Michael Straeubig

In this article I discuss the use of distinctions as a method for reasoning. First I trace the role of distinctions in three different theories: the formal calculus of George Spencer Brown, the constructivist biology of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems. In the second part, play is used as an exam...

Despite various attempts to define, explain or justify the phenomenon of play, sciences, humanities and the arts have yet to achieve a truly transdisciplinary understanding of the character of playful thinking and playing behaviour. In this paper we propose an experimental, tentative approach towards transdisciplinary understanding. First we discus...

In this short presentation, I give an outline of my work (in-progress), starting from the question ”can machines play?”, which echoes Alan Turing’s question ”can machines think” asked 65 years ago. In my investigation, I am taking a systems- theoretic approach, based on distinctions such as system vs. environment, machine vs. human, and play vs. wo...

In recent years, we have observed impressive advancements at the intersection of games and artificial intelligence. Often these developments are described in terms of technological progress, while public discourses on their cultural, social and political impact are largely decoupled. I present an alternative rhetoric by speculating about the emerge...

Machines do not produce art, social systems do.

Despite recent progress in natural language generation and continued efforts to create operational conversational agents, humans and machines still do not communicate with each other. To adress this problem, I attempt to shift the usual discourse grounded in linguistics and stochastic approaches towards a social systems based four-sided communicati...

Analysis, interpretation, and construction of artificial and natural languages as well as formalizations of communication have been central concerns of Artificial Intelligence since the 1950s. Current applications for natural language processing range from real-time translation of spoken language through automated discovery of sentiment in online p...

Play is a common, yet elusive phenomenon. Many definitions of play and explanations for its existence have been brought forward in various disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, ethology and in the humanities. As an activity apparently serving no other purpose than itself, play can be simply considered a pleasant pastime. Yet its equation wi...

Complex phenomena such as play, creativity or innovation are familiar, yet difficult to describe in a systematic manner. In this short article I propose six necessary conditions for any comprehensive description of play. Against this background I discuss my systems-theoretic, constructivist and practice-informed approach to play.

When Alan Turing proposed the imitation game as a method to investigate the question if machines can think, he described a social system. However, the various disciplines that have pursued this seminal inquiry rarely touch base with sociological concepts. One might be tempted to say that progress has been made on brains, bodies, and on models of mi...

While the game studies have made remarkable progress establishing a new discipline within the academic system (Quandt et al. 2015), the process of conceptual emancipation is far from complete. This can be observed through gradually emerging methodologies (Lankoski 2015), a difficult search for boundaries within a wider cultural domain (Sachs- Homba...

This poster outlines some topics of my practice-based project which aims to research, explore and extend our understanding of play by creating games and other interactions that expose systems, human and non-human, to playful experiences. I am developing the concept of a ”playful system”, which includes players and other game elements in mixed-reali...

In this short presentation, I am discussing roles of distinctions: ontological (Genesis), logical (Spencer- Brown), epistemological (Radical Constructivism) and meaning-construction (Luhmann). Finally, I propose distinctions as a methodology for the game studies in order to be able to describe a wide range of phenomena related to games and play whi...

Panel Discussion with Judith Ackermann, Phillip Ehmann, Marianne Halblaub Miranda, Christiane Hütter, Gwyn Morphey, Michael Straeubig. Moderation: Andreas Rauscher 1. PLAY AS TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE 2. URBAN GAMING: SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 3. GAMES AND AGENCY 4. PLAYING WITH THE DARK SIDE; OR, THE AMBIGUITIES OF GAMING 5. THE CITY AS PLAYGROUND 6....

Review of Avant-Garde Videogames: Playing with Technoculture by Brian Schrank (Leonardo Reviews Online).

Tidy City is a mobile location-based game concept that is easy to appropriate. The game has been designed with simplicity in mind so that everyone can implement their own designs within the given structure and share it online. The system comprises a game-client for Android devices and a pair of dedicated authoring tools that combine in-situ mobile...