Abstract: “Video Game Theater” is a paraller project to my Master-Project at the University of Arts in Zürich (CH) by Benjamin Burger. I’m studying in the field “Ereignis” what means more or less designing or planning public events for a target audience such as commercial events, media interactions or artistic interventions.
The project Games On Stage-Video Game Theater is a confrontation with my 4 years activity as artist and game tester in the games industry. Always confronted with the general prejudices against this medium I decided to restage this medium from a complete artistic perspective. In my practical project the game jumps out of the screen and the isolation of the living room onto a real life theater stage reaching another audience. I’m using the aesthetics and mechanisms of modern videogames to reenact “Mac Beth” a classical drama of theater history. This new hybrid-medium is a modern puppetry, where the gamer becomes the puppeteer, pulling the strings via gamepad and the avatar becomes his marionette. I’m searching methodically for the benefits and obstacles of this symbiosis where I restage the Video Game as a phantasmagoria in our digital age.
