Moments of Breakage: Metatextuality and the Oracle

Caro Asercion (i'm sorry did you say street magic, Alone in the Station Remnants), Ben Roswell (Yearning Oracle, Behemoth and Killer), and Everest Pipkin (The Ground Itself, inflorescence.city) discuss their shared practice of designing oracle games and working with structured randomness during play.

For each speaker, chance is a tool that can create breakage; the moment when a story (or poem, game, or artwork) mutates when it is put under the pressure of incorporating the new. Despite the highly frictioned nature of this kind of storytelling, it is generous; it allows surprise to occur in play without inherently becoming failure.

This seminar will discuss the oracle as a mechanical solution that helps create these moments of narrative breakage and generative friction.

• Ben Auden Roswell (he/him) is a trans masculine poet and game dev working at the intersection of nuclear history, queer theory, and children's horror. He seeks to put the tools to write and rewrite history into the hands of his players. He also wants you to know that big bird wears nikes. You can find him on twitter @roswellwrites and support his work on itch at https://roswellian.itch.io/.


• Caro Asercion is an interdisciplinary game designer, theatremaker, and visual artist whose work sits at the axes of diaspora, dramaturgical theory, postmodernism, and reverence for the places we inhabit. You can find their work online at seaexcursion.itch.io, or follow them on twitter @SeaExcursion.


• Everest Pipkin (they/them) is a writer, game developer and software artist from Central Texas whose work follows themes of ecology, information theory, and system collapse. As an artist and as a theorist, they fundamentally believe in the liberatory capacity of care; care not as an abstract emotion but rather as a powerful force that motivates collective work towards a better world. They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and live and work in southern New Mexico. They have shown and spoken at The Design Museum of London, The Texas Biennial, The XXI Triennale of Milan, The Photographers Gallery of London, Center for Land Use Interpretation, and other spaces. When not at the computer in the heat of the day, you can find them in the hills spending time with their neighbors— both human and non-human.