stage and costume designer. She studied at the Dres-den Academy of Fine Arts and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. Before and during her studies, she gained experience as a stage and costume design assis-tant at “Burgtheater Vienna”, “German Theater Berlin” and “Theater Neumarkt Zurich” (among others). Among other awards, she won the MARTA Award for the best stage design at the Setkání/Encounter-Festival 2018 in Brno.

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Sarah Buser‘s works explore the interface of theatre and new media. Through creative coding and staged situations, they raise questions that deal with the na-ture of our reality. Sarah Buser lives in Berlin.

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Markus Schubert is a hacker, game designer, theatre nerd, co-founder and member of the „Nebelflucht GmbH“. He creates convincing, captivating and highly interactive games that connect the virtual world with the physical world. Markus Schubert is co-founder of polyplot.io, a software that installs digital lite-rature to mobile phones and founder of toto.io, a software for creating interacti-ve virtual reality games in the physical world.

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OutOfTheBox consists of Susanne Schuster and Ricardo Gehn. Since 2017, they have been working together on building speculative software and desig-ning performative spaces of experience. In their works, OutOfTheBox combine theatre and digital culture. They also give workshops about digitalisation and ar-tistic practice, such as software development and prototyping. Most of the time, Susanne Schuster and Ricardo Gehn are working in Lower Saxony and Hamburg.

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Ricardo Gehn is a media artist and software developer. Since 2013 he has been developing software and hardware solutions for performances and instal-lations in various working contexts, exploring the tension between theatrical forms and digitality.

Susanne Schuster is a freelance dramaturg, curator and production mana-ger. She studied “Dramaturgy” in Leipzig and “Staging of the Arts and Media” in Hildesheim. Since 2018, she has been conferring a doctorate on the subject „Al-gorithms in the performative arts - digitality as aesthetic practice“. From 2017 to 2020 she directed the festival „Hauptsache frei“ in Hamburg.

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pulk Fiktion is a performance group that was founded in Bonn in 2007. It is currently led by the director and performer Hannah Biedermann and the perfor-mer and video artist Norman Grotegut. A heterogeneous pulk of young artists (from the fields of theatre, film, music, performance, video art and interactive media) creates productions for children, young people and adults in various constellations.

Sebastian Schlemminger lives in Berlin and works as a sound artist as well as a musician, programmer and performer for independent theatre. He studied Cultural Sciences and Aesthetic Practice in Hildesheim, where he graduated with a thesis on the creative use of the computer on a stage (“Interconnected Thea-tre”). He continued to explore theatre interface of digitality and theatre and or-ganized the symposium “Acting Algorithms” in 2015. For theatre groups such as pulk fiktion, Kilofon, Karo Acht or Turbo Pascal he has been developing inter-active technologies, media installations and theatre music for six years.

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Tina Lorenz is a Berlin-based theatre scholar who focuses on digitality; she tries to develop ways to spread immaterial cultural heritage online. Moreover she emphasizes the necessity of transforming cultural institutions according to the digital age, as well as new means of storytelling for a theatre that is far behind the analogue age.

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Philipp J. Ehmann is a theatre maker and transdisciplinary multimedia artist. Since his theatre studies at the University of Exeter, Ehmann has worked with immersive and playful forms of theatre and has tried to make political issues at-tackable on various levels of experience. He wants to create spaces for safe ex-perimentation and discussion. Ehmann is co-founder of Play:Viennas, Austria‘s first initiative for playful art in public space. His works range from intimate tele-phone performances in public space for one person (Der Personal Adventure Automat, Streetlife Festival 2014) to immersive game theatre on stages (Press Staat for Revolution, Schauspielhaus Graz 2016), social media soaps with refugee youths (Stahlstadt, Ars Electronica Festival 2019) to community research pro-jects in housing estates in large cities (Die Siedler von Süd-Wien, Play:Vienna & WERK X 2020). In 2019 he was Artist in Residence at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics in Washington DC.

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Martin Ganteföhr studied linguistics and literature in Bremen and Osna-brück from 1992 to 1996. For more than two decades now he has been working as a designer, author, director and lecturer for interactive media. He works in the fields of video games, radio plays and theatre. He writes and designs interacti-ve productions (e.g. for Machina eX) and gives lectures and talks at universities such as the Film School in Cologne.

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playField. is a young collective from Belgium that explores the boundaries between actors and spectators. They use philosophical, sociological and scien-tific methods as a starting point to explore society and the human condition („la condition humaine“). Their interactive installations combine reality and fiction and invite the audience to a shared experience. They consider their performances as the collective work of performers and audience: the result of a performance is not only in the hands of its creators, but the audience is equally responsible.

Lana Schneider is a theatre maker, stage designer and visual artist from Bel-gium. She works with various forms of media; creates paintings, sculptures and conceptual art. Her works are a direct response to the environment around us and deal with the visualization of data and the aesthetics of science.

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Marthe Schneider is a theatre maker, author and actress from Belgium. Her works deal with the tension between fiction and reality: by presenting the audience with different future possibilities, they are tempted to question their current environment. Marthe Schneider is very much inspired by documentary theatre in her work.

Tim de Paepe is a theatre-maker, director and computer scientist from Belgium. As a theatre maker, he uses computer technology to question various topics, such as: The ethics behind data, the future of technology and the relationship between people in a digitalized society.

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THE AGENCY is a young performance group founded in 2015 by Belle Santos, Yana Thönnes, Magdalena Emmerig and Rahel Spöhrer.In an immersive way they experiment with the manifestations of neoliberalism. Their performances, in which audience members are gently integrated as custo-mers or future members, for example, revolve around subversive agency under the conditions of the post-digital.Questions such as: „How do our desires, feelings, identities and political move-ments form in the post-digital age“ are dealt with and neoliberally connoted formats (such as coaching) and their aesthetic strategies such as branding and corporate identity are taken up.They critically affirm the technologies of the self institutionalized in them - and struggle for a utopian potential from a queer-feminist perspective.

SoFie Luckhardt studies theatre, film and media studies as well as philoso-phy in Frankfurt am Main. As artistic production manager in the context of dance and the liberal performing arts, she has been working since the end of 2018, in particular with the performance group THE AGENCY. She continues to work as a freelancer in production for artists, collectives and festivals (including Billinger & Schulz, Paula Rosolen and the Festival Frankfurter Positionen 2019).

Yana Thöennes lives and works in Munich, studied theatre direction at the HfMT Hamburg as well as philosophy and cultural reflection at the University of Witten Herdecke. This was followed by assistanceships with Gintersdorfer-Kla-ßen, Bernhard Mikeska, Robert Borgmann and Public Movement, among ot-hers. In 2014 Yana Thönnes, supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste, sta-ged the immersive performance „Das Haus“ in Spangenberg, Hessen, together with Christina Rast and Bernhard Mikeska. In 2014 she founded the performance

group THE AGENCY with Magdalena Emmerig, Rahel Spöhrer and Belle Santos.With BOYS SPACE, Yana showed her new agency work at the Munich Kammer-spiele in June 2019 as part of the festival „Politics of Algorithms“ and is now pre-paring the third part of the trilogy „New Men*Movement“ with THE AGENCY. Yana has been invited by the Goethe Institute to reside in Bangalore, India in 2019

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Planetenparty Prinzip is a Graz-based performance collective that was founded in 2015 and since then has continuously worked on plays, performances and game formats. Starting from detailed and perspectively focused (cultural) techniques, social systems will be explored, taken apart and translated into theatrical forms. The Planetenparty Prinzip stands for theatrical and performati-ve contemporary art that reinvents itself again and again. The collective consists of nine planets, which realize projects in different constellations: Leonie Bram-berger, Alexander Benke, Victoria Fux, Nora Köhler, Moritz Ostanek, Miriam Schmid, Alexandra Schmidt, David Valentek and Nora Winkler, as well as return-ing guests and artists* who have been invited for individual projects.

Nora Köhler studied Philosophy, Linguistics and Global Studies at the KF University in Graz. She completed her Master‘s degree in Linguistics in 2016. Sin-ce 2006 she is working as a performer, actress and musician; for five years now she is also a theatre pedagogue and director at Theaterfabrik Beiz. She tours as s a drummer and singer in the bands Bird of the Year and Land of Ooo at home and abroad.

David Valentek has been working as an actor in various film and theatre pro-ductions since 2009. He has won numerous awards (including STELLA- outstan-ding production for young people, Award for best short fiction film at the Dia-gonale Festival) and has been involved in the development of several films as screenwriter and director since 2013.

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VOLL:MILCH is a Hildesheim theatre collective founded in 2011. In their non-contemporary works, which are always based on a political discourse and the construction of a scenic argumentation, they research with the means of montage at the interface of demonstration and representation in post-dramatic, performative theatre. VOLL:MILCH consists of five founding members, each working together in diffe-

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rent sized ensembles.

Birk Schindler completed his studies of scenic arts in Hildesheim in 2018. During his studies he produced children‘s theatre for audiences aged 18 and over and worked as a solo performer. In 2015 and 2016 he started to take over the pro-duction management at VOLL:MILCH together with Sebastian Rest. Having com-pleted his training as a stage pyrotechnician, he often brings his expertise to the collective in combination with the means of magic.

Nils Bultjer is a programmer and director. After 2 semesters of studies in Au-diovisual Media (Media Technology) and a change of subject, Nils Bultjer com-pleted his MSc in Computer Science in 2018. During his studies he focused on artificial neural networks and machine learning. Currently he is working in the field of (experimental) web applications and databases. As part of the production community nota, he questions the habitual use of computers and in this context programs the web application nota. At the Charité he is working on a stem cell database for the research area.

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Robin Junicke studied theatre, music and media studies in Bochum and is currently working as a research assistant in the master‘s degree course in scenic research at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum and as a freelance photographer and cameraman. He is currently working on his doc-torate in theatre studies on the topic: „Aspects of Performativity and Fantasy in Roleplay“ and is involved in various practical and theoretical projects in the field of theatre and play.

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Friedrich Kirschner is a filmmaker, visual artist and software developer. He uses computer games and real-time animation techniques as the basis for animated short films and interactive installations and digital performances.His work has been shown at numerous international animation festivals and exhibitions, including the Laboral Gameworld exhibition in Gijon, the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Ottawa Interna-tional Animation Festival and the Seoul Media Art Biennial. He was director of the Machinima Film Festival in New York in 2008 and since February 2012 he is professor for Digital Media in Puppetry at the HfS Ernst-Busch (Berlin).

Anna Vera Kelle (*1990 in Detmold) works as a freelance director among others at the Neues Theater Halle, Schauspiel Hannover, Staatstheater Kassel and Theater Strahl Berlin. Since 2018, she has been researching the theatrical potential of digital technologies in her master‘s degree in Play and Object at the HfS Ernst Busch Berlin. She is particularly interested in the power of human and non-human actors in participatory formats. In 2019, together with Leoni Voege-lin, she developed the society simulation FUTOPOLIS, a multimedia, participa-tory game for 30 to 60 players that offers the opportunity to discuss questions of individual and social power and responsibility in a playful way and through technologies such as AR, VR and computer-aided data transmission.

Hannah Perner-Wilson combines in her works conductive materials and craft techniques to develop new styles of building electronics that emphasize materiality and process. Since 2006 she’s been collaborating with Mika Satomi, forming the collective KOBAKANT. Together they maintain an online database titled How To Get What You Want, where they share their textile sensor designs and DIY approach to E-Textiles. Since 2020, she is part of the master’s program Spiel&&Objekt, where she works with students interested in experimenting with new forms of theatrical storytelling. By creating playful encounters that allow them to renegotiate the roles in this world, they want to discover new ways of living and making together. Together they reflect on the meanings and social relevance of technologies, materials and craft today.

Janne Nora Kummer is a director, performance and multimedia artist. She teaches and researches on the subject of the body and digitalisation, techno/cyber-feminism, new materialism and non-human-agency in the master’s pro-gram Spiel&&Objekt at Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin. She is a permanent member of the artist group VT (virtual reality theatre).

Leoni Voegelin has studied Art History and History in Basel, Switzerland. Af-ter some projects in the field of video art, she began with the Master program „Spiel && Objekt“ at the HfS Ernst Busch in Berlin. In her artistic research, she questions the nature of human society, the influence of the Anthropocene on nature and the generation of Hybrids and Cyborgs that are raised out of our in-tertwined living on this planet.

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machina eX has been researching the interface between theatre and compu-ter games since 2010. The seven-member media theatre collective (Clara Ehren-werth, Anna Fries, Robin Hädicke, Lasse Marburg, Mathias Prinz, Yves Regenass and Philip Steimel) emerged from the cultural studies courses at the Universi-ty of Hildesheim and has been producing participatory game theatre ever sin-ce. machina eX combines modern technologies with means of classical illusion theatre and thus creates immersive playable theatre pieces that are at the same time walk-in computer games.

Robin Hädicke is an interaction designer (M.A.) and cultural scientist (Dipl.-Kult.). He works as a freelance game developer, lecturer and workshop leader on the design with and of digital media in analogue space. As a designer, he is con-cerned with the connection between analogue and digital living environments and the development of interactive experiential spaces. His research focuses on the interplay of culture and technology and the dynamic design of digital arte-facts. He enjoys teaching digital skills to students, children and young people in a playful way. He regularly gives game and interaction design workshops for them.

Jan Philip Steimel invents, programs and solders electronic gadgets for Real Life Games. As a game designer he worked freelance, at machina eX, at Daeda-lic Entertainment and for Deutschlandradio Kultur - where he designed concept and levels for the audio-only game Blowback. He teaches Game Design, Elec-tronics and Meatspace/Theatre for Game Design at the Cologne Game Lab, the Federal Academy for Cultural Education and the University of Applied Sciences Dortmund, gives workshops on Game Design, Programming and Physical Com-puting. Lasse Marburg grew up in Bremen and studied cultural sciences & aesthetic practice at the University of Hildesheim and NTNU in Trondheim. As a game and software developer and as an „electronic hobbyist“ he is active in the indepen-dent theatre scene in Lower Saxony and Berlin.

Sebastian Arndt was born in Heidelberg in 1991 and studied electrical engi-neering at the Technical University of Berlin. At RAMPIG he has been a performer since 2006 and is also responsible for the development of technical solutions. In 2010, he founded the nationwide student choir Cantare, followed by a collabo-ration on the production TRACING TALES by machina eX at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. He is also active at the P14 Jugendtheater of the Volksbühne Berlin.

Anton Kurt Krause is a freelance theatre director and game designer. After studying directing at Akademie für Darstellende Kunst Baden-Württemberg and doing a master‘s degree in Spiel&&Objekt at Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin, he works with groups like machina eX on interactive, immer-sive theatre experiences. The hypermedia game „Be B:E:R:N:D:“, which was de-veloped during his studies, was presented on the VR! Ham in Hamburg as well as at the A MAZE / in Berlin.

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Georg Werner studied cultural sciences and aesthetic practice at the Uni-versity of Hildesheim (Diploma), experimental media design at the UDK Berlin and sound art as a master student with Ulrich Eller at the HBK Braunschweig. He often works in cooperation with various international artists and groups/col-lectives in the field of tension between art and technology. He shares his expe-rience and knowledge in workshops and teaching assignments (UdK Berlin, HBK Braunschweig). His artistic work is characterized by found objects and spaces, which he modifies in such a way that they invite discovery, sensitize perception and enable unexpected approaches.

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The Puzzle

Das FFT wird gefördert durch die Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf und das Ministerium für Kultur und Wis-senschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. Game on Stage wird gefördert im Rahmen des Bündnisses internationaler Produktionshäuser von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.

fft-duesseldorf.de

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