The multimedia installation consisting of a nine-piece handcrafted game board and a video essay maps out the inner world of the role-playing game Potvory. The game was developed as a cooperation between anto_nie and Maxim Shchapov over the span of 3 years and offers a queer-feminist reading of early medieval Slavic folklore. The physical board references the materiality of hobby dioramas (for both miniature based war-games and model railways) as well as museum displays while the video essay and game artifacts (like cards and character sheets) tell the story of a unique group of queer monsters.
A ludic intervention on the commodification of the self and the gamification of intimacy in human-AI relationships. The Diploma work uses the ludic method as an artistic tool for critical inquiry in the context of the rise of romantic AI companions, datafication and the capitalist commodification and exploitation of the vulnerable self of the user which may lead to “violence on all levels”, addressing a spectrum of potential harms, such as inappropriate behaviour, data risks and emotional harm.
I wanna do a Kusoge is a multi-chapter interactive game that follows a cat who meows and dies – repeatedly. Through the use of deliberately frustrating platforming, illusion-based mechanics, and shifting perspectives, the game resists traditional expectations of reward, meaning, or coherence. Its central mechanic – a toggleable mask that reveals or dissolves elements – challenges the player’s trust in visual information and mechanical logic. Rather than offering a narrative, the game presents a sequence of spaces designed to disorient and provoke playful mistrust.
The project unfolds as an immersive, non-colonial, and playful installation across extreme scales – from the bio (10⁻⁹) to the ludic (10⁹). It synthesizes βίος and ludus, physical space and digital reality, to explore biological interfaces, experimental bacterial food agencies, and playful permabioludic methodologies – within both the human body and the digital platform. It opens a portal for experimental fictions and interspecies interactions, where human and non-human agents – like bacterial species – engage in game-like interventions. The tongue becomes a ludic organ and symbiotic sensor – through it, we taste, smell, play, and host bacterial escapades.
The installation is a tribute to British author Virginia Woolf and deals with the profound seriousness of suicide and depression. Through virtual reality, participants experience the literal weight of Woolf's last words and immerse themselves in her poignant thoughts. The aim is to highlight not only her works, but also mental health issues and their taboo status in society.
I don't know what the house wants is an interactive installation that combines sculpture, playful methods and drawings. Users control a digital model of a building using a specially developed controller. This transmits original frequencies, enabling a tactile exploration of the house's memory on a non-verbal level. Through interaction, users discover letters, videos and sounds connected to the history of the house. Based on autobiographical elements, the installation serves as a ritual farewell to a house and as an exploration of how spaces preserve memories.
Page against the Machine is a modification for the computer game Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse Studios, 2025) that aims to rewrite all in-game books, replacing them with notes on the media theory and the history of computing. This game is marketed as "historically accurate" but there are certain disconnects between these claims and the way contemporary popular video games are conceptualized and produced. Exploiting the properties of computational media - modularity, claims of universality, openness to bricolage – Page against the Machine directs the user's attention to the constructedness of video games, and the human traces found in computational cultures.
I plunge into the abyss of my consciousness, and perhaps the subconscious. I study my subpersonalities, recreating them in reality. By moving them from the ephemeral to the physical, I give them a shell that reflects their character. I recreate "My Dear Puppets", as large human-size marionettes that come to life in dance. It is an attempt at deep self-reflection, depicting the complexity and ambiguity of the human personality. Each puppet on stage reflects a separate subpersonality of mine. There are six of them in this project: Warrior, Demon, Wise Old Man, Mother, Child, and Soul.
"Threads" is conceptualized as a communicative process akin to “play”, focusing on the interactions between two participants. It examines game mechanics and the interpersonal dynamics that occur during a playful situation. The emphasis is on facilitating an environment where participants engage in a communicative exchange. "Threads" involves various elements that, once being activated, connect the participants, fostering this exchange. "Threads" is comprised of two parts: the game itself and the process of creating the score and the objects. Everyday gestures, abstracted and transformed into movement sequences, serve as the source material, eventually shaping both the score and the objects through the physical presence of the performer
The Deconvolution of Things is an art-game installation featuring a digital game, unique controllers (ludic things), a laboratory, and an office for game observation. Inspired by Bruno Latour's ideas on objects and things, the installation allows up to five players to collaboratively control the game through ludic things, which are connected to a computer via navel cord-like cables. These controllers serve as both instruments (sounds by Sebastian Scholz) and game controls, forming a network of agencies. Players gather around these ludic things, which act as focal points for interaction and decisionmaking, reflecting Latour's concept of the Icelandic "Althing" where people discuss and resolve controversies.
"Cafe Nostalgia" is a playful project that aims to explore the medium of role-playing games as ergodic literature (Aarseth, 1999), using the approach of performative co-creation as a ludic method (Jahrmann, 2021) of artistic research and creative storytelling. Thematically, it deals with nostalgia and malleability of memory: the bittersweet longing, the murky waters of imagined past, and the darkness that hides in the corners of our consciousness. Together, players tell a shared story to blur the distinction between emerging narratives and lived memories. The project consists of a role-playing game system and an interactive installation. Both are meant to be engines of narrative design that enable players to tell their own stories.
"Can't Control It" is a music video game based on the song of the same name by The Royal Moth Airlines and aims to explore the interrelationship between playing and listening experiences. This is made possible by game mechanics that make changes in musical events tangible, give players opportunities to interact and thus contribute to shaping the music.
"Our Arms Must Be Mighty" consists of two major parts, illuminating the topic of violence in games. "Our Arms Must Be Mighty – Feindbild" artistically examines the position of the player as an entity of agency in a limited model of grim aspects of reality, inspired by Eddo Stern's digital killing automaton Fort Paladin. The separation of the direct causation of action in a digital space, draws similarities to automated warfare employed in physical battlefields. "Our Arms Must Be Mighty – Boot Camp" aims to serve as the progenitor of participants' critical analysis of commercial shooter games.
SKINS.II is an interactive game researching the controversies of today’s human interdependencies with technologies. It aims to reveal poetic research on the multidimensional notions of skin in the phygital* world, to uncover the intertwined and complex relationships between the extended reality of virtual media and the limitations in the design of A.I. technologies. The aim is to question the political prejudice behind social constraints related to the biological body and the following aspects of A.I. algorithms mirroring such actions. Our digital identities are encoded into a cluster system where humans become collections of categories.
