TROUBLING INTERACTIVITY

SEAM Festival 3.-5. Juli 2026

Date: July 3rd 2026, 10:00-16:00
Location: HfS Ladenlokal
Hosted by: MA Spiel und Objekt / Experimental Play, HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin
Registration: https://forms.gle/crpfdhjucpXpLF7C6

TROUBLING INTERACTIVITY
Pedagogies of Play, Art, and Technology in the Polycrisis

Reduced to a frictionless loop of action and reaction, interactivity has become the norm in our era of "low-latency". Digital systems have conditioned us to expect and to provide immediate feedback. When children attempt to "pinch-to-zoom" on a printed page, or when we lose the patience required for tedious political processes, we wonder: How has the normalization of interactive responsivity reshaped our cognitive and social habits?

To trouble interactivity is to look beneath slick interfaces. It is an invitation to revisit what was performative and strange about the interactions between living and technological systems, and to move towards (back to?) an understanding of interactivity as a decision, a relationship, and a force.

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Discussion Topics

The Co-option of Play: Interactions like browsing, collecting or roleplay developed in popular culture have been integrated into powerful systems of extraction and domination. Is it possible to reclaim a rich space for critical and reflective forms of interactivity, beyond simplistic logics of gamification or making a linear thing interactive?

Reactivity, Response-ability, Refusal: What would it mean to reimagine our relationship with interactive technologies in the spirit of response-ability? Can we create systems that value the unproductive and playful while being open to acts of care and refusal?

Pedagogy in a Burning World: As educators, we face the challenge of teaching interactive art, games and technology amidst ecological collapse, algorithmic war and the rise of opaque AI. How do we teach interactivity while navigating the ethics of e-waste, military funding, and the environmental and social costs of digital infrastructure?

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Schedule

10:00 Welcome and Warm-Up Hannah Perner-Wilson + Sebastian Quack

11:00 Input tbd

11:30 - 12:30 Exchange Session - Pedagogies of Interactivity

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 Daphne Dragona: After Interactivity – On Curating Agency in the Era of Immediacy

14:00 Darren O'Donnell & Elli Kühne: The Interaction Before the Artwork

14:30-15:30 Exchange Session - Staging Interactive Culture

15:30-16:00 Wrap-Up

17:00 Opening Ceremony SEAM Festival

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This symposium coincides with the SEAM Festival of performative and interactive works presented by the Spiel und Objekt / Experimental Play students from July 3-5. The festival serves as a living laboratory for the themes discussed—exploring the intersection of performing arts, media art, socially engaged practice, and speculative design.