USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study: Polymathic Pizza: Play

Polymathic Pizza: Play

When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Sidney Center (previously known as the Harman Academy), DML 241 
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

RSVP Required

RSVP Code: PIZZA1103
RSVP By: Wed, 11/03/2021

Event Details

“The sessions that brought traditionally "non-academic" or heart-centered concepts, ideas, or disciplines into the world of academic inquiry were really profound for me. The Playfulness event [was] a primary example of that.”  ~ Rohan Menon, Harman Fellow, Class of 2020 

“Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” ~ Plato 

“Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” ~ Diane Ackerman, poet 

Play or playfulness does not naturally come to mind when deep in your studies in the stacks of Doheny Library or finishing that term paper at 4 am, due at 9 am. It can seem counterintuitive to incorporate play into the “serious academic pursuit.”  Albert Einstein, however, disagrees: “Play,” he said, “is the highest form of research.”  Play -- meaningful, purposeful play -- cultivates in us greater creativity, unleashes our ability to think, and provides the ideal field for developing our problem-solving skills.  Play can also open us up to new worlds of imagination and possibility.  Our Harman Fellows agree--they voted the Polymathic Pizza on Playfulness the most memorable and impactful single session on their studies and their lives: 

“I remember walking out of [the event on] Playfulness, feeling less pressure to structure and focus every minute of my day towards a pre-defined productive end.”  ~ Shradha Jain, 2019 USC Baccalaureate and Harman Fellow

Games scholar Tracy Fullerton will guide us through her understanding of play and how it informs and shapes her scholarship and creative practice. She'll also help us consider how play and constraint might usefully be joined. Bringing meaningful, intentional play into our scholarly practice is polymathic.  It cultivates a spirit of exploration, adaptability, and an openness to diversity of perspective, with the end-game being social connection and change.

Speaker Information

Speaker

Tracy Fullerton

Professor of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media & Games Division, Electronic Arts Endowed Chair, Interactive Entertainment, Director, USC Game Innovation

Tracy Fullerton is an experimental game designer, professor and chair of the Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, as well as director of the interdisciplinary USC Games program, a collaboration with the Viterbi School of Engineering. Fullerton also works with the Digital Equity in Education team at the Pullias Center for Higher Education.

Her research center, the Game Innovation Lab, has produced several influential independent games, including Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, and The Night Journey, with artist Bill Viola. She is currently working on Walden, a simulation of Henry David Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond supported by multiple grants from the NEA and NEH. Fullerton is the author of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide, and holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment. Recent projects include a suite of college preparation games co-created with the Pullias Center’s Digital Equity in Education team and funded by the Department of Education, the Gilbert Foundation and the Gates Foundation; and Reality Ends Here, an alternate reality game for incoming freshmen at the School of Cinematic Arts.

Prior to joining USC, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond.

Before starting Spiderdance, Fullerton was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive, creative director at the interactive film studio Interfilm and a designer at Robert Abel’s early interactive company Synapse. Fullerton’s work has received numerous honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television, Indiecade’s “Sublime Experience,” “Impact,” and “Trailblazer” awards, Games for Change “Game Changer” award, and TIME magazine’s Best of the Web.