Mary Flanagan: Playful Systems

Mary Flanagan is a media artist and one of the most acclaimed game studies scholars. She combines creative praxis with cultural research in her scientific work. She has written more than 20 critical essays and chapters on the subject of digital art, cyberculture, gaming, and responsible design. Her last book, Critical Play was very well received by the game studies community. Her central thesis in this book examines how games can question established cultural rules and by doing so enable a bigger and much richer field of game play experiences. Besides her interdisciplinary research activities, she is well known for her ongoing pioneering contributions to the field of digital art. Her artwork ranges from game based systems to computer viruses, embodied interfaces to interactive texts.