INTERPLAY: Gaming at the Edge of the Artificial and the Alive

In INTERPLAY Christina Mayer talks to artist Will Freudenheim about his games Schema and Biotopy, which are interactive installations and biotic games exploring emerging modes of intelligence at the intersection of play, technology, and science. Biotopy connects bioreactors to game engines, enabling players to act as citizen scientists by cultivating microbial life to care for a virtual creature - thus mediating between biological and digital realms. Schema, on the other hand, unfolds within a livestream interface, where collective user input through Twitch chat modulates the emotional and behavioral states of a responsive digital creature, producing emergent patterns and algorithmic soundscapes.
Freudenheim’s artistic practice uses game engines, emotional AI, and biological systems not as ends in themselves, but as raw material for exploring the boundaries of interaction, sentience, and agency. These works provoke a reconsideration of how we engage with non-human intelligences, synthetic, environmental, or biotic, through the lens of play.
Both games will be presented by CALDO WORLDWIDE in the festival’s exhibition area for play.