Generation ZX(X)

This document discusses the design and development of Generation ZX(X), a hybrid multi-media event which explored how video games and performance can enhance and complement one another and enliven different types of historical data: oral herstories, lived experience, collective memory and audio-video archives.

Generation ZX(X) was a hybrid of live and virtual components: an audiowalk, a social play session (3 video games were developed and played in a pop-up arcade), a film projection and a musical performance. For Generation ZX(X), I worked with third year Games and Art students and staff from Abertay University.

The event took place on the 4th May 2018, in Camperdown Park, and at the JTC Furniture Group – the former Timex Camperdown factory. The event was developed as part of Mona Bozdog’s SGSAH ARCS (Applied Research Collaborative Studentship) PhD - Playing with Performance/ Performing Play. Creating hybrid experiences at the fringes of video games and performance.

The project engaged with the living memory and heritage of the Timex factory in Dundee, and its aim was to reclaim and rewrite the history of the charged site on Harrison Road and to challenge the ‘official’ history of the local games industry. The project explored the hidden figures of the video games industry: the women who assembled the ZX Spectrum computers in the Timex factory in Dundee, and the ramifications that this labour had for the city’s development as one of UK’s leading games development and education centres.