Margarete Jahrmann, is a ludic artist and artistic researcher, drawer and writer, full university professor and head of the 2021 newly founded Department EXPERIMENTAL GAME CULTURES at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. As Principal Investigator/lead she launches in the end of 2024 the research project “ROBOPSY. An Artistic Exploration of Collective Memory through Role-Playing with AI Language Models” (2024-2027) funded by WWTF Vienna Science and Technology Fund. 2023 she was able to acquire the Austrian Science Fund FWF supported project “The Psycholudic Approach. Exploring Play for a viable future (2023- 2026) (FWF/PEEK) and led 2021-2023 the international and interdisciplinary project “Neuromatic Game Art: critical play with neurointerfaces” (FWF/ PEEK), also supported fully by the Austria Science Fund. As active artist and writer she regularly publishes and exhibits artworks dealing with play, ludic method and neurosciences.
In 2023 she published a monograph on “KOPFGELD and other LUDIC EXPERIMENTS” (Eigenverlag/preprint). She hosts the RINGVORLESUNG LUDIC METHOD (public soirées and tea lectures) and curates international game art and research. She supports emerging artists in projects of the Angewandte INTRA program, like in 2024 NEST. XenoLudic games and nonhuman intelligence , 2023 “BIOLUDIC LAB” and 2025 a LUDIC Method SYMPOSIUM.
2024 she organized a summerschool on SITUATED PLAY in cooperation with the Athens School of arts in Kreta and Merz Academy Stuttgart. The study department was presented at AMAZE Playful Media Festival in Berlin 2024. Jahrmann herself, in her arts builds on drawings of experimental game mechanics and explores experimental systems. Topics are games for/with non-humans, AI, cognitive, emotional and political conditions of a viable world. Her awards include the prestigious prix ars electronica 2003, Berlin transmediale software arts award 2004, and the Media Art Prize of the City of Vienna 2020 to re-play AI, facial recognition and neuro-interfaces as LUDIC OBJECTS.
Selection of Exhibitions
2025 Multiperspectivity. Exhibition Game Show. AIL Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab/ Galerie Wien.
2024/2025 Roland-Rainer Siedlung Pop-Up Show Haus 16. LUDIC CONCEPT Drawings. Conceptual Game Mechanics.(Solo-Show)
2024 ReeperbahnFestival Hamburg: September 18 – 22. TREE [AI]D. Funding Installation for AI supported Klima neutral games.
2024 Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei. What is it like to play a tree? Installation/ video. Exhibition: becoming human in post-human times. 2023 RE:Publica Berlin: KOPFGELD currency converter.
2023 AMAZE Playful Media Festival Berlin: A[I] MAZE Ai Installation.
2023 OHO Galerie: AI Labyrinth, full life size labyrinth Installation/Soloshow.
2022 Parallel Vienna, Kopfgeld Intro.
2022 Havana Bienal de la Habana: Odradek/ NUBES MENTAL de Juego.
2022 [Artificial Museum] Mindworm: Narrenturm. Augmented reality piece.
2021 Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden, Hybrid Play Festival: Mindclouds Collective stage play
2021 Vienna Artweek/ Medienwerstatt: Pink Noise Brain Jam session
2021 CIVA Contemporary immersive Arts Festival Vienna/ AAA ThP Massive Multiplayer Online Game for EEG and non humans
2020 Parallel Vienna: Verräumlichtes Game: Installation mit Gesichtserkennung zum DIskriminierungs Bias.
2019 Art|Sci Center Los Angeles (CNSI): Augmented Reality Installation AAA
2018 Amaze Playful media festival Berlin: Neuroflow Game Release und Arcade Spielkonsole mit Emotive.
2017 AIL Galerie Handelskai Wien: AI Game mit Gesichtserkennung. I want to see Happy Monkeys.
2017 Ars electronica Linz: Transparente AI Installation. I want to see Angry monkeys.
Head of Experimental game Cultures University of Applied Arts Vienna/ Actual Study Program/department:
https://experimentalgamecultures.uni-ak.ac.at
PI of the RESEARCH projects:
https://neuromatic.uni-ak.ac.at
https://psycholudic.uni-ak.ac.at
English Curriculum Vitae _CV_Jahrmann_2018
German Curriculum Vitae_ Lebenslauf_Jahrmann_2018
Margarete Jahrmann first studied art history, philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna and then moved to the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she graduated with an MA in Media Art in 1995. After scientific work at the Kunstuniversität Linz and a visiting professorship for experimental art, she moved to the Zurich University of the Arts in 2000, where she taught media art and has held a professorship for game design since 2006. In 2011 she received her PhD from the School of Computing and Communication, University of Plymouth, UK, under Prof. Roy Ascott (title: “Ludics for a Ludic Society. The art and politics of play”). She currently holds a visiting professorship for artistic research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Ms. Jahrmann is one of the pioneers of Game Art with a presence in international exhibition venues such as ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, transmediale Berlin, Arco Madrid, Laboral Gijon, as well as at international Game Studies Research conferences such as DIGRA (Digital Games Research Association ) and ISEA (Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts). In 2010, Jahrmann was a Arts Research Fellow at the MIT Gambit Lab in Boston under the direction of Jesper Juul and Henry Jenkins.
From 2010 to 2013 Margarete Jahrmann was head of the EU HERA subproject PLAY & PROSUME at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In 2013 she realized the gamification of an exhibition for the Kunsthalle Wien on the research output of the project on media avant-gardes, the manipulative potential in technical lead media in relation to subliminal messages, propaganda and advertising with the title “Technology Exchange and Flow: Artistic Media Practices and Commercial Application”.
As an art-based experiment, which was conceived as experimental arrangements in the field of performance-oriented urban games, as well as to support her theses on the capacity to act through play, she founded the research society “Ludic Society” parallel to her doctoral studies, which is focused on performance and urban interventions through play and has about 50 internationally publishing members from various technical, scientific and artistic disciplines. At the same time, since its foundation, it has published a magazine on game research, the Ludic Society Magazine, which was presented at international media art festivals and is itself to be understood as an artistic artefact. This magazine series culminated in 2016 in the publication of the “Voidbook”, a performance tool in book form on the occasion of the Society’s tenth anniversary, presented as part of a Ludic Soirée in the Cabaret Voltaire Zurich on the occasion of 100 years of Dada.
In 2015 she was a founding member of the German Speaking Game Studies Chapter “D-A-C-H” as an autonomous research association of the international DIGRA network. In 2016 she was Research Fellow at the Berlin Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) with a game performance project on Memnosyne and Pathos Formulas of Movement. In the same year she realized an artistic experiment based on Near-Infrared-Spectroscopy, functional brain scans and the gamification of an experimental design in collaboration with S. Glasauer for the “Opera of Entropy” at the opening of the Musiktheatertage Wien. In 2017 she showed a Deep Dream installation, also with S. Glasauer, at the Ars Electronica in Linz. In 2018 her Neuroflow Game, a brain-interface controlled game on the psychological FLOW phenomenon produced by the Computerspielemuseum Berlin and in cooperation with T. Wagensommerer, was premiered at the International Festival for Playful Media Amaze in Berlin.
Most important publications of the visiting scholar
journal article
Jahrmann M (2017) ShapeShifter Games. Computer games as material and context of artistic practice. Politics & Culture, German Cultural Council Newspaper 5:24
Jahrmann M (2016) Deep Play. Arts experiments as strategies of participative research. Journal for Research Cultures 1:6.
Jahrmann M (2008) Morales du Joujou: Ludic wonder objects. Technoetic Arts 6: 149-162
Charming M (2007) Real Player Manifesto. Eludamos, Journal for Computer Game Culture 1:5.
Jahrmann M (2005) I play life. Real Player in Real Games. Art forum 178:86-94.
Book chapters
Jahrmann M (2018) War games and cognitive mapping. Sensomotoric experience and its playful sharpening. In: Novak L (ed.) Media War Room. Fink Publishing House, Paderborn, pp 451-470
Jahrmann M (2018) Constant Beyond Gamification. Deep Play in Political Activism. In: Cermak-Sassenrath D (ed.) Playful Disruption of Digital Media, Gaming Media and Social Effects. Springer, Berlin New York, pp 193-213
Jahrmann M (2016) Newsgames, Wargames, Artgames. Art against war, war through games. In: Strouhal E (ed) Agon and Ares. The war and the games. Campus, Frankfurt, pp 361-375
Jahrmann M (2014) Gamification and beyond. Seriously Play