Dr Rob Gallagher (KCL) - Volatile Memories: Videogames and the Future of Forgetting

The Centre for Digital Cultures at Birmingham is delighted to welcome Dr Rob Gallagher from Kings College London, who will be discussing his research on videogames and memory. The talk begins at 4pm and will be followed by a drinks reception.

In ‘Forgetting as “a Feature Not a Bug”’ (2006) Liam J. Bannon observes that while digital technologies have effected a massive ‘augmentation of human remembering’, computer scientists have largely ‘ignore[d] the issue of what augmentation might mean when it comes to forgetting’ – an omission that he worries may have grave consequences in the future.

Bannon’s concerns are echoed in a range of recent science-fiction-themed videogames. Games like Analogue: A Hate Story (Love, 2012), Tacoma (Fullbright, 2017) and Nier: Automata (Taro/Platinum Games, 2017) imagine posthuman futures in order to pose questions about the materiality of memory, the shifting contours of subjectivity and the terms on which the past remains accessible in the present.

For more information and to book a place at the talk, please see the Eventbrite booking page: https://cdc-videogames-rob-gallagher-talk.eventbrite.co.uk