Finite and Infinite Games

"There are at least two kinds of games. One could
be called finite, the other infinite. A finite
game is played for the purpose of winning, an
infinite game for the purpose of continuing the
play."

In this advanced seminar we'll use James Carse's
notion of FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES to launch and
frame a deep-dive into theories related to and
branching off of the collision of indeterminacy,
play and the notion of the Conceit. Subjects
discussed may include: states of exception,
pretending, temporary consensual agreements
(rules) and frameworks, norms, radical free will,
belief(s), thought experiments/mentation, art
discourse (the idea and function of the Score, the
Premise, the Experiment and the Exhibition),
participation/assimilation (opacity), submission,
game design (failure/success/learning), emotion as
experience, the Real, conscious enculturation,
vulnerability/gamification, fiction as game,
non-fiction as game, panpsychism, the Performative
Utterance, logical fallacies, generative false
analogies and life as play and possibility.
Additional readings may include selections from:
Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, Gregory Bateson,
Buckminster Fuller, Édouard Glissant, David Bohm,
Karen Barad, Ray Kurzweill, Rosalind Krauss, and
Roger Caillois.

"A finite player is trained not only to anticipate
every future possibility, but to control the
future, to prevent it from altering the past. This
is the finite player in the mode of seriousness
with its dread of unpredictable consequence.
Infinite players, on the other hand, continue
their play in the expectation of being surprised.
If surprise is no longer possible, all play
ceases..Because infinite players prepare
themselves to be surprised by the future, they
play in complete openness. It is not an openness
as in candor, but an as in vulnerability. It is
not a matter of exposing one's unchanging
identity, the true self that has always been, but
a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the
dynamic self that has yet to be.To be prepared
against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared
for surprise is to be educated."