Hin zu einem virtuell-digitalen Theater / Towards a Virtual-Digital Theatre [MFA Thesis]

de Loutherbourg, Philip James (ca. 1782): Viewing the Eidophusikon.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2004): Ästhetik des Performativen. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2004.

GDC (2022): The Dramaturgy of Video Games Theatre, Story and Empathy  [01.01.2023, 21:33].

Rama/Wikimedia Commons (2005): Jaquet-Droz automata, musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Neuchâtel [Image].

Zimmerman, Eric (2013): Manifesto for a Ludic Century. In: www.kotaku.com. URL: https://kotaku.com/manifesto-the-21st-century-will-be-defined-by-games-127535520... [12.09.2024, 19:43].

Screenshots by Luka Friedland from: Rube Works: The Official Rube Goldberg Invention Game (Electric Eggplant/Kalani Games, Inc./Heirs of Rube Goldberg/Unity Games, 2014) // L.A. Noire (Team Bondi/Rockstar Leeds, 2011) // Iris.Fall (NExT Studios, 2018) // Contrast (Compulsion Games, 2013) // Eastshade (Eastshade Studios, 2019) // BioShock Remastered (2K Boston/2K Australia/Blind Squirrel 2007/2016) // Dishonored (Arkane Studios, 2012) // The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival (Whippoorwill Ltd, 2020) // Pathologic 2 (Ice-Pick Lodge, 2019)

book cover image: actors from Little Virtual-Digital Mechanical Theatre Automaton (2024)

additional models and animations via Mixamo and Poly Haven // the soundtrack was coded using Sonic Pi, additional sound files via freesound.org // the avatar of Luka Friedland was created using Avaturn and animated with Rokoko Studio

[unpaid shoutout] be gay, do crimes fan via I’m a Fan!

- my second book of this year!!! yeah!!!

- the avatar was created using Avaturn & Rokoko Studio. a helpful video for me was this Rokoko studio to Blender tutorial.

- The more you know about art history, the more you realize that you cannot do anything anymore artistically, because literally everything already existed at some point, or exists in some online micro-niches today; I see it all, I see you all, and it drives me totally crazy. Knowledge can be a bad thing. I sometimes really hate that I do know art history & all my „special interest research fixations“. The bliss of ignorance of some excited people online sometimes, that you really do not want to destroy with your knowledge of some random unknown niche dis_abled art brut German avant-garde artist of the 1970s or the 1790s or sth. And when you think you might have found sth unique, which paradoxically also seems to be a thing that art universities want/expect from you, they immediately remind you of some historical thing that already existed. And then they go on to suggest you making the millionst political climate activism art piece that literally f-cking everyone does online and in the German literature scene and the theatre and everywhere, as if they really don’t know anything about contemporary art online, and you are having a f-cking brain stroke. Isn’t that weird. I would love arts academia to have a totally different feedback system rooted in unconditional mutual encouragement rather than in the capitalist framework of competition. As I wrote somewhere in my 2024 „menty b“-book Men, I said and sighed, I am convinced that, when taking theories of intertextuality seriously and to their consequential conclusion, no idea is ever unique, everything is just a remix, and everybody could potentially arrive at exactly the same artworks given the same influences and inspirations. We are competing with the whole world population when it comes to art, so it would be absolutely wyld if anything could ever be standalone-unique, you will always be artistically topped by some person who crafted something in their spare freetime in their hoarder apartment, and never has had the opportunity to show it to anyone, and it later has been destroyed by the landlyrd when they threw out the whole belongings of this dead person, because they deemed it all as "entartet" or whatever.

- The English title of the presentation/book references James O'Sullivan's "Towards A Digital Poetics" which has been, next to Astrid ensslin's "Literary Gaming" not just the basis of my bachelor's thesis in 2021, but also the most important books for my "Game Dev Journey", next to Bo Ruberg's "The Queer Video Games Avantgarde" – I myself am of course missing in Ruberg's book as of now, but surely future generations will appreciate my Gen Z importance after my death (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

- i see this speech as a theatrical format, also "personal ramblings" in the sense of a more polemic theatre text & not so nuanced & deeply researched & fact-based as it would be the case in an explicitly scientific text such as the majority of my thesis book.

- i noticed that it’s totally giving "hildesheim style"/vibe (everyone who studied there knows what i'm talking about) – despite me always struggling with the hildesheim style, it is still there, and working on my ba thesis as well as my time at erfurt university did motivate me for theory, despite my ongoing ambivalences

- literary writing always has priority before my academic writing, or at least it is super deeply entangled with it – as my examiners also commented very fittingly after the presentation that theory and practice really go hand in hand for me without any borders (free all borders!!!), art is also research & research is also art!!! yeah!!!!

- (when i talk of a "we", it doesn't really mean "we", of course not all marginalized people are a homogenous monolith, that's always one of my premises, so i don't even deem it necessary to always repeat it in order to not repeat myself too much. also the adressed "you" is more of an abstract literary device than someone real (in the elevator speech).) the things are (unfortunately? luckily?) always more complex than what one can articulate in one short text, or even one short book – i usually don't like the reduction of complexities, but more: the addition of layers and contradictions until you don't really know what to think anymore, because that seems like a really real feeling of our times to me, or until you have to remain silent, because you are totally overwhelmed due to unresolved complexities and a cacophony of voices, that's probably also why i think of my work more as an interconnected rhizomatic web than in singular "perfected" artworks - if i would always perfect every aspect of an artwork, with my perfectionism, i literally wouldn't get anything ever done – this whole concept maybe more to be appreciated posthumously than right now, so that's a hopefully long way to go...

- and when talking about neurodivergence & universities, i of course 100% know that there definitely are lots of fellow neurodivergent people (i even know some of them!!!) at universities; but it always seems like, despite academia apparently being structurally built with a certain neuronormative-conformative idea in mind, that there aren't many issues that other people encounter with that, which perplexes me; shouldn't there then all the time be problems with people being affected by certain barriers & someone noticing that & doing something about it??? (see also: ableism in academia)

- & by the way, i mean kim salmon the writer, theatre person & elevator enthusiast in my elevator speech, not to be confused with the musician & wikipedia-page-haver kim salmon!!!