TIM_BM_022 Gameworlds/Mirrorworlding

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2025
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: z (credit).
Asynchronous teaching
Teacher(s)
Dustin Breitling (lecturer), doc. Mgr. Jana Horáková, Ph.D. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Jana Horáková, Ph.D.
Department of Musicology – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Musicology – Faculty of Arts
Prerequisites
No Prerequisites are required for the course.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is offered to students of any study field.
Course objectives
The design of this seminar centers around exploring the overlap of Gameworlds,Game Engines, MRx technologies and their modeling as well as construction of complex ecological systems. Increasing literature and focus has centered upon exploring how gameworlds and concerns related to ecology overlap and can synergize into a form of ‘scalar consciousness.’ (Chang, 2021) This concept of a ‘scalar understanding’ speaks to the ways gameworlds can facilitate in equipping us with an environmental way of thinking that requires grasping the multiple scales and levels that make up our ecosystems, feedback loops, and equally invite us to think about the entanglements of both human and non-human spheres. This enmeshment of non-human and humans can be a gateway to understand gameworlds as what Alenda Chang’s contends and borrows from the world of ecology as ‘Mesocosms’, where gameworlds can be testbedded and likened to “experimental enclosures intermediate in size and complexity that allow scientists to recreate naturally existing environments in spaces that they can have more control over.” With this understanding of experimental enclosures or Gameworlds as virtual laboratories we can in turn understand how Gameworlds are increasingly incorporating Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Agents that span from Satellite Technology, Remote Sensory devices, Softwares, Drones, and Datasets that can further play a role in contributing to public research infrastructure and efforts to tackle biodiversity crises especially coral reef devastation as exemplified by the likes of NeMO-Net.
Learning outcomes (in Czech)
The aspiration of this course hopes to stimulate and engage students BY critically linking together the ideas of models, gameworlds, game engines, computer-aided design as resources in generating or tinkering novel or preexisting worlds. It hopes to have students examine how modeling and visualizing worlds is increasingly interdependent on planetary infrastructure that enables the importing of maps from satellites that links together also Machine Learning.
Syllabus (in Czech)
  • Week 1: Class Introduction

  • Week 2: What is a Simulation/History of Simulation and Modeling? How does it relate from an anthropolgoical perspective. Investigates into the idea of technogenesis or the coevolution of ‘human’ and ‘technology’ as well as exploring the anthropological nature of simulation drawn from the works of Stefano Gualeni, Helmuth Plessner, Bernard Stiegler to the modern day development of simulation for purposes of warfare that has underpinned the basis of scenario planning.

  • Readings: Review. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/5334.001.0001 Crogan, P. (2011) Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation, and Technoculture. (36) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Gualeni, Stefano (2014). Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools - How to Philosophize with a Digital Hammer. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. Hayles, N. Katherine, 1943-. How We Think : Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago ; London :The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

  • Week 3: Videos: Further exploration of U.S. Military ‘Synthetic Training Environments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWrquTLhMDU World Game by Buckminster Fuller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs0mcSC5zmA Mississippi River Basin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeTcYcd5dUM

    Week 4: Notes or write-ups

  • Week 5: Class Meeting

  • Week 6: Gameworlds in the wake of Climate Change—No Abstraction with Extraction Exploring the material and geological elements that shape the baseline infrastructure for hosting and generating gameworlds from data centers and the cool microclimates necessary for their maintenance and rare earth minerals that build consoles/computers. Benjamin J. Abraham Digital Games After Climate Change Nicole Starosielski Media Hot and Cold (Elements)

  • Week 7: Games as Mesocosms This module intends to investigate how gameworlds can be vehicles or virtual laboratories for exploring and testbedding certain properties they try to replicate in ecosystems. We will particularly focus upon the concept of Mesocosms that Chang borrows from biology as also a way to consider how gameworlds are multi-scalar objects not only bound to the biosphere yet also increasingly interdependent on the economy of remote sensing. We will briefly and expand the focus of location-based games that are reliant on GPS technologies. Readings: Chang, Alenda Y.. “Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games.” (2019). Jovanavic D. Games and Worldmaking https://journal.b-pro.org/article/p3-games-and-worldmaking/
  • Week 8: Games: Everything Equilinox Eco SimEarth

  • Week 9: Meeting 2
  • Week 10: Wildness Generator: Project Air Sim:

    Week 11: AR/VR/MR/ We will explore the influx of AR/VR/MR especially in relation to rendering into strategic chunking of ‘environments’ whether from ViveCraft(Minecraft VR equivalent) to the myriad of VR/AR/MR testbedded applications that attempt to interact and engage with phenomena linked to generating awareness of Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, Habitation Destruction, and ultimately to try to render what has been coined as a ‘hyperobject’ legible. Games: Minecraft Earth/ViveCraft Week 12:
  • Readings: Rambach, Jason & Lilligreen, geb. Itsova, Gergana & Schäfer, Alexander & Bankanal, Ramya & Wiebel, Alexander & Stricker, Didier. (2020). A survey on applications of augmented, mixed and virtual reality for nature and environment. Huang, Jiawei & Lucash, Melissa & Scheller, Robert & Klippel, Alexander. (2019). Visualizing Ecological Data in Virtual Reality. 10.1109/VR.2019.8797771.

  • Week 13

    : Final Meeting
  • Week 14

    : Final papers
Teaching methods (in Czech)
There will be readings provided weekly and monthly seminars dedicated to the readings. It will be required that students participate in the readings and are encouraged to bring material they find relevant to the topics at hand.
Assessment methods (in Czech)
Students will be required to complete weekly readings and assignments as well as attend monthly seminars that are devoted to the readings. Further, at the end of the semester they are required to write a 10-15 paper to reflect on the nature of the course, the readings, and seminar as well as a topic of their choice related to the course material.
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
The course is taught annually.
The course is taught: every week.
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2024.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2025, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2025/TIM_BM_022