Wyrd Con Companion 2012 online

The companion to the U.S. larp conference Wyrd Con is online, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek. The appealing design has been created by Kirsten Hageleit. This year, an academic section has been added. Here you can find among other texts my contribution about larp motivation in Germany. Click on this link or on the image below to open the book (~19 MB).

Enjoy*!

Click on image to open pdf.

* If you liked the book and would like to support the convention, there is a kickstarter campaign running for next year. 5$ make organizers happy and where do you get coffee below 5$ nowadays? (Maybe in the Bandito Espresso in Maastricht).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wyrdcon/wyrd-con-4-interactive-storytelling-convention

Machen’s „The Great God Pan“ in the eye’s of Lorca’s ‚Duende‘

(c) Pat Rogers, Hank Williams III at the Haunted Ranch

I admit, that this is quite a complicated title. Let me explain to you both artist’s texts and see what happens if we compare them. The Great God Pan is a novella written by Arthur Machen in 1894. The story is about a medical operation, most likely a lobotomy, which is imposed on a female child. The child becomes the center of short stories, which chronologically follow the child’s growth and her legacy. More important is the idea of the abusive doctor who wants to open the eyes of the child to see the Great God Pan. What this being is, is not clear. Descriptions of naked or hairy men in the woods appear throughout the story, as told by third characters. I could never understand what the Great God Pan was similar to: religious feelings, a spiritualistic nonsense which was common in the 1890s, or a state of elevation, like ecstasy or any other emotional state.

How Playing helps with Aporia

Aporia is ancient Greek (ἀπορία). It means puzzlement, doubt, or a certain kind of confusion . The famous ‚I know that I know nothing‘ might be rooted in this feeling. The origin of philosophy? Let us assume that testing before deciding gave birth to empirical science. Testing the possibilities and deciding later sounds familiar to everyday life, but what does this have to do with playing? And how does playing help with aporia?