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Author Archives: Kars

Speaking at CoCities Salon Amsterdam

By Kars | Published: June 29, 2011

Cog­ni­tive Cities cer­tain­ly has been the most stim­u­lat­ing con­fer­ence of 2011 for me so far. (Despite the few short­com­ings I report­ed on ear­li­er.) So I am super glad it is get­ting fol­low-up in the form of a salon in Ams­ter­dam. Tomor­row. And I will be speak­ing. So, Thurs­day June 30 in TrouwAms­ter­dam’s Verdieping: Cog­ni­tive Cities […]

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Speaking at dConstruct 2011

By Kars | Published: June 22, 2011

I am real­ly pleased to be speak­ing at dCon­struct this year. I’ve attend­ed the con­fer­ence myself sev­er­al times and always enjoy the well-curat­ed pro­gram and the good things offered by the even­t’s home, love­ly Brighton. You’ll find the abstract I sub­mit­ted below. Have a look at the con­fer­ence site for the rest of the pro­gram […]

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Things we’re working on (volume 2)

By Kars | Published: June 15, 2011

It’s been over half a year since I last talked about the projects we have on deck. I thought I’d do a quick post to give you a sense of what’s going on. We’re in the process of wrap­ping up Maguro. The game — titled Code 4 — is fin­ished and has seen sev­er­al suc­cess­ful […]

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Talking about Code 4 at Chi Sparks

By Kars | Published: June 3, 2011

Our long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Alper Çuğun will be at Chi Ned­er­land’s bi-annu­al con­fer­ence to talk about Code 4 (for­mer­ly referred to as Maguro). Code 4 is a per­va­sive game we cre­at­ed for the Dutch Tax Admin­is­tra­tion with the aim of ignit­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al change. Chi Sparks is a con­fer­ence that focuss­es on “the very impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions that […]

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New Games for New Cities at FutureEverything

By Kars | Published: May 19, 2011

Last week I was in Man­ches­ter for FutureEv­ery­thing. I pre­sent­ed on games and how they can be used to improve city life. Below are my notes and a selec­tion of slides. It’s longish, but hope­ful­ly infor­ma­tive. I’ve tried to con­nect crit­i­cism of gam­i­fi­ca­tion with the virtues of open-end­ed play, and show how the lat­ter can […]

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Looking back on playful Tweetakt 2011

By Kars | Published: May 6, 2011

I’ve just uploaded a set of pho­tos tak­en at the open­ing of the play­ful Twee­t­akt 2011 exhi­bi­tion. As you may recall, I was asked to curate an inter­ac­tive addi­tion to this youth the­atre fes­ti­val. The works I select­ed are in my opin­ion all won­der­ful exam­ples of the way play can lead to per­for­mance. Each was […]

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“The opposite of play isn’t work…”

By Kars | Published: April 28, 2011

RANJ cre­at­ed a game that makes work in flower farm­ing green­hous­es more fun. The game plugs into the data being gath­ered there already, allow­ing work­ers to train their skills at spot­ting sick plants. In addi­tion, they attempt­ed to increase social inter­ac­tion between Dutch and Pol­ish work­ers by ask­ing them to col­lec­tive­ly answer a quiz or […]

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Two new projects in the portfolio

By Kars | Published: April 15, 2011

I’ve added two projects to our port­fo­lio recent­ly. I thought I’d post a quick note to point them out to you. Learn­ing Lab The first one is Learn­ing Lab, a design research project we ran in the last few months of 2010. It was com­mis­sioned by an exper­i­men­tal edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram for VU and UvA stu­dents […]

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Slides and notes for ‘Fevered’ at Mob Fest: Thinking Mobile

By Kars | Published: March 30, 2011

After speak­ing at an Ignite a while ago I returned to Media­mat­ic’s won­der­ful Arcade exhi­bi­tion last week. I was asked to present at the first evening of Mob Fest, a 3‑day mini fes­ti­val on mobile games in the broad­est sense of the word. Below are my slides and notes for the talk. The evening was […]

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Kars speaking at several upcoming events

By Kars | Published: March 18, 2011

I have a num­ber of speak­ing engage­ments lined up for the near future so I thought I’d fire off a quick post before the week­end to point them out to you. First up is Media­mat­ic’s Mob Fest on Wednes­day 23 March in Ams­ter­dam (that’s next week). I’ll talk about mak­ing per­va­sive urban games that are […]

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