Playable Bodies

Dance Games and Intimate Media

Kiri Miller (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2017
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-025784-2 (ISBN)

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Playable Bodies shows how dance video games work as engines of humor, social risk, and intimacy, urging players to dance like nobody's watching-while being tracked by motion-sensing interfaces in their living rooms. Author Kiri Miller looks at game design and player experiences across media platforms, presenting a new theory of "intimate media."

Playable Bodies investigates what happens when machines teach humans to dance. Dance video games work as engines of humor, shame, trust, and intimacy, urging players to dance like nobody's watching--while being tracked by motion-sensing interfaces in their living rooms. The chart-topping dance game franchises Just Dance and Dance Central transform players' experiences of popular music, invite experimentation with gendered and racialized movement styles, and present new possibilities for teaching, learning, and archiving choreography. Author Kiri Miller shows how these games teach players to regard their own bodies as both interfaces and avatars, and how a convergence of choreography and programming code is driving a new wave of full-body virtual-reality media experiences. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research with players, game designers, and choreographers, Playable Bodies situates dance games in a media ecology that includes the larger game industry, viral music videos, reality TV competitions, marketing campaigns, consumer reviews, social media discourse, and emerging surveillance technologies. Miller tracks the circulation of dance gameplay and related "body projects" across media platforms to reveal how dance games function as "intimate media," configuring new relationships among humans, interfaces, music and dance repertoires, and social media practices.

Kiri Miller is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University. Her research stands at the intersection of media studies, performance studies, and ethnomusicology. She is the author of Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance and Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Dance Games and Body Work
1. "I See You, I See You!"
2. Dancing Difference / Gaming Gender
3. Listening Like a Dancer
4. Practice, Practice, Practice
5. FTFO: Choreographic Labor
6. Intimate Media: Body Projects Megamix
Notes
References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	20.03.2017
Zusatzinfo	39 halftones
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	234 x 155 mm
Gewicht	431 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik
	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Sport ► Tanzen / Tanzsport
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-19-025784-9 / 0190257849
ISBN-13	978-0-19-025784-2 / 9780190257842
Zustand	Neuware