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Never Alone: Video Games as Interactive Design - by Paola Antonelli (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- An exploration of interaction design through 35 classic examples of video games, from Space Invaders to MinecraftOur lives are increasingly lived on screens, and every one of our electronic interactions is mediated by a designed interface, which can be buggy and incomprehensible or inviting and accessible.
- Author(s): Paola Antonelli
- 140 Pages
- Art, Digital
Description
About the Book
"As our devices like to remind us, we spend a huge portion of our lives in digital worlds. The interfaces we use to access them--from Zoom to FaceTime, WhatsApp to Discord, Roblox to Fortnite--are visual and tactile manifestations of code that both connect and separate us, and shape the way we behave and perceive others. Yet like other ubiquitous tools, interfaces are seldom recognized as design. This exhibition brings together notable examples of interaction design, a field that considers the points of contact between objects--whether machines, apps, or entire infrastructures--and people. The exhibition, drawn from work in MoMA's collection, ranges from the iconic and universal @ sign, a symbol dating back to the Middle Ages, to an ad hoc device that allows a graffiti artist with ALS to tag city walls from their bed. Games range from global staples such as Tetris and Pac-Man, to immersive explorations of the natural world, like Flower, or records of indigenous traditions and culture, like Never Alone, to forays into the absurd like Everything Is Going to Be OK. These works remind us that while the digital realm has different, and often untested, rules of engagement, interaction design can transform our behaviors--from the way we experience and move our bodies to the ways we conceive of space, time, and relationships."--Book Synopsis
An exploration of interaction design through 35 classic examples of video games, from Space Invaders to Minecraft
Our lives are increasingly lived on screens, and every one of our electronic interactions is mediated by a designed interface, which can be buggy and incomprehensible or inviting and accessible. Like other ubiquitous everyday tools, these interfaces are seldom recognized as objects of design--and even less as objects of interactive design. In video games, however, users are acutely aware of their relationship with the interface, making video games compelling examples of this important field of contemporary design.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Never Alone: Video Games as Interactive Design explores the impact of interactive design by examining 35 video games created between 1972 and 2018--from Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980) to The Sims (2000) and Minecraft (2011). An overarching essay by curators Paola Antonelli, Anna Burckhardt and Paul Galloway presents the pioneering criteria by which MoMA has selected these video games for its collection, as well as the protocols for their acquisition, display and conservation. The richly illustrated plate section is divided into three sections that analyze input devices (keyboards, joysticks, buttons), game designers and players, and each game is accompanied by a short text illuminating its significance in the history of the medium.
Review Quotes
A testament to the fact that although people want to paint gamers as loners shooting away in their basements, video games can be community-building.--Angela Watercutter "WIRED"
Shows how designers coax players through the worlds they create on a screen and ultimately invites us to think critically about how we experience all digital interfaces and our interactions with them.--Diana Budds "Curbed"