Discussions on women in the world of video game design. Some examples from already existing games.

Anokhi Shah is an Architect, Curator, Educator, and New Media Entrepreneur based in Frankfurt and Pune. She is the founder of company IOVR -an Interdisciplinary Design Research startup founded on the premise of technological innovation flirting with new media narratives. It is a multimedia studio, a combination of a physical set with immersive design to create hyperreality experiences. She is the Curator for the annual New Media Festival: Cyberia at TIFA Working Studios.

Instagram: @iovr.space Link: www.iovr.space

Poornima has been part of the gaming industry for over 15 years and essayed roles varying from Game Designer to Producer to Studio head and Entrepreneur. She has been part of companies like Indiagames (Disney India), Jumpstart, GSN Games, etc. She is currently a Director of Design at Zynga. She has worked on franchises like BioShock Mobile, How to Train your Dragons, Neopets, and  FarmVille 2: Country Escape to name a few. She is a Women in Games Ambassador and also a Hall of Fame Inductee at the Global WIG Awards 2020, making her the first Indian game developer to receive such an honor.

Instagram: @arty_mis

Links:

http://drowlife.com/

http://www.womeningames.org/hall-of-fame/

Aditi Rakhe received her Bachelors in Architecture from Faculty of Architecture, S.C.E.T, Surat and her M.A. in History of Art from the University of Nottingham, U.K. She has been working in curatorial teams and has undertaken various exhibitions in India and U.K. as an exhibition designer and manager. She has worked with Crop up Gallery (University of Nottingham) and The Aftermath Project x Nottingham Contemporary in the U.K. In India, she has worked with the Museum of Goa on various events and exhibitions and was the project manager for Goa Affordable Art Fest 2018. Subsequently, she joined TIFA Working Studios, Pune, as a Programmes Manager & was the Festival curator for the Futures of Sexuality Festival 2019. She presently works as a Project Lead (My City My Heritage) at Sahapedia.

Instagram: @gobblefunker

Shraddha Nair is a writer and curator who lives and works between Kodaikanal and Bengaluru. Her curatorial practice is a method by which she negotiates and navigates the complexities of human consciousness, an interest that flows into her writing as well. She believes that art and collective experience holds the immense capacity to cultivate conversation, which forms the bedrock for cultural development - a process she deems vital in today's turbulent times. She is currently working to create spaces for art as a medium for discourse and education through interactions with children. Nair graduated from Srishti Institute, Bengaluru in 2018 and is currently a writer for the digital publication STIRworld.

Instagram: @yourlocalcurator

Link: www.yourlocalcurator.com

Image Credits: Cyberpunk 2077

Link: www.cyberpunk.net/

Cyberia Festival is curated by Anokhi Shah @paw_lish, Curator at TIFA Working Studios

In collaboration with Goethe Institute, Pune @goethepune

Special thanks:

Ria Rajan @_rrad.studio_

Anuj Nakade @asifiknowu / @deepfriedneurons

Siddharth Merchant @triggerfish.wut

www.tifastudios.in

Vamsi Krishna Vemuri is a speculative architect, educator, and entrepreneur based in Frankfurt, Germany. He operates at the intersection of speculative design, immersive media (AR/VR/XR), and game thinking. He holds diverse experience in communicating through contemporary forms and spatial experiences. As a designer and researcher, his work has been published in various conferences, International magazines, and design festivals in the US, UK, Germany, Latvia, India & Japan. He recently co-founded Futurly - a global education platform for architects and designers. .Futurly is an active network connecting expert instructors and participants from over 50+ countries, all over the world.

In this podcast, Vamsi discusses new ways how we can create and engage with worldbuilding and the existing tools for engagement. Discussions on Immersive Mediums like Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Vamsi Krishna Vemuri Instagram: @vamzeekrriz @futurly.space

Link: https://www.thefuturly.com/

Image Credits: Cyberpunk 2077

Link: www.cyberpunk.net/

Cyberia Festival is curated by Anokhi Shah @paw_lish, Curator at TIFA Working Studios.

In collaboration with Goethe Institute, Pune @goethepune

Special thanks:

Ria Rajan @_rrad.studio_

Anuj Nakade @asifiknowu / @deepfriedneurons

Siddharth Merchant @triggerfish.wut

www.tifastudios.in

Provides Ng is an architect/researcher, who studies the emergence of digital tools, their applications, and impacts on urbanism. Her theoretical work maps a timeline of events around Cybernetics, Information, and Game Theories, searching for system design tools that fall between the established fields of expertise. Provides currently teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL). She also actively engages in speculative design, collaborating interdisciplinarily with talents worldwide and established creative practice current.cam and researcher collective R.E.Ar_ to experiment with technologies first-hand, expanding the audiovisual spectrum of design production and architectural representation.

In this podcast, Provides take us on a journey introducing us to lead characters and gives us an insight as to where AI actually comes from. Discussions on ways AI is being used in creative and artistic practices these days.

ProvidesNG Instagram: @provides.ism @current.cam @R.E.Ar_

Link: www.current.cam

Image Credits: Google DeepDream

Link: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/DeepDream

Cyberia Festival is curated by Anokhi Shah @paw_lish, Curator at TIFA Working Studios

In collaboration with Goethe Institute, Pune @goethepune

Special thanks:

Ria Rajan @_rrad.studio_

Anuj Nakade @asifiknowu / @deepfriedneurons 

Siddharth Merchant @triggerfish.wut

www.tifastudios.in

Miriam Kuhlmann is a German-born sci-fi artist, architect, and film director who operates in the spaces between design, fiction, and futures. Kuhlmann uses cutting-edge technology to create both mainstream and design media exploring the limits of technology and study its emotional impact. In her latest Film Project MercuryXX, she leveraged Machine Learning and Virtual Reality for worldbuilding, such as the spaceship, the shuttle, and the handcrafted spacesuit during quarantine. The wild and messy sketches of the ML in combination with traditional architectural approaches result in raw, furry, and fleshy organic structures, constructing a fantastic atmosphere with a strong Xenofeminist agenda. Miriam Kuhlmann holds degrees in Interior Design, Architecture & Aesthetic Practice from Staedelschule in Frankfurt as well as a degree in Fiction & Entertainment from SCI-Arc. She is currently based in Los Angeles, California. Her work 330,000 Feet Apart and MercuryXX is currently being exhibited in the AplusD Museum in Los Angeles as part of the Futuresof_Space online exhibition.

Kuhlmann and Anokhi discuss new ideas and theories within emerging technologies. They discuss their unique experiences with the mediums and the creative practices that emerge from them.

Miriam Kuhlmann Instagram: @miriam__kuhlmann @mercuryxx_official

Links:

miriamkuhlmann.com

www.mercuryxx.com

Xenofeminism: https://laboriacuboniks.net/manifesto/xenofeminism-a-politics-for-alienation/

Image Credit: Raised by Wolves

Link: https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GX0WFcAlf5r5cuAEAAADu

Cyberia Festival is curated by Anokhi Shah @paw_lish, Curator at TIFA Working Studios.

In collaboration with Goethe Institute, Pune @goethepune

Special thanks:

Ria Rajan @_rrad.studio_

Anuj Nakade @asifiknowu / @deepfriedneurons

Siddharth Merchant @triggerfish.wut

www.tifastudios.in

Prataprao, also known as SirViktor in the online gaming world who is currently residing in California, USA. He is currently employed as a software engineer for a corporation with more verticals than he can care to count. He was born in Mumbai, but he considers Pune to be his hometown.  Gaming and messing around with electronics, in general, has been a part of his life since his family got him his first personal computer. Presently he is a proud owner of a kickass PC with an Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card, and a PlayStation 4 Pro. He has a special bias for role-playing and strategy games.

What were the best video games of the year 2020? Talking about Cyberpunk 2077, Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us Part II, etc. Talking about different genres in video games, MMO, MMOBA, Game-plays, etc. Discussions on Modding and how that opens up creative avenues within the game. Covering some game aesthetics and the immersion it brings with it.

Image Credit: Monument Valley

Link: www.ustwo.com/work/monument-valley-mobile-games

Cyberia Festival is curated by Anokhi Shah @paw_lish, Curator at TIFA Working Studios.

In collaboration with Goethe Institute, Pune @goethepune

Special thanks:

Ria Rajan @_rrad.studio_

Anuj Nakade @asifiknowu / @deepfriedneurons

Siddharth Merchant @triggerfish.wut

www.tifastudios.in

For this episode, Anuj, Aditi and Anokhi, the Curators of Meme Regime, Futures of Sexuality and Cyberia respectively talk about the stories intimacy and the psychological and social territories it has pushed us in as a species. We hear from Ammu, who has taken the time to acquire technological familiarity with the tools of the modern age, to communicate with her children and grandchildren; We also hear from a friend of Anuj's who got into a relationship with a girl he's met twice and then broke up without ever meeting her while they were dating. Saket, another volunteer with a story shares his experience of making a significantly present friendship over discord amidst the pandemic. Finally, we hear from Ria, who talks about how the pandemic entered like a perfect storm that created unity among strangers and fostered creative output.

The promised meme:

To Know More about TIFA Working Studios, go to www.tifa.edu.in

Intro music was made by Triggerfish (Siddharth Merchant): https://www.instagram.com/triggerfish.wut/

Get to know the people on the pod!:

Anokhi Shah:

Anuj Nakade:

The word “intimate” has been known to mean “close and familiar” ever since its English derivation from Latin in the 1630s and the word has been associated to indicate a degree of proximity and access that humans provide to each other in relationships. Sharing the visual and tactile sensations of the naked body has largely been pressed by society to be reserved for “the most intimate of relationships”, and any public expression that’s known to include the same is associated with absurdity at the best and obscenity at the worst in most societies. In this episode, Aditi, the curator of Futures of intimacy and Jayesh, the designer behind Quirkbox and an artist that dabbles in nudist art discuss what the expression of Nudity means in art, and how the message of it translates in the digital age where this art can be shared so instantly and to such a wide audience. They also discuss where the line between nudity and erotica lies, and what is the difference between the two.

To Know More about TIFA Working Studios, go to www.tifa.edu.in

Intro music was made by Triggerfish (Siddharth Merchant): https://www.instagram.com/triggerfish.wut/

Get to know the people on the pod!:

Jayesh Sachdev:

Episode 0 of the TIFA Podcast introduces you to us, the people who frequently bring their ideas and labour to provide perspectives and conversations at TIFA Working Studios, Pune. On this episode, We largely talk about Futures of Intimacy, a curatorial coming to TIFA, curated by Aditi Rakhe. Futures of Intimacy talks about how expressions of intimacy are changing in the present day. Aditi is joined by Anokhi Shah, the Curator of Cyberia, a project about exploring the cyberspace for artistic expression and Anuj Nakade, the Curator of Meme Regime, a project about discussing memes as a contemporary democratic art form. Three of them discuss how Instagram has become the digital alleyways of exploring art and starting conversations in the year of the quarantine.

To Know More about TIFA Working Studios, go to www.tifa.edu.in

Intro music was made by Triggerfish (Siddharth Merchant): https://www.instagram.com/triggerfish.wut/

Get to know the people on the pod!:

Anokhi Shah:

Anuj Nakade: