Serious Games Workshop led by Jorge Lopes Ramos (ZU-UK)
A hands-on workshop exploring the use of procedural rhetoric and analogue game design to experience themes of *disengagement, opting out, and slowing down*. Participants will have an opportunity to design analogue physical games to create meaningful interactive experiences that reflect these themes. Through discussions, collaborative activities, and prototyping, participants will learn how game mechanics can explore complex ideas through interactivity. The workshop will encourage participants to think critically about disengagement in today's digitally immersive world and explore how simple physical games can create space for testing modes of slowing down and opting out.
Professor Jorge Lopes Ramos is a multi-award-winning artist and producer conducting word-leading creative research in the intersections of interactive performance, serious games and disability arts.
Born and raised within Borel (one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas) to a Polish/Romanian/Ukrainian family, Jorge is co-founder and Executive Director of disabled-led theatre/digital arts company ZU-UK with Yemeni-British Artistic Director Persis Jadé Maravala. Their artworks aim to challenge invisible privilege and lower barriers for participation, when a quarter of the UK population is disabled and half is working class. In a world where mainstream narratives thrive on hate, division and fear, Persis Jadé and Jorge believe in the harnessing depth of knowledge in lived experience to create new models that help us rethink our shared realities.
Jorge's artistic work has won awards and nominations in the fields of immersive theatre, hybrid art, technology and social impact. He works as Professor of Interactive Theatre and Performance at the University of Greenwich and leads SIMFONIK - a new audio-led Immersive Platform transforming empathy skills in Healthcare Simulation through patients' lived experience of Mental Health services.