This document discusses plans for a new digital culture and gaming program launching in 2015 at Wilfrid Laurier University's Brantford campus. It outlines the creation of a "Launchpad" space in Brantford modeled after Laurier's existing Launchpad in Kitchener, which provides resources for students, faculty and alumni to learn entrepreneurial and technological skills. The document then discusses ideas for a summer course that would use pervasive gaming and augmented reality to have students explore and critique issues around globalization through games set in the city of Brantford. Students would help design game strategies and create their own games to foster learning.

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Gaming the City:
Telephone City and Social
Spaces of Transformation
Carolyn Guertin, PhD
Augmented Reality Lab, Faculty of Fine Arts
York University • 27 May 14
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY -
BRANTFORD
New Program launches 2015:
Bachelor of Applied Arts in
“Digital Culture and Gaming”

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At Laurier University’s main campus:
Laurier Launchpad, Kitchener
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY IN WATERLOO
HAS ESTABLISHED THE LAURIER LAUNCHPAD, A
SCHOOL FOR ENTREPRENEURS, 3 YEARS AGO.
- RUN AS A STARTUP BY A MEMBER OF THE
BUSINESS FACULTY, IT IS A SPACE WHERE
STUDENTS, FACULTY AND ALUMNI CAN COME TO
LEARN ENTREPRENEURIAL OR TECHNOLOGICAL
SKILLS.
- THE BUILDING WAS DONATED BY THE CITY FOR
THE PROGRAM
- IT IS RUN BY THE UNIVERSITY, GOOGLE AND
LOCAL BUSINESSES LIKE COMMUNITECH.

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WLU Launchpad @ The Tannery
- work with Google employees on your app, use the VR Cave to test
your game, meet with and get funding from businesses and dotcom
entrepreneurs
Play Brantford
Brantford also is no Waterloo. In fact, Brantford has met its Waterloo

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Brantford was
the number three
manufacturing
center
in Canada …
until globalization
happened
Belching smokestacks were the hallmark of 20th century prosperity

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Massey Ferguson Plant
During the demolition in 2013, environmental clean up crews extracted 1,000
liters of petroleum byproducts per acre. They didn’t say how much remained
behind that was unreclaimable. They only cleaned the top 13 feet of soil.

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The ground floor of the Expositor Building, former home of the
local newspaper, will be the site of a new Launchpad for WLU

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TD Bank just donated $750,000. A developer is donating
the ground floor for developing a space for
entrepreneurial work for students and alumni.
INDUSTRIALIZATION TOOK A
TERRIBLE TOLL.
Brantford is supposed to be an
acceptable sacrifice so that we can have
Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver.
How do we lead students to construct a
new vision of place for Brantford?
Is there life after oil and industry?

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SACRIFICIAL LANDSCAPE
“Where nature and culture meet, they construct a landscape. This
construction is most obvious in its physical manifestations, yet
humans also determine its spiritual, social, and cultural meanings.
Therefore, such a meeting between nature and culture may not
always result in a physical creation. A vision of a place can also
form within the mind, as humans reshape attitudes and values-
thereby adding a mythic component to the meaning of an
envisioned locale.”
~ Brian Black. Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil
Boom
“WORLD WITHOUT OIL”
BY JANE MCGONIGAL AND KEN EKLUND
HTTP://WORLDWITHOUTOIL.ORG
“What is your life like after the oil crash?” is the
question Jane McGonigal and Ken Eklund ask in
their pervasive game.

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POST-SACRIFICIAL LANDSCAPE:
PERVASIVE GAMING
IT’S LIKE REAL LIFE ONLY BETTER.

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HOW DO YOU CREATE AN
ENVIRONMENT FOR GAMING IN
THE MIDDLE OF A WASTELAND?
In order to use this urban space, I turned to Brantford’s
own history, which is interwoven not just with industry
but with telecommunications.
HACKING THE CITY

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Parkour repurposes urban space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pryzwlspg50
PARKOUR HACKS THE CITY.
IT IS THE POINT WHERE THE CAT
BURGLER MEETS THE TAGGER.
It is a physical interaction with urban space in strictly
non-legal ways. It is trespassing as a sport. It is a kind
of urban wandering. But it is important to note that this
is a SPORT, not a GAME.

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GUY DEBORD AND
THE SITUATIONISTS
GUY DEBORD WAS A REVOLUTIONARY
ACTIVIST WHO USED CONSTRUCTED
SITUATIONS IN TIME THROUGH RHETORICAL
DEVICES:
• DÉRIVE
• THE DÉTOURNING OF IMAGES AND TEXTS
• PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF
URBAN SPACE.
THIS WAS A METHOD OF CRITIQUING THE
ANAESTHETICIZATION OF THE SENSES THAT
HE SAW AND FEARED IN THE ARRIVAL OF
MASS MEDIA AND VISUAL CULTURE.

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DEBORD AND THE OTHER SITUATIONISTS
ARTICULATED AN ANTI-AESTHETIC THAT
CALLED FOR THE DEVALUATION OR EVEN
SUPPRESSION OF HIGH BROW ART IN
ORDER TO CREATE “A NEW GENRE OF
CREATION” (DÉTOURNEMENT AS
NEGATION AND PRELUDE 1959).
THEIR HIGHEST GOAL WAS THAT
CREATIVE PRACTICE AND CULTURE BE
INTEGRATED INTO EVERYDAY LIFE.
PERVASIVE LEARNING
My primary goal is to create a course that
critiques globalization and technology in
urban space.
A not inconsequential goal is to allow
students to transform their world on a local
scale.

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HTTPS://NIGHTWALK.WITHGOOGLE.COM/EN/HOME
Our cities contain many layers of
invisible cultural heritage.

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A COURSE LIKE THIS TAPS
INTO THE UNDERCURRENTS
OF HISTORY.
BRANTFORD HAS A RICH
HISTORY AS THE PLACE
WHERE ALEXANDER
GRAHAM BELL INVENTED
THE TELEPHONE, AND
BRANTFORD IS KNOWN AS
TELEPHONE CITY.

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MOBILE MEDIA PROVIDE THE
USEFUL TOOL STUDENTS NEED
TO EXPLORE THEIR CITY AS A
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND
GAME SPACE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkJnislZXgU
I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that
you’re afraid. You’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I
don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this
is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to
begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going
to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m
going to show them a world without you. A world without
rules and controls, without borders or boundaries; a world
where anything is possible. Where we go from there is
a choice I leave to you. ~ The Matrix (1999)

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Pervasive Gaming’s inspiration:
The Tenth Victim (La decima vittima), 1965
PERVASIVE GAMING GOT ITS START IN RESPONSE
TO PONTI’S MOVIE AND ITS SOURCE, A SHORT
STORY CALLED “THE SEVENTH VICTIM” WRITTEN
BY ROBERT SHECKLEY IN 1953.
THESE TWO WORKS SPAWNED A GAME CALLED
KILLERS THAT WAS PLAYED ALL OVER NORTH
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES FOR A
COUPLE OF DECADES.

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The idea of a place where normal rules do not apply is
familiar from science fiction, magic realism and film noir.
Fiction writers too have long played with these ideas
as in Gulliver’s Travels by Daniel Dafoe (1726)

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The Game (David Fincher, 1997) explores this premise: a
birthday gift for the man who has everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kqQNBR09Rc
MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS AND
PERVASIVE COMPUTING TECHNOLOGIES,
TOGETHER WITH SOCIAL CONTRACTS
THAT WERE NEVER POSSIBLE BEFORE,
ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO CHANGE
THE WAY PEOPLE MEET, MATE, WORK,
WAR, BUY, SELL, GOVERN AND CREATE.
~ HOWARD RHEINGOLD
AND I WOULD ADD LEARN AND TEACH.

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2 KINDS OF LEARNING
According to Lone Dirckinck-Homfeld, there are:
( “Designing for Collaboration and Mutual Negotiation of Meaning,” 2)
ASSIMILATION
(LEARNING ABOUT SOMETHING)

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ACCOMMODATING KNOWLEDGE
(TRANSFORMING SOMETHING)
TELEPHONE CITY: A MYSTERY
THE GAME, THE COURSE, YOUR LIFE
Pervasive learning falls predominantly in the
maker camp.
This summer course will use Brantford as a
haunted landscape with a mystery to be solved.
The game becomes a vehicle for exploring
issues related to globalization.

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BOUNDARY OBJECTS ARE DEFINED
“AS ANALYTIC CONCEPTS OF THOSE
SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS WHICH BOTH
INHABIT SEVERAL INTERSECTING
SOCIAL WORLDS AND SATISFY THE
INFORMATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF
EACH OF THEM.”
(STAR AND GRIESEMER 1989 P. 393).
BOUNDARY OBJECTS PROVIDE:
1. “a locus for communication, conflict, and
coordination” (Yakura, 2002: 968),
2. create “the common ground that leads to
shared understandings” (Bechky, 2003: 326).
3. allow “actors with diverse goals” to work
together (Briers & Chua, 2001: 241-2)
4. promote “the sharing of knowledge in
practice between diverse groups” (Sapsed &
Salter, 2004: 1515).

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4 TYPES OF BOUNDARY OBJECTS
1. Repositories, groupings, clusters, or tags that
have been standardized in some fashion.
2. A Map. A form of visualization, overview,
diagram or atlas.
3. Common boundaries between things, but
differing contexts.
4. Immutable mobiles (Bruno Latour). Objects that
can be conveyed over large distances without
changing.

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STUDENTS COULD EXPLORE A
PARTICULAR COMPANY, PLOT OF LAND
OR BUILDING. THEY COULD EXPLORE
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ACROSS THE
REGION. THEY COULD EXPLORE SOCIAL
EFFECTS OR SCIENTIFIC ISSUES. THEY
COULD STUDY GLOBAL FINANCE, URBAN
PLANNING OR LOCAL ARTISTS’
DEPICTIONS OF THE CITY. ETCETERA.
Global Studies:
From Convergence to Gaming Content?
• Globalism as ideology,
inequality, poverty,
access, diaspora,
migration,
cosmopolitanism, etc.
• Access,
agriculture,
sustainability,
urbanization,
climage change,
etc.
• Imperialism, neo-
colonialism, soft
power and
hegemony, global
regulation &
deregulation,
social
• movements, etc.
• Investment,
free markets,
distribution, etc.
trade flows,
labour, etc. Economy &
Trade
Power,
Politics &
Institutions
Society and
Culture
Resources
and
Environment

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So, your mission, if you choose to accept it,
is to help devise strategies for game play.
Project Based Learning Overview
• What are our goals for the students?
• - Students are able to help solve a game as they apply
these ideas to their own game design/creation
• - Students reflect on the process of game making
• - Students understand the importance of narrative and
politics
• Overview of plan:
• 1. Students create a criteria to define a “good game”.
• 2. Students test, play, critique games by using real world
issues in the city where they live.
• 3. Students design their game
• 4. Students create their game
• 5. Students set up their own play scenario, poll users, and
then compile data, revise premises.

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THE UNIVERSITY COULD
HAVE STUDENTS PLAY THE
SAME GAME YEAR AFTER
YEAR AND BUILD ON THE
INFORMATION CREATED
OR, IT COULD EXPLORE
OTHER LOCAL ISSUES

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For example,
the course
could study:
Residential
Schools,
Native issues,
and genocide
through a
‘game’ about
the mystery of
the execution
of native
children in
Brantford by
the clergy in
1943.
Women’s Rights:
Mary Anne Shadd
Cary, Emily Beecher
Stowe, Brantford and
the drive for Suffrage

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From: Nikolaos Avouris, “Learning in the City Through Pervasive Gaming”
From: Nikolaos Avouris, “Learning in the
City Through Pervasive Gaming”

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THE COMPLEXITY OF SUCH A
SUMMER PROGRAM IS SO RICH
BECAUSE IN A HISTORIC SITE
THERE ARE THREE DIFFERENT
CONTRIBUTING FACTORS:
1. Overabundance of events

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2. Spatial
complexity
exists in
layers in a
single
location
Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas
3. Data has become personalized

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THE IDEA THAT THERE IS A SHARP
BOUNDARY BETWEEN OUR TRUE
INNER SELVES AND THE OUTSIDE
WORLD IS PERVASIVE BUT HIGHLY
QUESTIONABLE. THE BOUNDARIES
OF THE SELF MIGHT WELL BE MORE
POROUS THAN WE ORDINARILY
THINK.
~ JULIAN BAGGINI

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Berlin Mauer Layar: AR enhances
our understanding of the world
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s
augmented theatre Ghost Machine
(Berlin, 2005)

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Contact: carolyn.guertin@gmail.com