Cafe Nostalgia is a playful media project that deals with the idea of nostalgia and memory as malleable narrative constructs (Linde, 2015). It is about the feeling of bittersweet longing, the murky waters of imagined past, and the darkness that hides in the corners of our consciousness. Together, players tell a shared story to blur the distinction between emerging narratives and lived memories.

Cafe Nostalgia explores the medium of role-playing games as ergodic literature (Aarseth, 1999), using the approach of performative co-creation as a ludic method (Jahrmann, 2021) of artistic research and creative storytelling. It is a communal playful experience, that is meant to facilitate reflection and empathy. The project consists of a storytelling game and an interactive media installation. Both are meant to be engines of narrative design that enable players to tell their own stories.

Cafe Nostalgia Thesis and Rules

Photo Credit - Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Foto © Jorit Aust, 2024, licensed under CC BY ND SA 4.0

Photo Credit - Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Foto © Jorit Aust, 2024, licensed under CC BY ND SA 4.0

<aside> 📖 References

Aarseth, Espen J. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature.

Jahrmann, Margarete. 2021. Das ludische Manifest. Die Kunst des Spiels und ihre gesellschaftliche Wirkung. DDE Publikation – Franke Björn (ed.) 2021: Not at Your Service: Manifestos for Design, Zurich.

Linde, Charlotte. 2015. Memory in Narrative. In: Tracy, Karen. 2015. The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction.

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