Panelists: Carrie Sijia Wang, Sahej Rahal, Casper Harteveld, and Celia Pearce
Description: This webinar will examine the ethical and emotional dimensions of artificial intelligence within game design and interactive storytelling. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives in design, media, and performance, the discussion will bridge academic theory and creative practice to ask: Can AI help games become a site of ethical reflection rather than escapism?
The session will include a conversation and a live interactive playtest inspired by the artist’s projects, culminating in an open reflection and publication of annotated design notes as an archival artifact.
This event is part of the Center for Transformative Media’s AI Webinar Series.
Speaker Bios:
Carrie Sijia Wang is a socially-engaged artist and educator whose work investigates the relationships between human and machine, technology and power, language and alienation. Working with software, video, participatory experience, and performance, she creates digital fragments of reality that explore what it means to be human in a machine-coded world. Wang has been a 2024 Working Artist Fellow at Pioneer Works, a 2023 More Art fellow, a Year 8 member of NEW INC, and a 2020 Mozilla Creative Media Award recipient. She has shown and presented work with venues including New Museum, Onassis Foundation, Rhizome, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, ACM SIGGRAPH, and A.I.R.Gallery. Her work has been featured in publications such as Business Insider, Slate, and Computerworld. Wang teaches as an adjunct at New York University. Additionally, she is the creator of Whose AI? — a series of hands-on workshops designed for underserved youth to explore AI and its social implications.
Sahej Rahal is a storyteller from Mumbai who weaves counter-mythologies that question narrations of the present. This myth world takes the shape of sculptures, performances, films, paintings, installations, video games, and AI simulation programs. Drawing upon folklore prophecies, archeological conspiracies, hidden histories, and occult manuscripts, he renders scenarios where the fictive and the real begin to converse, at the borderlines of myth and memory.Rahal’s artistic practice has been featured in institutional exhibitions internationally, including the upcoming Munch Triennial, The Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, Manifesta 14, the Gwangju Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial, the Kochi Biennale, the Vancouver Biennale, Transmediale, MACRO Museum Rome, Kadist SF, ACCA Melbourne, CCA Glasgow, and the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai.
Casper Harteveld is a Professor of Game Design at Northeastern University, has affiliated appointments in Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, and with the School of Law, and works closely with faculty in Marine Science and Public Policy. His research focuses on using games to study and improve decision-making, and through these efforts both to advance our knowledge and to engage a broad cross-section of people globally about societal issues. He applies games especially in areas where it is challenging to study and educate in natural environments and collects detailed and expansive behavioral data in a controlled manner.
Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator, and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent art, and alternative game genres. Her recent work focuses on live action roleplaying and “playable theatre.” She is also the co-founder of IndieCade, and is considered a leader in games and diversity.