The Primeval Sensuous Body: Master Class with Sascia Pellegrini
This masterclass explores the narrative extremes of two landmark games—Disco Elysium and Journey—through the critical frameworks of semiotician Julia Kristeva and literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov; we will explore how game spaces function as philosophical laboratories.
We will juxtapose their opposing designs: the dense, text-saturated world of Disco Elysium against the completely wordless, emotive experience of Journey. We will examine key questions including:
· How do both video games achieve profound impact from such divergent starting points?
· What is the relationship of video games with direct experience and perception?
· How language mediate our relationship with the video game’s world?
· Has gameplay altered our perception of the world itself?
In Journey, we will apply Todorov’s categories of the “uncanny” and the “marvelous” to its ambiguous world, where communication occurs through melodic chirps—a pre-linguistic form echoing Kristeva’s “semiotic chora” and a fundamental desire for connection that exists before words. How do mechanics of movement, gesture, and melodic chirps create the poetic experience? How does the game model connection before and beyond words?
In Disco Elysium, we will use Todorov’s “fantastic” to analyze its text-driven plot, before turning to Kristeva to examine how the game’s “thought cabinet” exposes the protagonist’s pre-linguistic drives and fragmented psyche. Ultimately, we investigate how both games, through absolute language and absolute silence, navigate the same terrain: the human need for meaning and connection. How does the "thought cabinet" visually externalize a fragmented psyche? How does the game use language to explore the breakdown and reconstruction of the self?
This comparison will ask us to reflect on fundamental questions in contemporary artistic practices including:
· How the digital age transforms artistic practices in relation to the senses?
· What do video games reveal about twenty-first-century consciousness and perception?
· Can phenomenological experiences be deliberately designed through video games?
· Should space be given—culturally, institutionally, economically—to forms of game design that explicitly engage therapeutic, ethical or ecological dimensions?
By the end of this masterclass, you will be able to critically analyze video games practices and their correlation to philosophical, and socio-cultural frameworks, integrating this knowledge into your own critical and applied work by:
1. Apply key concepts from Kristeva (the semiotic, the chora) and Todorov (the fantastic, the uncanny) to analyze game design and narrative.
2. Articulate how game mechanics create distinct phenomenological experiences, from linguistic introspection to pre-linguistic empathy.
3. Critically evaluate games as sites for philosophical inquiry into contemporary consciousness, perception, and intersubjectivity.
(OPTIONAL) Final Participant Reflection/Prompt: Recall a moment in the game (Journey or Disco Elysium) where a sensory or emotive impression felt "pre-linguistic." Was it designed through sound, texture, rhythm, shared action, or what else? Briefly describe its resonance.
vSascia Pellegrini is a scholar and artist whose work sits at the intersection of artistic practice, phenomenology, and media theory. Approaching video games as embodied metaphors for everyday life, Pellegrini’s research draws on a background in classical percussion, piano, and dance choreography. Their work explores how game mechanics, language, and silence shape perception, meaning, and connection, and is reflected in The Amplification of Sense (2024) and the forthcoming Video Games: Metaphors of Daily Life (Indiana University Press, 2027).