Game + Community Design

In Conversation with Izzie Colpitts-Campbell

Dames Making Games (DMG) founder Izzie Colpitts-Campbell speaks with us about her art and design practice and how her role as a community organizer influenced her contributions to the DEL. In this conversation we discuss her new DMG project Damage Labs, similarities between game design and community organizing, and how artist solidarity can be provoked digitally.

In this conversation, Dames Making Games (DMG) founder Izzie Colpitts-Campbell shares a brief history of her art and design practice, her motivation behind community organizing, and her thoughts on what drove her to participate in the Digital Economies Lab (DEL). Albeit a brief introduction to her collaboration on Artwork_Local404, Colpitts-Campbell contextualizes her vision for the piece through her experience in design and community solidarity. Countering the misconception that technology is pressuring artists to participate in capitalist models, Colpitts-Campbell asserts this isn’t new, “Leonardo da Vinci sure as hell did not want to paint Jesus.” So how are these discussions shifting in the digital world? Thus far, is the digital world exclusively designed for mass culture? Does the digital world, in its current conception, marginalize and even exclude communities? Does our engagement with digital tools, platforms, and services produce harm? As the world embraces a somewhat forced digital literacy in response to the pandemic, how do we navigate creating digital experiences that counter how digital spaces have been viewed previously? Follow along as we discuss these questions and more. As Colpitts-Campbell explains, there are more similarities between game design and community organization than we may have previously thought. Join us as we explore how game design, tech fashion, and new media art can advance culture and participate in community organization. Be inspired by DMG’s new project, Damage Labs, and their goal to create the gaming studios of tomorrow, today.

Explore Izzie’s projects here:

DMG Toronto: About

Join the Union here:

https://artwork404.com/

Platforms Empowering Artists to Take Back their Power:

Gain Context for these themes:

Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect

Artwork_Local404 Collaborators:

Tim Maughan (@timmaughan)

Emmanuel Madan « Undefine

Produced by the Artengine Stream Team:

Mikke Gordon aka Seiiizi https://twitter.com/s3iiizi

Ryan Stec

Kimberly Sunstrum https://www.kmbrlysnstrm.com/

Editorial Assistant

Erin Galt

Production Design Consultation

Leslie Marshall/MAVNetwork http://mavnetwork.com/

Post-Production Support: Chris Ikonomopoulos

DEL Theme Music by Mikki Gordon aka Seiiizi

Artengine’s Digital Economies Lab brought together a diverse group of artists, designers and other creatives to rethink the infrastructure of cultural production in the 21st century.

Funding for the Digital Economies Lab was received through the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategies Fund.

And like, it’s not ‘easy discussions,’ right? Particularly when you’re talking about personal prosperity, personal finances and economics, that’s a risk on the table…I think this is why often these movements come from marginalized people, because often they have much less to risk because they don’t have access to all of these systems that work for a very small amount of people. That’s why these movements often come from those that have less in the first place, because it is a hard thing to say, “A thing that’s working for me is not working for everyone else and I’m going to change that.”

I am the one who takes the approach of like, actually, let's build the studios that we want to see in the world.

Organizing Creative Labour

In this conversation Tim Maughan chats with us about digital infrastructure, the role of organized labour in the creative landscape, and the DEL project Artwork_Local404. Join us, as we discuss technology and capitalism, the benefits of organizing, and what form collective action might take. Maughan also talks about how we need to rethink many of the platforms of tools of the digital world as public infrastructure: this may change how we understand what the government could do with them.

Blockchain + DAOs

From NFTs to governance structures, blockchain technology may be a glimpse into the future. At least that is what Jesse McKee and the team at 221A are exploring. In this conversation McKee shares a bit about the history of artist-run centres in Canada, the limitless potential for blockchain to change how society is ordered, and the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Listen closely to discover the literary Easter eggs Jesse drops that are framing research at 221A.

Body Mind Machine

An engaging panel with Kristin Anne Carlson, Davide Rokeby and Chris Salter, moderated by Nell Tenhaff which delves into different relationships artists are cultivating with machines.