15:00-15:30 // KEYNOTE SPEECH
MixArt – Sala Arena
Speaker: Maddalena Grattarola
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine and Somewhere are two videogames with a particular structure, capable of brilliantly replicating the form of oral tradition and bending the limits of their medium so as to become real anthologies of folklore of local, almost forgotten stories. In both cases the sense of belonging evoked by the places described is very strong: in the first game we are immersed in the thirties of the Great American Depression, while the second has the nineteenth century backdrop of British colonial India. The stories are collected by players as they explore and travel through the territories described. In some cases it will be necessary to recount the stories heard and inevitably end up by modifying the structure of the anthology in which we are immersed: just as in the oral tradition, the absence of an authoritative authorship gives the narrator a certain freedom, allowing them to run through the same story several times to create its own narrative fabric, without breaking any rules. Analysing the specific characteristics of the two videogames, this lecture is an explorative journey of the similarities between oral tradition, postmodern literature and videogames.