With events, installations and exhibitions, how can we inspire and engage audiences through games and what are the practical and theoretical questions that arise when showing interactive or digital work?
Marie Foulston is a playful curator and producer with a love of the mischievous and the unexpected. She was lead curator on the V&A‘s headline exhibition Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt and is Co-founder of the UK-based independent videogame collective The Wild Rumpus.
Riya Patel is a writer, editor and curator with ten years' experience in architecture and design. She's currently Curator of The Aram Gallery, an independent gallery dedicated to new and experimental design. She is a Contributing Editor at Icon magazine, and writes for several publications on design including Disegno, Wallpaper and The Independent. She was previously Senior Editor of Icon magazine, and Editor of Frame magazine.
George Buckenham is a curator, artist and game designer. They are Assistant Director of Now Play This, a festival of games and play at Somerset House, and a founder of the indie videogame party collective Wild Rumpus, a touring videogame club night. They are the creator of Cheap Bots, Done Quick!, a radically accessible botmaking tool, as well as many twitterbots of their own. Their game design focuses on digital-physical play, including Beasts of Balance,Doom Piano and Punch The Custard, each as playful as they sound.
Holly Gramazio is the Director of Now Play This, a festival of games and play at Somerset House. She is also a game designer and half of Matheson Marcault, whose recent projects include PARK PARK, a hoardings installation at King Edward Memorial Park; As I Was Saying..., a game for families to play at Goodrich Castle; and Art Deck, a card game that gets people drawing together collaboratively.
Michael Bell is an ex-juggler, sometimes comedy performer and often games curator through his company Unstable King. He teaches at Circomedia, tours worldwide with Gandini Juggling, has made award-winning theatre shows. He also runs a street theatre company, and his own project Cardboard Arcade, creating events and building interactive works that have appeared at the V&A, Birmingham Library, Now Play This, Royal Museum of Cornwall and the Eden Project.
This event is part of Now Play This, a festival of experimental games and play, running in the New Wing and around Somerset House 06–14 April 2019. This year, Now Play This explores the idea of community, bringing together some of the most exciting independent and experimental game designers from around the world.
