Monday, September 29, 2014
7:30 pm
6 E 16th Street, room 1103

Blast Theory makes games, performances and installations online, on the street and on mobile. Drawing on popular culture, the work often blurs the boundaries between the real and the fictional. And audiences are often invited to participate in radical ways. In A Machine To See With you are guided by mobile phone through the city to rob a real bank. In Ulrike and Eamon Compliant you take the role of a terrorist and arrive at a hidden location for an interrogation.

Matt will describe a selection of Blast Theory’s work showing how the audience can be the protagonist in a story. What techniques and approaches are needed? He will also discuss the trolley dilemma coined by Philippa Foot in her essay The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect in 1967 and propose that a model of ethical dilemmas may be a rich strategy for considering player agency within games and  interactive artworks.

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BIO: Matt Adams is a co-founder of Blast Theory, an artists’ group making interactive work based in Brighton in the UK. Blast Theory has shown work at the Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival and at Tate Britain. Commissioners include Channel 4, the BBC and the Royal Opera House. The group has been nominated for four BAFTAs and won the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica.

Matt has curated at Tate Modern and at the ICA. He has lectured at Stanford University and the Sorbonne. He is a winner of the Maverick Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards. He is the Visiting Professor in Interactive Media at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.