2025 | Programme

Below you will find the program for the 2025 Tampere Spring Seminar. The organizing committee reserves the right to make changes to the program.

Tuesday, 25 March

19:00-22:00 Boardgames and finger food at board game café Taverna. Participation fee is 4€/person (3,5€ for students), which covers using their extensive library of board games for the whole evening. Their menu includes snacks, salads, wraps and warm toasts, with vegan options also available. (self-financed)

Wednesday, 26 March

8:30 Registration opens

9:00-9:15 Opening words

9:15-10:50 Session 1: Play and Artistic Practice

  • Zhou: The Double Technicality of Video Games: Rethinking Digital Games as Artistic Practice through Mechanical Metaphors
  • Masek, Galeote, Pomposini: Ludic Inquiry: A New Arts-Research Method for Games
  • Aurava & Meriläinen: Games as art, described by young game jam participants

11:10-12:50 Session 2: Survival

  • Mukherjee A & Mukherjee S: Cards Against Anarchy: The Survival of Art and Game in the Dashavatar Cards of India
  • Wyatt & Leorke: Collaborating with life itself: modalities of play in climate art
  • Ruiz-Cabrejos & Castro Valdez: Street art and location-based games

12:50-14:00 Lunch (self-financed)

14:00-14:45: Keynote 1: Grayson Earle

14:45-16:20 Session 3: Performance and Spectacle

  • Warren: Deviant Acts and Performance Arts: Digital Role-play as System Hacking
  • Cochennec: On videogames and their spectacle, the art of the détournement
  • Moritzen: Digital Performance and In-game Concerts: The Affordances of Ludomusicological Expression

18:00-21:00 Social programme at Lyhty, Tampere University campus. Light food and snacks available. Join for an evening of artful social games and a relaxed atmosphere. All game participation is optional, so if you prefer to just hang out with interesting people, that’s fine too!

Thursday, 27 March

9:00 Registration opens

9:30-11:00 Session 4: Game mechanics

  • Vesa & Särkijärvi: The Aesthetics of Arkham Horror’s Rules: A Case Study
  • Clark: Lucid Dreaming: Gameplay Mechanisms in Installation Art
  • Gerasimenko: Repetition as political subversion: Art games of independent Russian media outlet Mediazona

11:15-12:00 Keynote 2: Cindy Poremba: Capture Matters: Games, Art and Real Images

12:00-13:00 Lunch (self-financed)

13:00-14:30 Session 5: Against

  • Timonen: The 28 movement – Artistic remediation in the anarchic counterplay of Warhammer
  • Sotamaa & Paul: Grab Them by The Balls – Unless the VAR is Watching: What Soccer’s Dark Arts Can Teach Us About Games
  • Stark: Brecht’s Experimental Games, or the Philosophy of Art-Science

14:45-16:15 Session 6: Overlooked Aesthetics

  • Calcagnile: Beyond Black and White: Fun and Future in Colour
  • Pomposini: Atmospheric Dwelling in Sable: Three Relationships to Place
  • Phelps: Games as Gesamtkunstwerk: Generative and Aesthetic Methods for Scholarly Practice

17:00 Visit to the Finnish Museum of Games in Vapriikki. Dinner together at Plevna afterwards. (self-financed)