Following on from the 2021 Ludic Ecologies: Engagement in Ecological Empathy Workshop, in the fall of 2022 Students from the Games Workshop and Dataism classes at the Interface Cultures Programme in Linz participated in an open format, semester long workshop, also named Ludic Ecologies: Playing with Post-Nature. 

The long format workshop started with several lectures and discussions about data, digital sensing, ecological concerns and personal insights, reflections and expressions. One particularly impactful lecture was kindly presented by the Climate Coordinator for the City of Linz, Dr. Oliver Schrott. The extremely detailed, insightful and at times surprising information that was presented served as the foundation for the student project concepts. 

This was complemented by several ideation activities and excursions, including to the urban Danube shoreline, the Climate Oasis (one of the main sights for the Islands of the Day Before Project) and the Eleanore (the other main site for the project). 

Participants developed an extremely wide range of concepts in response to the open brief (basically the premise was to make something relating to one of, or a selection from the topics of nature, natural phenomena, care, love, ecology, pollution, waste or similar and to use play and ludology to engage as wide a spectrum of users as possible. As expected, there was an interesting set of outcomes, ranging from virtual reality simulations, electronic micro-lovers, xenogels, mixed media tomato protest games, rain mineral supplements, interactive trash cans, transcendent telematic portals and post-biological card games. 

A small selection of the outcomes can be seen below and as a positive outcome, several of these concepts and prototypes have since been developed further and in some cases will be exhibited in the near future.