On the 9th of April 2024 I was invited to give a Solarpunk Game Design lecture within the "Games for Future v2: Solarpunk" course for Multimedia | VR-Design (B.A.) & Multimedia Design (M.A.) students of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle in Germany.

You can find the recording of my lecture on Vimeo (sadly, without the Q&A with the students).

Please feel free to check out the project's wiki as well as its pad and zine!

I mostly focused on defining Solarpunk and sustainable futures and analyzing how to present them using emergent gameplay and emergent narratives, allowing players to intuitively and implicitly understand a lot of the issues which could be hard to communicate explicitly. Some of my examples feature the subtle mechanical encouragement to interact with the community in I Was A Teenage Exocolonist and geopolitcally problematic gameplay balancing of Daybreak.

Huge thanks to professor Jonas Hansen for inviting me and organizing such a wonderful course!

As someone deeply interested in Solarpunk and climate fiction in general, I encountered a lot of recommendations of "The Ministry For The Future" by the esteemed science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson (later: KSR). The endorsements came from activists, academics, writers and game designers, programmers and climate entrepreneurs: everyone around me seemed to be impressed with the book. It is said to draw a comprehensive, grim, realistic, and yet still optimistic trajectory of our civilization towards a better, sustainable future past the Climate Catastrophe. The author consulted it with over 40 scientists, activists, and conservationists who made sure that "The Ministry…" presented us with a grounded vision.

I started reading it deeply intrigued and hopeful, impressed by the scale and scope of the book, stunned by the rawness of the first chapters. However, as I turned the pages, I quickly stopped in my tracks: I realized that "The Ministry…" is very different to what I assumed it is, to what my friends described when recommending it to me.

I struggled to continue, clenching my teeth …

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26go lutego 2024 miałem przyjemność wygłosić mini-wykład i dwugodzinną sesję pytań i odpowiedzi dla Koła Naukowego Socjologii Cyfrowej UW (FB). Obejrzeć możecie go na PeerTube (lepszy dźwięk) bądź na YouTube.

Rozmawiamy między innymi o tym:

• Czy nazwa "Solarpunk" jest w ogóle ważna?
• Czy opowieści o innej przyszłości mogą pomóc protestującym rolnikom?
• Dlaczego tak ciężko znaleźć - lub wydać - solarpunkowe opowiadanie?
• Czy telenowela może być dobrą formą opowieści o lepszym jutrze?

A well overdue introduction to one of the biggest Solarpunk writing podcasts on the English-speaking internet! I've been postponing writing a comprehensive post about this project for well over a year - and suddenly, we are in the middle of the second season!

You can listen to the podcast here or on most platforms, like Spotify, Apple, Audible, Google or others! The writeups can be found on Tomasino's wiki.

Inside, you can find episodes such as The Tower:

A community is freshly moved into a new, wooden, sustainable, climate-controlled tower designed to help them be close to each other and live communally. For some it is a dream come true, for others it is a culture shock, but everyone is struggling with the trauma of losing their old homes to floods, fires and relocation programs. While the adults deal with their emotions, children are quick to run around and explore the wonders of their new home.

From contests to podcasts

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21go lutego 2024 w czasopiśmie naukowym "Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis | Studia De Cultura, 15(2)" ukazał się artykuł Kajetana Poniatyszyna z Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, pod tytułem "Słoneczna synergia słowa i działania. Ruch solarpunkowy w Polsce". Opisuje on szczegółowo polską scenę solarpunkową, powołując się między innymi na tego bloga, 19 czwartych Asi Kaniewskiej czy Ekofikcje. Publikacja objęta jest licencją CC BY-NC 4.0 - można więc ją czytać za darmo!

Została już dodana do sekcji źródeł solarpunk.pl.