Title: Play & Pay: The Capitalist Evolution of Video Games
Author: Beichen Huang (S2558598)
Course: ARTX110472024-5SS1SEM2 2024–2025 Curating
Submission Date: 28 April 2025
Portfolio Type: Individual Curatorial Project Portfolio
Play & Pay-The Capitalist Evolution of Video Games
This week’s class focused on the role of the archive in contemporary art and curatorial practices. Through her lecture, Kirsteen Macdonald demonstrated that archiving is not merely a technical means of recording the past but a critical intersection of power and future imagination. Reading Hal Foster’s An Archival Impulse (2004) made me realise that archiving is not simply about preserving existing materials but represents an effort to “turn excavation sites into construction sites” (Foster, 2004, p.22). Archives can become tools to disrupt dominant historical narratives and reorganise social relations.
At the same time, Gül Durukan and Akmehmet (2021) point out that contemporary institutions, under the banner of “open access,” have begun exhibiting their own archives, but this very openness remains embedded within specific power structures (Durukan & Akmehmet, 2021, p.131). In other words, archiving is never neutral; it is always situated within cultural and political frameworks.
Against this background, I personally hold a cautious optimism toward archiving. Although decentralised, multi-platform archives may shorten the longevity of preservation, even bureaucratic systems are not foolproof. More importantly, the purpose of archiving should be to activate new ideas and inspire new artistic practices rather than serving as a cold storage of the past. In a sense, nature itself can be seen as our archivist—human remains and relics are unconsciously archived underground. As Connarty notes, “archival activities have already become part of everyday life” (Connarty, 2006).
Therefore, the true focus should be on how to allow archives to remain dynamic and generative rather than static. In the context of my curatorial project, a sustainable, cross-cultural, multi-platform approach to archiving could break the monopoly of singular memories and foster more unforeseen connections and creative acts for the future.
This Wednesday, our group organised a small collective activity. In this event, each participant brought a unique bouquet representing personal experiences, creative expressions, and emotional investments. The colours, shapes, and scents of the flowers all carried individual significance. However, when combined, they did not lose their respective identities. Instead, through interaction and cooperation, they formed a vibrant and dynamic whole. This experience reminded me of the key concept in my curatorial project — the tension between the individual and the collective, especially the fluidity and transformation within intimate relationships and emotional exchanges.
Floral Gathering
I personally brought a large pot of chrysanthemums, which became a striking visual focus. In addition, we engaged in tarot readings and a series of playful games, including placing sticky notes with teachers’ names on our foreheads and guessing who we were. One of the most brilliant moments came when someone wrote “Neil’s Bear”—a genius touch that made everyone laugh. I still miss that little paper note!
Reflecting on this gathering, I couldn’t help but think that if such activities had taken place at the very beginning of the semester, our relationships would have deepened much earlier. In fact, these seemingly casual activities, such as bringing flowers, tarot readings, or playful guessing games, are actually expressions of individual aesthetics and worldviews. They serve not only as mediums of connection but also as mirrors for self-reflection. As Greenan emphasised in her podcast, self-archiving and non-hierarchical collecting practices can become important means of exploring identity (Greenan, 2023).
Kate also participated in our activities, and her presence brought even more warmth and humour to the session. Through this experience, I gained a deeper understanding of Rogoff’s concept of “knowledge-in-movement” and the value of co-creating knowledge collectively (Rogoff, 2008).
At the theoretical and conceptual levels, my curatorial project is almost complete. However, a major practical setback occurred this week.
I had already selected a vacant rental flat as the exhibition venue and had modelled the exhibition space accordingly using online resources. However, this week, I discovered that the Zoopla listing for the property had been taken down—and regrettably, I had not saved any archival documentation. This means that, from both a practical and historical standpoint, I can no longer use the original spatial design.
This unexpected turn of events has forced me to abandon the previous plan and start from scratch, including going out to search for a new venue and remodelling the space. Through this setback, I have come to a deeper realisation that curatorial practice is not just about creativity, but also about responding to unpredictability and maintaining flexibility under changing conditions.
Alas, as Schön highlights, both “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action” are crucial to professional practice (Schön, 1983). In the coming days, I must visit potential sites and swiftly adjust my curatorial plans to ensure that the project can still proceed on schedule.
Despite the frustration and pressure brought by this setback, it also reaffirmed an important truth for me: curatorial practice itself is a process of continuously dealing with the uncontrollable, adapting to reality, and seeking creative solutions within uncertainty.
My old artsteps scene modeling
—–
Connarty, Jane. 2006. Introduction. In Ghosting: The Role of the Archive within Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video, edited by Jane Connarty and Josephine Lanyon, 8–13. Bristol: Picture This.
Durukan, S. Nesli Gül, and Kadriye Tezcan Akmehmet. 2021. “Uses of the Archive in Exhibition Practices of Contemporary Art Institutions.” Archives and Records 42 (2): 131–148.
Foster, Hal. 2004. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (Autumn): 3–22. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Greenan, Althea. 2023. “The Feminist Laugh: Archives, Art and Activism.” Extraordinary Creatives Podcast with Ceri Hand. Podcast audio, 1 hr 45 mins. https://cerihand.com/althea-greenan-podcast/.
Schön, Donald A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.
Capitalism, Game Narrative, Platform Economy, Commodification, Immersion, Microtransaction, Media Critique, Interactivity
Physical exhibits (game consoles, magazines, hardware)
Interactive installations (playable video games)
Fictional texts (fake newspapers, fabricated game notes and in-game recharge records for research purposes)
Spatial scenography (reconstructed living rooms/game rooms from different decades)
Sound design (simulated ambient noise from different gaming eras)
Costs – This must be reflected in the budget.
A two bedroom unfurnished flat in Edinburgh on zoopla（Mcdonald Road, Edinburgh EH7）
（This is a public rental flat with no furniture. With minimal setup, it can be turned into an exhibition space.
Curating in Edinburgh does not require legal permission, but confirmation from the landlord is necessary.）https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/69761818/
Duration:
| Aug 19-20, 2025 | Exhibition setup / Installation period |
| Aug 21-24, 2025 | Exhibition open to the public |
| Aug 25-26, 2025 | De-installation / Takedown |
workshop twice daily, each session lasting 4 hours.
Room 1: Playroom as History This room is divided into four corners by translucent curtains, each representing a specific gaming space from the past. Visitors walk through different time periods, encountering the material culture, visual language, and social atmosphere of historical gaming.
Room 2: The Capitalist Now This room dramatizes the split between two dominant gaming environments of the 2020s: the performative spectacle of esports and the minimalist, mobile-centered individual consumption.
Room 3: Workshop for Play & Thought A flexible space for participatory programs including public workshops, critical play sessions, panel talks, and speculative design labs. This room is intended to transform visitors from passive observers into active thinkers and co-creators of gaming futures.
Calculate Your Gaming Expenses and Digital Assets
Re-Trial of Landmark Legal Cases in Video Games
Open Conversation with Game Industry Professionals (Tentative)
Video games have never been neutral media—especially when situated within specific social systems. Whether it’s killing enemies, leveling up, looting, or freely trading, building, and capturing attention in virtual cities, these actions mirror the logic and operations of capitalism in the real world.
The exhibition Play and Pay: The Capitalist Evolution of Video Games focuses on how video games have been shaped and regulated by the processes of global capitalism—and how, in turn, they actively participate in shaping our cultural perceptions and modes of consumption.
The exhibition is structured around living rooms/game rooms from different decades, using gaming consoles, magazines, playable video games, fictional newspapers, and archival materials to guide visitors through the evolution from arcade culture to today’s immersive AAA titles. Visitors are invited to explore how narratives have been disciplined through genre and commodification, how hardware has shifted from exclusive consoles to cross-platform ecosystems to maximize profit, and how game systems—through loot boxes, microtransactions, and virtual economies—construct a closed world where “to play is to consume.”
Soundproofing; accessible pathways; games (colorblind assistance, audio assistance).
Artists/Artworks/Ethics/Budget/Funding/Partners and Sponsors will be added in future updates to this post.
*This version was updated on March 26 as a revision, offering clearer articulations and raising additional questions—it is may not a final submission.
I’m really glad to have the chance to revisit your curatorial project—we briefly talked about it before.
Your exhibition is a critically ambitious experiment on intimacy. From “generating and burning keywords through alcohol consumption” (Week 5) to the “tactile metaphor of power in sandpaper and tape” (Week 6), you gradually built a multi-layered, evolving spatial theatre. I’m particularly pleased with your revisions in Week 8, where you streamlined the process. As we’ve discussed, overly complex mechanics can undermine the clarity of your curatorial message. You not only adjusted the structure, but also made a clear declaration about this shift—well done!
（In fact, I especially admire your Week 6 observation: “This is not liberation, but a meticulously designed power game—technology becomes the new curator, and the audience becomes complicit through the expenditure of body heat.” This mirrors Claire Bishop’s critique in Artificial Hells of “passive freedom” in participatory art, and inverts Nicolas Bourriaud’s ideal of “touch as an egalitarian bond.” Through sandpaper and adhesive tape, you effectively revealed how touch can comfort—but also harm. It’s a bit of a pity that this tactile layer was dropped in the revised plan, but I understand it was a necessary and reasonable decision.）
From your descriptions, I can clearly imagine a curatorial field charged with anonymity, thermal sensors, and data self-destruction, where “intimacy” becomes something touchable, perceivable—even capable of lashing back. The entanglement between body, technology, and emotion allows the exhibition to reflect not only closeness through heat, but also the consumption and control hidden within it.
That said, I believe there are still TWO areas for improvement:
1. How does your curatorial mechanism convey your core ideas?
Your project might benefit from reconsidering the audience’s threshold for understanding. Your theoretical integration is rich and well-structured—from Erika Balsom’s reflections on the temporality of moving images (Week 8), to Boris Groys’ view of the audience as the “trigger of the event” (Week 6). However, the exhibition shifts rather quickly between “the physicality of intimacy” and “the temporality of digital power,” especially the jump from heat imaging to periodic data cremation. This could dilute your curatorial focus—not just in terms of expression, but also in thematic coherence.
Do you perhaps need supporting materials like a curatorial booklet or didactic panels to articulate this conceptual shift? Are you more focused on observing intimacy and relational behavior—or on curating its “thermal death”? (I’m using the physics term here—meaning the eventual exhaustion of heat, the descent into cold stasis—I think it’s a very COOOOOL metaphor!) You might consider ways to strengthen the conceptual bridge between these two dimensions.
2. How feasible is the participatory structure?
You may also want to further reflect on the practicability of your process. As Shannon Jackson writes in Social Works, the ethics of participatory art lies not in constructing barriers, but in building “supportive structures.” The tiered model introduced in Week 6—where participants must first finish a drink (“Frida’s Vein”) to unlock a Wooclap QR code, and only then access the anonymous dialogue booth—does respond to Claire Bishop’s idea of “antagonistic participation,” but it might also create unnecessary exclusion.
While your revisions in Week 8 helped simplify this structure, a few procedural concerns remain. After all, this is still a bar. When you transform it into a curatorial space, it still carries its original identity. Who are your participants—visitors who came specifically for the show, or casual customers who might just want a drink?
How do you plan to guide those accidental participants into your framework, instead of letting them drift away due to fatigue, confusion, or disinterest? Your design relies on both participation and consumption—but if a participant chooses not to follow the full path, how will it affect their experience? Also, how do you intend to acquire the equipment and software necessary for features like the “Power Fingerprints” or the “Digital Ashes Altar”? Are there precedents for this type of interaction, or at least some proof of feasibility?
Overall, this is an incredibly mature, original, and critically sharp curatorial proposal. It not only challenges the boundaries of exhibition-making, but also those of emotion itself. I’m excited to see how you continue developing the ethical questions of “temporary power” in future work.
Balsom, Erika. After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso Books, 2012.
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2002.
Groys, Boris. “Art as Event.” In Going Public, 41–49. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010.
Jackson, Shannon. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. New York: Routledge, 2011.
=======================
In contrast to Anonymous Intimacy, which explores the emotional flows of the digital age through multi-sensory participation and data self-destruction mechanisms, Play and Pay adopts a format closer to traditional exhibition structures. It establishes video games as a legitimate medium of contemporary art through a curatorial logic focused on the game-capital relationship.
Both projects deal with themes of interactivity and structural violence, but their starting points differ: the former emphasizes the bodily embedding and data reverberations of individuals within systems, while the latter critiques the system itself—its narratives, devices, and monetization models. Although Play and Pay successfully illustrates how capital drives the game industry, its critical approach remains more indirect when compared to the bodily immediacy of Anonymous Intimacy, where the mechanisms themselves generate a visceral response.
In the future, if Play and Pay could further activate player identity and experiential differences through well-designed didactic panels, it might establish a clearer curatorial personality between academic discourse and sensory experience.
That said, Play and Pay also faces issues of procedural flow. Participants may not follow the intended sequence—they might just play the games without reflecting, skip the texts, or leave quickly. Some may not even understand video games at all, making the entire experience hard to access.
Perhaps the mechanisms could be refined by using more direct, interactive strategies to guide visitor behavior (without becoming overly complex). Spatial design might also establish a more coherent route to ensure visitors have a complete experience. But this also risks feeling authoritarian—like the curator has become a control freak!
This week’s theme focused on the design of public programmes. I felt it was quite similar to the workshops we conducted last semester. However, this time, I gained a deeper understanding of why the course places such a strong emphasis on public projects.
Compared to simply completing a pre-set exhibition, public programmes make curatorial practices truly “fluid” — they are not merely a one-way transmission of meaning from curators or artists to the public, but rather an interaction that constantly evolves, responds, and reshapes itself through the process.
As Gul Durukan and Kadriye Tezcan Akmehmet pointed out, many contemporary art institutions today are attempting to “open archives” in public dialogues, enabling cultural materials to be continuously reinterpreted and revitalised (Durukan & Akmehmet, 2021). I believe this process-oriented rather than results-oriented curatorial logic can also be extended to the understanding of public programmes.
While most exhibitions themselves are temporal and cannot be permanent, the influence of public projects may last much longer — not through the exhibition objects themselves, but through the experiences and reflections that transform participants, curators, and artists during the process.
This reminds me of Hal Foster’s idea: to transform “the no-place of the archive” into “the no-place of a utopia” (Foster, 2004, p.22). Curating, perhaps, is about continuously constructing this kind of open, unfinished space.
The collective activities this week were particularly fruitful for me, as I led a small workshop teaching everyone how to use Artsteps to build virtual exhibitions.
In my session, I not only introduced the basic operations of Artsteps but also shared practical problems I encountered and the tips I had accumulated, such as how to overcome upload size limits, how to optimise the loading speed using low-poly models, and how to design exhibition flows through Guide Points.
I particularly emphasised a core idea: virtual spaces are not mere replicas of physical spaces, but can and should be re-planned based on experiential needs.
For example, I explained to the group that even though Artsteps provides a default 30×30 metre cube, we could freely scale it up or down depending on the narrative logic. We could even intentionally exaggerate spatial proportions to evoke certain emotional responses.
My group members actively joined the discussion, raising intriguing questions such as whether multisensory experiences could be simulated within Artsteps or whether interactive triggers could be embedded.
This kind of collective exploration made me realise that even a technically demanding platform can spark creative ideas if the environment for communication is open enough.
As Simon Sheikh mentioned in his idea of “curating as educational space,” curating is not merely the presentation of existing knowledge but a site for knowledge production itself (Sheikh, 2006). I feel that this workshop truly embodied that spirit.
Artsteps performing
Apart from the Artsteps workshop, I also participated in another curatorial project organised by Yiran Gu, Hanyun Xue, Lingqiu Xiao, and Yufan Wang — the Fear as Method workshop.
The event was fascinating, using the deprivation of vision to stimulate participants’ imagination. Personally, I did not experience fear because I am quite accustomed to visualising with my eyes closed.
More interestingly, instead of recording experiences through writing afterward, we were invited to draw what we perceived. This non-textual method was refreshing.
If the future version of this workshop could allocate more time for participants to observe and analyse each other’s drawings — even conduct light psychological discussions — it could break social barriers and deepen mutual understanding.
Perhaps whether through technical tools building virtual spaces, or through sensory deprivation creating temporary psychological spaces, curating is essentially about constructing new platforms for interaction, challenging and expanding habitual cognitive boundaries.
Each different form of collaboration deepens my understanding of curating as a multi-dimensional, evolving practice.
Fear as a method
My individual curatorial project is largely complete at this stage, but this week brought an unexpected and frustrating setback.
Previously, I had selected a rental apartment (unfurnished) as the blueprint for my exhibition space and built a 3D model of it in Artsteps based on its floor plan. However, this week I discovered that the Zoopla listing had been taken down — and I had not saved any of the reference data.
This means that from both a practical operation perspective and a historical documentation perspective, I can no longer continue using the previous design. I am now forced to start over and search for a new location.
Although it was a huge disappointment, on a positive note, the repeated practice of virtual modelling on Artsteps had already helped me develop a more mature awareness of space zoning, accessibility, and visitor flow.
For example, I paid special attention to designing discrete yet easily accessible staff resting areas, ensuring that toilets could be reached without disrupting the main narrative flow, and creating “decompression zones” where visitors could rest after intense sensory experiences.
Through these considerations, I realised that spatial design itself is a form of storytelling — every choice of movement path, every opening and partition, is a silent narrative that guides how the audience “enters” and “exits” the story.
No matter what space I choose next, this detailed spatial consciousness will undoubtedly help me make more resilient and flexible curatorial decisions in the future.
—–
• Durukan, S. Nesli Gül, and Kadriye Tezcan Akmehmet. 2021. “Uses of the archive in exhibition practices of contemporary art institutions.” Archives and Records 42 (2): 131–148.
• Foster, Hal. 2004. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110: 3–22.
• Sheikh, Simon. 2006. “On the Standard of Exhibiting as a Standard of Living.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson.
This week’s theme centered around “Publishing as Curating.”
The session prompted me to reconsider the role of publications in contemporary curatorial practices — no longer merely supplementary materials or records, but independent curatorial spaces with their own expressive power. Publications can extend the discussion around artworks beyond the temporal and spatial limits of exhibitions, reshaping artistic discourses through various media forms.
As Louise O’Hare has pointed out, publishing should be recognized as a distinct field of theory and practice, not merely an extension of art history or exhibition studies (O’Hare 2020).
A publication not only carries the artworks but also reflects the curator’s understanding and engagement with the artworks, the art system, and the broader social context.
Gradually, I realized that publishing expands the boundaries of curating — allowing curators to construct ongoing responses to artworks and their social environment through text, images, and sound, beyond the limitations of physical exhibition spaces.
During our small group discussions, Dr. JL raised a very thought-provoking question: if curators control the publishing process, is there a risk of distorting the artists’ original intentions? At the time, I was not quick enough to articulate my thoughts fully. However, after conducting further research, I would like to offer a more considered response here.
Firstly, from a legal standpoint, artists hold copyrights, not absolute ownership over the ideas within their works. As Craig Dworkin argues in his exploration of textual theory, copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves (Dworkin 2013).
Therefore, once a work enters the public domain, its ideas can be quoted, reinterpreted, or transformed by others. While the artist’s right to attribution should be respected, attribution does not imply monopolistic control over all possible readings and re-presentations.
Secondly, artistic creation has never been a purely isolated act; it is always shaped by complex intersections of social, cultural, and technological forces. Walter Benjamin famously noted that every cultural product bears the imprint of its production conditions (Benjamin 1936).
Thus, treating artworks as entirely independent and regarding curatorial or publishing reinterpretations as “distortions” is itself an oversimplification of the mechanisms of cultural production.
Finally, if an artist feels dissatisfied with how their work is reinterpreted through publishing, they are fully entitled to respond with their own voice. Such responses are themselves part of the broader cultural dialogue.
Even if curators or publishers inadvertently introduce interpretive shifts, their work should not be automatically subjected to moral condemnation — they are also engaging in labor and expression.
Of course, I do not deny that the publishing system (including curatorial publishing) has its systemic problems, such as the capitalization of copyright, the concentration of archival power, and the overpackaging of artists.
Nevertheless, I adhere to a text-centered perspective: once an artwork is created, its meaning becomes open, fluid, and cannot be permanently monopolized by any single authorial figure.
This week, our Collective organized a casual and enjoyable film screening session, initiated by Zi, who brought a selection of contemporary art-related videos. Special thanks to Sarah, who not only borrowed a projector but also designed a beautiful poster for the event.
During the screening, everyone presented short films they had prepared. I showed a one-minute experimental animation called Qanun. The film constructed a richly imaginative world using vivid colors and flowing forms, strongly imbued with an Eastern aesthetic.
While watching, I couldn’t help but reflect: this work neither fits the typical Western expectations of installation-based elements nor delivers an overt socio-political statement. Instead, it leaves ample open space for imagination.
This made me question — within the Scottish contemporary art context, would such a piece still be recognized as “contemporary art”?
I gradually realized that there might be subtle but important differences between Chinese and Scottish conceptions of contemporary art.
This cross-cultural interpretive gap has been a recurring — and sometimes challenging — issue in my curatorial studies.
collective II
This week, our Collective also had the opportunity to meet several students from the Contemporary Art Practice program. They were not only incredibly talented but also brimming with passion.
One project that left a deep impression on me was by a student from India. She transformed human hair into industrial-style objects and presented them as packaged commodities.
This idea struck me as both highly unique and a powerful articulation of her feminist critique — an impressive materialization of her conceptual declaration.
However, because there were so few of them, the event felt somewhat like a formal interview session, putting a lot of pressure on the participants.
I sincerely hope that in the future we can create more relaxed settings for such exchanges, because encountering these diverse practices from different cultural backgrounds is profoundly inspiring for my own curatorial thinking.
Lastly — I even designed and printed business cards for the occasion! I thoroughly enjoyed bowing politely while handing out my cards.
By the end of the meeting, I had given away all my cards, and many of them added me on social media.
I genuinely hope that someday, these new connections will lead to exciting collaborations!
My business card（A）
My business card（B）
—–
Reference
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 1936. Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Penguin Books, 2008.
Dworkin, Craig. No Medium. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.
O’Hare, Louise. “Artists at Work: Nick Thurston.” Afterall. Accessed March 2025. https://www.afterall.org/articles/artists-at-work-nick-thurston/.
This week, I focused on understanding the invisible infrastructures that support exhibitions—such as logistics, insurance, contracts, and accessibility requirements. I studied documents like Paying Artists Exhibition Payment Guide and Creative Scotland’s Fair Work Guidance, which emphasize ethical financial practices when commissioning artists and running public programmes.
I realized that an exhibition is not only an aesthetic or intellectual endeavor but also a legally and economically bound project that must protect all participants, from artists to assistants to visitors.
In our seminar, we discussed the ethical dimensions of budgeting and project planning. Some peers were surprised by the extent to which logistics dictate creative freedom: from the cost of shipping artworks to the complexity of event insurance. I particularly resonated with the idea that good project planning is itself a form of respect toward collaborators—acknowledging their labour, time, and risks through fair compensation and responsible organization.
This week, I finalized the budget for Play and Pay. I carefully categorized expenditures into necessary costs (venue, rental equipment, insurance, transport) and atmosphere costs (decoration, retro props), creating a financial buffer space.
I used reliable online sources for each item (eBay, rental services, insurance quotes), ensuring traceability for all budget lines. I also prepared multiple funding applications, estimating that even if only minimum grants were secured, I would still maintain basic operational viability.
This logistical preparation, often overlooked, was a key moment where the abstract exhibition vision became a practical, deliverable reality.
a-n The Artists Information Company. Paying Artists Exhibition Payment Guide. 2016. https://static.a-n.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Paying-Artists-Exhibition-Payment-Guide.pdf
Creative Scotland. Fair Work Guidance. 2022. https://www.creativescotland.com/resources/professional-resources/guidance/fair-work-guidance
The three venues I visited in Glasgow—Hunterian, Tramway, and GOMA—felt like three distinct curatorial dialects: restraint and authority, contemporary energy, and touristic display. Each shaped its own rhythm of viewing and carried an embedded belief about what exhibitions are for. As a curatorial student developing my project Play and Pay, this field trip offered me an opportunity to reflect on how these different curatorial structures expose underlying power relations—and how they challenged or affirmed parts of my own thinking.
Hunterian is perhaps the most “traditional” museum in Glasgow—and also the most alien. Its spaces are composed with restraint: clear exhibition logic, academic classifications, and a structured display rooted in conventional art history. Particularly in the second gallery, the hierarchical layout—by time period, style, and medium—reveals what Bourdieu calls the architecture of cultural capital: the power to judge beauty is the power to interpret the world.
Ironically, this was my favorite space of the three—not because it showed the most radical art, but because it was so honest about the system it represents. It’s a place where the curator doesn’t “appear”; the structure speaks for itself. The first gallery, however, was more contemporary in tone, and I especially appreciated the upstairs installation—although I honestly forgot the artist’s name (English names slip away from me too easily).
Still, Hunterian made me question how my own exhibition might intentionally subvert or mimic this complete, closed system. Could Play and Pay build a curatorial structure designed to glitch? Could I create a space where the viewer notices the cracks, not just the frame?
Roman wall bricks
Tramway is the most contemporary space of the three—raw, passionate, and spatially generous. The exposed pipes and industrial remnants anchor the exhibition in material reality. Here, artists seem encouraged to “go big”—with projection, sound, choreography, light, even theatre sets.
This atmosphere deeply inspired my rethinking of immersive space. Initially, Play and Pay leaned toward a theatrical, game-like linear sequence. But after seeing Tramway, I began to imagine a looser format—perhaps a kind of server-based logic, where visitors drift rather than advance, and different zones run parallel like mini-worlds.
That said, Tramway’s openness isn’t without its drawbacks. The grassroots, DIY energy can feel a little exclusive—as if it’s a space built for insiders, for the artist-curator-devotee. This made me look critically at my own bar-space concept: am I accidentally designing something that only “insiders” will truly enjoy? That’s something I’ll need to address when rethinking accessibility and audience entry points.
Compared to the other two, GOMA felt more like a public museum made for a broad city audience. It’s clean, diverse in its displays, with clear labels and accessible language. But its curatorial voice is more neutral—almost too safe. Some contemporary works were placed in the space, but I couldn’t say they were truly curated. They felt more like they had been “positioned,” not “situated.”
GOMA offers a comfort zone of passive viewing, which stands in stark contrast to my project’s intended system of interaction, feedback, and productive confusion. This made me question: is exhibition power about how much you show, or how sharply you frame the experience? My goal is for audiences not to feel like they’re “seeing an exhibition” but rather stumbling into it—a curated accident.
coolest traffic cone in all of Scotland
The weather was miserable. Absolutely dreadful.
I ran into Dr.JL, who very kindly showed us how to take the subway. She was enthusiastic but seemed a bit nervous too.
My favorite object in the whole trip? A brick from a Roman wall. (I know, it has nothing to do with contemporary art… but still!)
I was totally exhausted. I should’ve packed chocolate and energy drinks. Lesson learned.
No prize-giving quiz
This week, I focused on the “system” component within video games, particularly the construction and operation of virtual economic systems. Through reading Games of Empire and Ian Bogost’s theory of procedural rhetoric, I began to reexamine how game systems are not merely mechanisms of entertainment, but vessels of ideology. Bogost (2007) argues that games convey particular worldviews and values through their procedural structures rather than being neutral or unconscious spaces. Looking back at major titles such as Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft, it becomes evident that in-game economies, looting, and labor mechanisms replicate and reinforce real-world capitalist logics and structures of neoliberal urbanism.
Based on these reflections, I raised a key question: Are transactions within games a form of real economic behavior?
This question not only touches on players’ consumption choices but also addresses the blurring boundary between virtual and real economies. Through systems like loot boxes, microtransactions, and gacha mechanisms, players unconsciously participate in market-like activities while being trained, psychologically and economically, to become ideal consumers. This phenomenon echoes the critique by Kline et al. (2003) that video games have functioned as tools of “new media consumer education”—teaching people not only how to play, but how to consume.
In designing the exhibition, I began constructing an immersive and satirical installation: a fictional “Game Company Financial Report Wall.” It will mimic the aesthetic of real quarterly financial reports, presenting charts and figures about player expenditure on microtransactions, gacha pulls, and time investment. At first glance, the data will appear authoritative and serious; however, deeper inspection will reveal hidden critiques of capitalistic logic beneath the polished surface.
Simultaneously, I am writing a series of faux-real documents, such as The Player’s Investment Guide, The Philosophy of Gacha, and A Proposal for In-Game Microtransaction Taxation. These texts will be distributed throughout the exhibition space, allowing visitors to gradually experience cognitive dissonance as they realize: “This is not just satire—it reflects a real part of our lives.”
This phase of development has made me more aware that an exhibition should not merely point out problems but should construct a field of occurrence where problems can emerge organically. Just as Bogost suggests that procedural narratives make audiences experience a story rather than hear it, curating can also act as a form of disruption—a violent interruption to the naturalized systems that shape our perceptions and behaviors.
—–
Reference
Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.
Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Kline, Stephen, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
This week, Frances Davis introduced us to the curatorial practices of ATLAS Arts, particularly focusing on how to engage with local histories, cultures, and visions of the future through art projects in remote areas such as the Scottish Highlands. We studied Lauren Gault’s project Samhla and discussed how audience experience shifts when artworks are presented in different geographical contexts. At the same time, we began to think more critically about the interaction between space, time, and the audience in curatorial practice.
One question from class left a strong impression on me: “Why choose to exhibit online? What does it change?”
Through analyzing the online presentation of Samhla, I began to realize that different modes of exhibition—physical or digital—silently reshape the artwork itself:
①Offline exhibitions emphasize the sense of place, where the audience must “be present” and experience the tension between the work and the environment; ②Online exhibitions amplify the fluidity of time and space, allowing broader access but diluting the physical context of the work.
This reflection made me reconsider how my own project should be presented: is the exhibition meant to be fixed, or could it become a fluid, evolving experience?
ATLAS’s approach particularly stresses the idea of art as a bearer of stories, rather than simply a means of display. This made me realize that curating can be a form of storytelling that crosses both time and space—not only conveying the past but also calling forth possible futures.
I began to wonder: perhaps my project is meant to do the same. If it were merely about playing games, I could just create an online playlist for everyone. But then, why gather people in a physical space?
This week, I officially confirmed the title and theme of my curatorial project: Play and Pay: The Capitalist Evolution of Video Games.
It is an exhibition exploring the relationship between “play” and “consumption,” and an attempt to think critically about how contemporary media and economic structures are deeply entangled.
I started tracing the ways video games have been shaped by capitalist logic—from arcades to home consoles, from game halls to esports arenas. Technological evolution has always accompanied the evolution of business models.
Therefore, I decided to structure the exhibition around three major sections:
At the same time, I have been thinking carefully about the exhibition’s spatial language.I do not want to create a “video game archive” filled with explanatory text panels, nor do I want the exhibition to be a mere “nostalgic recreation.”In my inspiration board, I have collected images of arcades, living rooms, and esports centers from different eras, and developed the idea of Time-Sliced Living Rooms as the main structural metaphor: Each exhibition unit would represent not only a technological stage but also a theater of viewing and consumption practices—an idea that directly ties back to the reflections I had during class!
Family game room in the 2000s
One key development this week was that I started to formally establish one of the methodological approaches for the exhibition: Video Game Archaeology.
The idea came to me as I tried to map the formal and technological evolution of video games from the 1970s to today. While searching for materials, I was inspired by an internet phenomenon: YouTube channels and online communities like Summoning Salt, Ahoy, and Retro Game Mechanics Explained, where players spontaneously uncover, restore, and narrate forgotten aspects of video game history.
Henry Lowood (2009) suggested that video games are not just technological artifacts but cultural products whose histories should be preserved, restored, and retold like works of art or literature. Raiford Guins (2014) discussed the “afterlife” of video games—that is, how games are given new cultural meanings after their commercial life ends, through the actions of players, collectors, and preservationists. He framed restoration and re-exhibition as acts of cultural archaeology and memory work. Tanya Krzywinska (2002) directly used “archaeology” as a metaphor to excavate hidden traditions, narrative structures, and cultural meanings embedded in different generations of horror games, treating each generation as a cultural stratigraphy that reveals social fears and technological shifts. I believe Krzywinska’s concept aligns most closely with my thinking, so I have decided to call this approach Video Game Archaeology.
This grassroots, community-driven “electronic archaeology” practice has greatly inspired me. It helped crystallize a key curatorial concept: Video games are not merely consumer goods—they carry layers of cultural sediment and transformation. Therefore, in the exhibition, I do not want to present video game history as a static museum display. Instead, I hope to create a living, dynamic space where audiences are invited to act like archaeologists: excavating, connecting, questioning, and reconstructing their own memories and experiences.
—–
Reference
Henry Lowood, “Videogames in Computer Space: The Complex History of Pong” (2009)
Raiford Guins, Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (2014)
Tanya Krzywinska, “Hands-On Horror” (2002)
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
