Jared Gardner (Ohio State)
“Play/Time: The Long History of Comics and Games (& What It Can Teach us About the Future of Both)”

This keynote was given as part of the "Beyond Narrative" conference on October 10, 2019.

Abstract: The Late 17th-century artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli was a pioneer in the popularization of the new art of caricature that first took shape in his native city of Bologna. He is also a pioneer in the work of game design, having designed numerous card and board games. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, comics and game design would evolve as increasingly complex interactive narrative art forms, but the interrelationships between the two from these early origins on through the digital convergence of games and comics in the 21st century remains underexplored. After highlighting some key moments in this history, I will focus in the final section of my talk on how attention to the game elements of comics and the comics elements of games can help us conceive of possible futures for both and, more urgently, new models of narrative that highlight playability and collaboration.