Playful Materialities
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Playful Materialities
Game culture and material culture have always been closely linked. Analog forms of rule-based play (ludus) would hardly be conceivable without dice, cards, and game boards. In the act of free play (paidia), children as well as adults transform simple objects into multifaceted toys in an almost magical way. Even digital play is suffused with material culture: Games are not only mediated by technical interfaces, which we access via hardware and tangible peripherals. They are also subject to material hybridization, paratextual framing, and processes of de-, and re-materialization.
Taste, Waste and the New Materiality of Food
Anthropocentric thinking produces fractured ecological perspectives that can perpetuate destructive, wasteful behaviours. Learning to recognise the entangled nature of our everyday relationships with food can encourage ethical ecological thinking and lay the foundations for more sustainable lifestyles. This book analyses ethnographic data gathered from participants in Alternative Food Networks from farmers’ markets to community gardens, agricultural shows and food redistribution services. Drawing on theoretical insights from political ecology, eco-feminism, ecological humanities, human geography and critical food studies, the author demonstrates the sticky and enduring nature of anthropocentric discourses. Chapters in this book experiment with alternative grammars to support and amplify ecologically attuned practices of human and more-than-human togetherness. In times of increasing climate variability, this book calls for alternative ontologies and world-making practices centred on food which encourage agility and adaptability and are shown to be enacted through playful tinkering guided by an ethic of convivial dignity. This innovative book offers a valuable insight into food networks and sustainability which will be useful core reading for courses focusing on critical food studies, food ecology and environmental studies.
Gaming the Metaverse
Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash conceived of the Metaverse as an escapist medium within a dystopian future. By the early 2000s, his vision had evolved into a blueprint for pioneering virtual worlds, notably Second Life. In the 2010s, technology companies—from Meta to Epic Games—recast the Metaverse as the next frontier of digital experience and revenue generation. Now, in the 2020s, the still speculative concept encompasses a convergence of extended reality technologies alongside blockchain systems and artificial intelligence. This volume brings together leading scholars and industry professionals to examine past “imaginations” and recent “achievements” in the pursuit of the Metaverse. Contributors trace its development through literary, media, and cultural history while exploring current applications and their technical, social, cultural, and economic implications.