medi@terra 2006

Category

Festival

Year

2006

Institution

Fournos - Centre for Digital Culture, Athens

Comment

medi@terra festival dedicates its 7th edition to videogames and the crucial role they play in today’s digital culture. The fields affected by videogames have multiplied, forming a platform with numerous applications in different areas of reality: Within the last years the game industry has outsold cinema production while the hardware and software production companies develop their products according to videogame’s specifications and requirements. The MMORPGs are a basic field of communication and action for many users daily and a main centre of attraction for internet café’s all over the world. At the same time, videogames are a precious tool of education for various ages as well as an important new medium of creation with multiple possibilities for artists. And while academic departments on game design and theory are being established all over the world, the sectors of sociology and psychology are more and more occupied with the new social and individual conditions arising in the 'game era’' . Videogames encompass ideas, narratives, points of view and ideologies. They form images, they develop their own aesthetics and offer a new way of understanding the world around us. It is no more just a successful area of entertainment – probably it never was just that. Videogames express and reflect today’s world – they are a part of it. The boundaries between the virtual and the real world seem to intertwine, as the virtual spaces become the new public spaces. New identities appear, new roles are defined, new mentalities are being born. Observing this sphere of changes brought by the gaming realm, medi@terra aims to explore the different dimensions and developments in the field of games and entertainment and attempts a thorough examination of the data, the trends and the new conditions arising as a result of their widespread use and deployment. The five day festival includes an international conference, a game exhibition, special screenings, sound events and performances taking place in Athens with the participation of game designers and developers, independent creators, journalists, theorists and curators from all over the world. (source: www.mediaterra.org)