Embodied Data and Gamified Interfaces

Undergraduate / Graduate

We produce caches of data within our networked lives, from social media interactions to mass surveillance systems, mostly to the benefit of corporate or state entities. The aesthetics of many of these interfaces uses gamification as a guise to data collection, relying on dopamine rushes from "winning" likes, shares, and views to keep us coming back. Through a combination of lectures and workshops, we will explore data and games as artistic mediums and how they interface and exchange with each other. We will look at how the physical body is reduced to data, surveilled and analyzed through our online behavior, mobile devices, computer vision, and machine learning algorithms. Students will learn how to incorporate the aesthetics of this embodied data into 2D and 3D gaming spaces, while considering how the physical body fits into the increasingly digitally connected world. This course counts towards the Media Practice and Design requirement for the MAAD program.