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A 'pataphysics engine: technology, play, and realities

A 'pataphysics engine: technology, play, and realities
A 'pataphysics engine: technology, play, and realities
This article plays a game with Jean Baudrillard's thought and the intellectual traditions on which it draws. Or rather, it plays Baudrillard's game but with a cheat code. The game or program here is the hyperreality of the contemporary world—Baudrillard's integral or virtual reality characterized by the dominance of things—of objects over subjects. The cheat code identifies and accentuates the development, application, and interconnection of theories of play, waste, technology, and multiple realities in aspects of 20th-century French avant-garde and social scientific thought and practice. It suggests ways in which everyday technoculture, not least videogame culture, can be addressed as at once playful and simulacral.
1555-4120
392-404
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33

Giddings, Seth (2007) A 'pataphysics engine: technology, play, and realities. Games and Culture, 2 (4), 392-404. (doi:10.1177/1555412007309534).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This article plays a game with Jean Baudrillard's thought and the intellectual traditions on which it draws. Or rather, it plays Baudrillard's game but with a cheat code. The game or program here is the hyperreality of the contemporary world—Baudrillard's integral or virtual reality characterized by the dominance of things—of objects over subjects. The cheat code identifies and accentuates the development, application, and interconnection of theories of play, waste, technology, and multiple realities in aspects of 20th-century French avant-garde and social scientific thought and practice. It suggests ways in which everyday technoculture, not least videogame culture, can be addressed as at once playful and simulacral.

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pataphysics draft - Author's Original
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Published date: October 2007

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 434459
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434459
ISSN: 1555-4120
PURE UUID: 4911cc68-201a-4fda-b0c0-03171f5dd34f
ORCID for Seth Giddings: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7323-9184

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Date deposited: 24 Sep 2019 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:21

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