Expanded Mediatheque - ARCADIA: Games from a Culture of Innovation :: until December 7, 2009 :: LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Los Prados, 121, 33394 Gijón (Asturias), Spain.

“Toys are not as innocent as they appear. Games and toys anticipate important ideas.” - Charles Eames

Initiatives have multiplied in the last ten years from the worlds of art, academic research and industry seeking to establish the videogame as a valid medium of expression and to proclaim the possibilities given by the ludic as a creative strategy. LABoral contributed to this process with the exhibition trilogy Gameworld, Playware and Homo Ludens Ludens, perhaps the most exhaustive treatment of the subject by any cultural institution.

At a time when artists’ interest in videogames no longer causes surprise, when numerous universities have departments of Game Studies and when the Independent Games movement is finding its own space and audience, questions arise concerning the new limits of play as a language and an industry.

Arcadia: Games from a culture of innovation is an observatory that marks out the principal lines of research being followed today in the various domains of contemporary ludic culture: from toy design to the independent development of video games, passing through gameart to what are known as ’serious games.’ The more than thirty selected projects - most having been produced in the last three years - are a sign of the emerging sensibility of videogames that overturn our preconceived notions about the function and form of play.

Beyond software, Arcadia explores areas like the product and gadget design, toys and the culture of self-construction and playful hacking. Arcadia is the first presentation of the Expanded Mediatheque, a LABoral project that experiments with new presentation formats that promote sociability and that go beyond the traditional exhibition.

CURATOR: José Luis de Vicente
EXHIBITION DESIGN: Longo+Roldán

LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial is a space for artistic exchange. It is set up with the purpose of establishing an effective alliance between art, design, culture, industry and economic progress and the goal of becoming a space for interaction and dialogue between art, new technologies and industrial creation. It throws a special spotlight on production, creation and research into art concepts still being defined.