Videogames and Critical Practice : case studies and a potential future for digital humanities

I will present a case study of interactions and
interventions with the Center for Interamerican
Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. These
interventions have challenged rigid definitions of
professional academic identities, and have been challenged
by regimes that reinforce said identities. I will include
successes as well as failures. These interventions
occured across disciplines and across media and across bureaucratic entities. I will further introduce collaborations
with collaborations with the Computer Sciences at
the University of Denver where the creation of digital videogames is the integrative activity that affords and asserts a critical and humane presence in the sciences, and proposes a role for critical humanism in both game industries and marketplaces.
The interventions to be shared in this presentation were
created in a situation that can best be described as a
cyberpunk present which presages future conditions for digital humanities based in arts practices. This dark
vision of digital practices - bereft of funding, but full of innovation - will be explored, with linkages not only
to the arts and humanities, but also to contemporary
economic models of the city and policy planning.