Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

A 'pataphysics engine: Technology, play, and realities

Giddings, Seth

Authors

Seth Giddings



Abstract

This article plays a game with Jean Baudrillard's thought and the intellectual traditions on which it draws. Or rather, it plays Baudrillard's game but with a cheat code. The game or program here is the hyperreality of the contemporary world-Baudrillard's integral or virtual reality characterized by the dominance of things-of objects over subjects. The cheat code identifies and accentuates the development, application, and interconnection of theories of play, waste, technology, and multiple realities in aspects of 20th-century French avant-garde and social scientific thought and practice. It suggests ways in which everyday technoculture, not least videogame culture, can be addressed as at once playful and simulacral. © 2007 Sage Publications.

Citation

Giddings, S. (2007). A 'pataphysics engine: Technology, play, and realities. Games and Culture, 2(4), 392-404. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412007309534

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Dec 1, 2007
Journal Games and Culture
Print ISSN 1555-4120
Electronic ISSN 1555-4139
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 2
Issue 4
Pages 392-404
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412007309534
Keywords play, technology, Baudrillard, Bataille, surrealism, Situationist International, ethnography, waste, videogames, realities, simulation, simulacra
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1024418
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1555412007309534
Additional Information Additional Information : Giddings was invited to submit an article for this special issue of Games and Culture assessing the significance of Jean Baudrillard's work on the development and future of the study of digital games and games cultures.