Translations of Sensory (Dis)abilities in Digital Gaming Arrangements
The project at hand analyses the relations and mutual configurations of users in digital gaming situations. Based on theories and methods of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) the processes of sensory and bodily translations will be analysed along with the corresponding production of users in digital gaming arrangements. These situations are framed regarding contextually specific technological, cultural and discursive conditions. The project will follow the premise that gaming is at any time a hybrid, collective process, a ‘feedback loop’ in which both human and non-human actors are interlinked, related to each other and translated into players in a game. Departing from this premise, consoles, controllers, specific bodily techniques, spatio-temporal arrangement, rules, individual bodily characteristics, subjective (sensory and psychic) impressions and the human players become acting elements. They need to be considered as a web of relations, an actor-network that is not made up of singular entities, but of processual hybrid constellations. In this respect, the thesis of the project is that (dis)abilities cannot be presupposed but are effects generated during collective networking.