Abstract

This dissertation presents the written portion of a research-creation PhD exploring vibrotactile technology in the context of artistic and creative game development. Brittle Configurations: Practical Explorations on Games and Vibrotactile Media features four games that use vibrotactile technologies as a primary expressive modality. Vibratory expression crosses boundaries inexorably: materially, anatomically and semiotically. Focussing on the vibrotactile in the context of game development therefore allows for a refiguring of what Aubrey Anable has called the surface/depth dichotomy in game studies—a tendency to associate representation with the surface, and computation with depth. This dissertation details the development process of the four games mentioned above. Four chapters present these four respective development processes, introducing expressive, ethical, practical and technological concerns of artistic game development. These development chapters alternate with reflective chapters contextualizing and complementing the examined making processes. In seeking out a design strategy that not only accommodates difference but appreciates it, this dissertation articulates how I worked toward vibratory media that abandon the closed loop of signifier and signified and become open signifiers, hosting memories, speculation, imagination, poetry, and inquisitive thinking. A critical examination of the role of container-like metaphors in game studies offers new perspectives on how tasks and responsibilities (such as playing, executing, policing, evaluating, rewarding) are distributed throughout circuits of playful media. Together with non-verbal and non-human modes of communication, as well as a series of alien robotics, these examinations bring about reflections on what I call fragile games. A fragile game aesthetic features situated and relational game design as an alternative to universal guidelines of “good game design” and aesthetics of purity, stability, resilience, and individuality. The evolution of these explorations culminates with the development process of the game Where Stillness Breaks, an installation that explores memories, associations, and speculative connections in the space between felt vibration and words.