The Digital Playful River, a River Out of Eden: How the Internet Shaped my Planetary Perception

Starting from with an autoethnographic perspective, merging the creation of the Digital River installation (VV.AA., Catálogo Jovens Criadores’97. Edições Clube Português de Artes e Ideias, 1997) and the concept of the Playmode exhibition in Portugal (Gouveia, Play and games for a resistance culture [Brincadeiras e jogos para uma cultura da resistência], Playmode Exhibition Publication, 2019) and Brazil (Gouveia, The strange world of Playmode Brazil: playful sounds and complex critical speculations [O estranho mundo da Playmode Brasil: sonoridades lúdicas e especulações críticas complexas], Playmode Brazil Publication, 2022), I will tell a personal story to inquire into the role of interaction technologies and the internet in shaping our contemporary artistical and cultural playful reality. The goal is to suggest that our perception relates to gaming technologies and that the internet plays an important role in defining us as global and planetary citizens. There is no precedent in human history for such dissemination of information and connectivity before the spread of networked playful technologies. That fact made us consider the role of interaction in our lives and how it changes our physical and artificial environments. Moving from a personal and political journey to a broader context, where the age of integrated arts and technologies merge with play to find possible ways to survive on a damage planet. Feminist theories, dark ecology and open possibilities promote dignity and care for future survival. Speculative feminism avoids grand narratives and certainties, emphasizes vulnerability and coexistence, and for that matter can be a tool to stimulate humility and respect among humans and other species. Play and gaming can integrate women’s studies to generate convergent and sustainable futures. Speculative arts-based research deals with processes instead of objects, with the aim of instigating resistance against modern delusions.