How does it feel when your FitBit score is taken into consideration as part of your job performance? Or when you know that your successful liked Selfies attract the attention not only of your network but also of your employers? Does this new form of playful and multilayered surveillance make us more productive and why do we willingly engage in an economy which driven by play translates everything into accelerated work? It seems that to fit in, in a world ruled by numbers , we need to become part of an endless feedback loop, constantly adjusting our image and habits to new scores and norms.

Taking into consideration the wide use of gamification and the popularity of the Quantified Self movement, the panel will look into how play can set behaviors and discuss the gains and the losses of today’s gameful world. Are we experiencing a preset game-of-data where play rules through freedom or can we still count on new forms of data-play and dis-measure that can oppose the logic of a life tied to playful but continuous work?

Presented in cooperation with Leuphana University of Lüneburg

Daphne Dragona (gr)

Daphne Dragona is a curator, writer and researcher living and working in Athens and Berlin. Since 2001, she has been collaborating with centers, museums and festivals in Greece and abroad for exhibitions, conferences, workshops and media art events. Among them are the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens), LABoral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial (Gijon), Alta Tecnologia Andina (Lima), Goethe-Institut Athen and the Hybrid City Conference organised by the University of Athens. Daphne has worked extensively on game art, net and network based art as well as on artistic practices connected to the urban and digital commons. Her current research and curatorial practice particularly involves critical data-driven art, playful exploits and off-the-cloud initiatives, explored as tools for users’ empowerment and emancipation. Articles of hers have been published in numerous books, journals and magazines.