EVENT: A SHORT HISTORY OF MAPS IN VIDEO GAMES AND VIRTUAL WORLDS (APRIL 2 2024, STANFORD UNIVERSITY)

Tuesday, April 2, 2024
2pm to 4:30pm PT
Green Library, Bing Wing, David Rumsey Map Center
459 Lasuen Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

Signaling the border of the Western world, the Pillars of Hercules have for centuries been the symbol of the end of the known and the beginning of a mystery that has always attracted humanity: the promise of an elsewhere where the rules of reality were organized by other demiurges. In the age of satellites, traces of this apparently disappeared human feeling survive within the simulacra of the contemporary age: video games. A short history of maps in video games will explore how they have organized and evolved not only to sort out data and orient players, but also to respond to the mysteries of life and the human condition, hiding Easter eggs, surprises, glitches and soliciting obsessions, funny missions and odysseys of entire online communities, demonstrating how, even on the margins of the digital world, the enigmas of the human being continue to survive, multiply and proliferate.

Starting from the research carried out for the film A Stranger Quest, shot inside the David Rumsey Map Center, Andrea Gatopoulos will talk about his journey within the existential folds of the virtual through video-essays, short films and stories orbiting around maps. Andrea Gatopoulos is a film director and producer. His productions have been presented at the most prestigious festivals in the world, including Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam and hundreds of other film festivals around the world. His projects address virtual realities, uncanny valleys and criticisms of progressivism, but maintain their intimate, sweet longing for simple feelings.

There, beyond the borders of codes: a history of game maps and glitches