About

I will use this site to document my research as part of my PhD at Sheffield Hallam. Though more than this I hope, it can actually be a methodology that I use in order to sift and relate my research discoveries to each other, and to the broader fields I am investigating.  To use hyper links and other online structures to bring my research and see how it bumps up against the work online I feel is relevant and the theoretical framework that has fed my investigations. This also gives me a means to allow my research to have impact and effect others by distributing it to an online audience.

I am investigating the use of game structures for artwork creation and the generated works effect on space and participation. The power of game structures to engage people fully through the ability to generate active participation is an area of growing cultural significance. This has led concurrently to academic study of games and their place in society. This investigation of the powerful connection of player to game, has led to attempts to utilize game structures as persuasive tools for non-game purposes, such as engendering a healthy life style or encouraging students to study. From this I began to see a connection with artworks that require human interaction and participation as the materiality of the work. Could game structures provide the theoretical glue between participant and artwork? This led to me to question if it is possible to use gameful structure to make participatory artworks that directly harnesses the gameful experience. To understand this, we have to first understand what forms of gameful experiences are available in participatory art, and to ask whether researching game creation might offer strategies to change and enrich or challenge participatory arts. By researching deep game structures and applying them through practice based research I will be in a better position to understand the terrain of gameful structures in artworks. This study also considers the theory of Huizinga’s Magic Circle, which is the area of activity occurrence. Could the lens of the Circle be extended to art-works that happen though the actions of people, but examine when this work happens in the public realm how the aspects of the circle feed into and effect the experience in the location.