Hello, all! We have some wonderful news to share with all Hand Eye Society members as well as the Toronto games community– Em Lazer-Walker and Daniele Hopkins are our latest nominees for our Board of Directors! We invite all active HES Members to attend this week’s AGM to meet the Board and vote in the nominees.

We have a lot of announcements to make about changes to the org in the coming years, including a new Executive Director, so please don’t forget to RSVP to the Annual General Meeting that is happening this Saturday on August 15th! Links and instructions to the new Hand Eye Society Discord will be sent to those who RSVP before the date. The first half is open to the public while the second half is for active Membership only, but you can still hang out and chat with whoever else is in the server that day.

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Now, please allow them to introduce themselves!

Hi! My name’s Emilia (she/her or they/them). I’m a Toronto-based artist/engineer and a games/XR cloud advocate at Microsoft.

As an installation artist and game designer, most of my work focuses on using nontraditional interfaces to reframe everyday objects and spaces as playful experiences and to inspire people to become self-motivated learners. I’ve built projects as far-flung as a site-specific generative poetry walk, a game played on 19th century telegraph hardware, and a commercial board game that uses Amazon Alexa. In the past, I’ve been the co-founder of a VC-funded games hardware platform, worked on commercial mobile games such as Flappy Royale and Words With Friends, and done academic game design research with the MIT Media Lab’s Playful Systems research group. I’ve had work featured in places such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Venice Architectural Biennale, and at games events and spaces such as IndieCade (2016 finalist), alt.ctrl.GDC, Bit Bash, Come Out and Play, Babycastles, Different Games, and New York Toy Fair (2019 Game of the Year nominee).

But my experience shipping games is far less relevant than my experience and interest in helping the community! I already spend a lot of my time doing advocacy work to help marginalized people thrive in the games industry, both in my spare time and (quite fortunately!) as a large part of my current day job at Microsoft. While I’ve never served on a board like HES’s before, I co-run the Roguelike Celebration conference, the annual alt.ctrl.PARTY at GDC, and the local QueerJS JavaScript meetup here in Toronto. After GDC was cancelled, the “altGDC” Discord I created to facilitate alternative GDC community events had around 1,000 people at peak and spawned multiple virtual conferences. I’m beyond excited to take the experience I have building and managing games community organizations to the HES board and helping out the Toronto community!

Daniele is a Toronto-based intermedia artist and founder and executive director of Electric Perfume, a community-oriented production team (former 5yr studio/gallery) focusing on experiential arts. With Electric Perfume, she has organized and curated shows and series that give creators within the community a chance to learn, explore, perform, and showcase their endeavours.

Daniele develops interactive and experiential artworks and physical games for a variety of applications, from festivals and events to storefronts and galleries. Daniele is passionate about teaching and mentorship, both in Toronto, and as a visiting artist engaging indigenous youth across Canada. She is also on the board of directors for Musicworks Magazine, a publication covering cutting-edge experimental music for over 40 years, as well as an inaugural board member for Gallery X, an upcoming public art gallery in east Toronto. Most of her projects are an exploration of intersections between nature, technology, sculpture, sound, and interactivity, and the sculptural component of her works is commonly based in discarded, obsolete, or found materials. Daniele is a lover of insects, and she often looks for subtle methods of incorporating their enigmatic beauty in her projects.

Finally: Have you filled out our Strategic Planning survey yet? It’s open until Thursday this week! We want to hear from you about what a local videogame arts organization can accomplish in the year 2021 and beyond, so please send us your anonymous feedback. We will be discussing everything that’s sent to us in-depth with Currents Group, who are helping to facilitate our year of transition and reflection.

After our tenth anniversary in 2019, we decided that 2020 would be a year for rest, restructuring, and reflection. The pandemic hasn’t changed that, but after 6 months of hard work, we are ready to start announcing some of the transformations coming to the org in the months and years to come. This is just one of several posts that will keep you all updated on the invisible things that make the exciting things possible, including the strategic planning work we will be doing with Currents Group to help guide us through some big changes. But first:

Annual General Meeting –  AUGUST 15 2020

Mark your calendars for what will almost certainly be our first virtual Annual General Meeting! Come hear about programming and operational changes in 2020 and beyond, and give us your input on what you’d like to see from us in the future. We’re also currently looking for people interested in being on the Board who self-identify as “active game-makers”, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. If you’re interested in helping to shape the organization as we move forward, please get in touch!

The first half of the AGM will be open to the public, and the second half closed to Membership. However, since it seems likely this meeting will take place on Discord, you are welcome to hang out in the Public channel while the members-only portion takes place. The link to the server will be provided to those who RSVP at the link below.

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Familiar Faces, New Roles

Sagan Yee, who has been executive director of HES since 2016, will be stepping down from their position in 2021. Stepping up will be program coordinator Len Predko, who has been working with us for a number of years, and is actively involved in the maker and indie games communities. Also joining the core team will be Jordan Sparks, who has been working with our Director of Technology and Workshop Coordinator Extraordinaire Ken Cho for some time in anticipation of taking over the position. We have been hard at work training and preparing staff for this transition, and look forward to seeing what the next generation team will accomplish!

Len Predko (they/them) is a queerdo and play architect, making games in Toronto Canada. They have a Bachelors in Design from OCAD University in the Digital Futures and went to School of Machines, Making, and Make-Believe for Waiting and Escaping, a program about escape rooms, play, and environment building. Their thesis work at OCAD focused on using video game mechanics in the physical world, translating virtual world building to physical space.

Email: len@handeyesociety.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlennMakes

Jordan Sparks is a Black Multimedia Artist, Designer, and Educator that uses Games and Media to entertain and inspire social change. Jordan has a Masters in Media Production and BFA in New Media. With a long history in Toronto’s local Games Community and Jordan is widely known for his game An/Other and research on Games for Social Change. As an Educator, Jordan has engaged thousands of people across Ontario through institutions such as Royal Ontario Museum, Sheridan College, and Ryerson University. With his strong technical, creative, and educational expertise, Jordan is proud to succeed Ken Cho as the incoming Technology Director and continue the groundbreaking work of the Hand Eye Society.

E-Mail: Jordan@HandEyeSociety.com
Portfolio: GrindSpark.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/SparkComics
Twitter: Twitter.com/SuperSparkplugs
Itch.io: GrindSpark.itch.io
Twitch: Twitch.tv/SuperSparkplug

That’s all for now! Keep an eye on this space for upcoming news about WordPlay and other programming, our strategic planning project, and 2021 plans.