The Semiotics of Video Games
My essay Adamant Bodies. The Avatar-Body and the Problem of Autoempathy has ispired one of the themes of Chistophe Bruchansky and Mathias Jansson online exibition The Semiotics of Video Games, realized starting from some suggestions of E|C, No. 5, “Computer Games between Text and Practice” (edited in 2009 by Dario Compagno and Patrick J. Coppock). The Semiotics of Video Games is a miscellany that investigates the production of meaning in videogames and “wants to uncover the ambiguous interdependence that exist between our everyday cultural reality and the rhetoric manifesting itself in video games”. In Theme 1: Avatars and Empathy in video games, Kei Houraku’s Gomba’s lifetime (2007) and Brody Condon’s KarmaPhysics < Elvis (2004) videos are cited as examples in order to discuss the role of empathy in video gaming practice.
