Green Games: Interview with Professor Thea Pitman

In this post, Tim Thurston interviews Professor Thea Pitman, one of the founding members of CELCE. Professor Pitman is involved with the Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme and President of the Society for Latin American Studies. Read below to learn more about her research.

Tim Thurston: Firstly, thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I wondered if you could tell us a bit about your research and its fit within the scope of CELCE?

Thea Pitman: Hi, Tim. Well, I work in the field of Latin American cultural studies and my research usually focuses on digital cultural production (digital art, electronic literature, tactical media, and so on). The first ideas for CELCE came from a dialogue between linguists and scientists with a shared interest in the relationship of endangered languages and ecosystems. I had been involved with some of the linguists – Janet Watson and Diane Nelson – in relation to events on endangered languages – specifically Indigenous languages in Abya Yala (Latin America) – and I wanted to join in. But I’m not really a ‘proper’ linguist, so I suggested adding ‘Cultures’ to the title to justify the inclusion of both anthropological and cultural studies perspectives.

I think the kind of research that I’ve been doing most recently that sits at the intersection of digital and environmental humanities best fits the remit of the Centre. To give you some examples, I’m interested in creative responses to the environmental impact of digital technologies. That includes creative applications of discarded hardware such as mouse mats or jewellery made out of motherboards and other computer parts, as well as digital art or electronic literature that focuses on the subject of e-waste or lithium mining or the huge energy consumption of video streaming and bitcoin mining. I’ve also been looking at ‘green games’, videogames that aim to create awareness around environmental issues and might perhaps even move us to change our behaviours.

Tim: I can imagine videogames have excellent pedagogical potential. Do you teach our students here at Leeds about this kind of thing?

Thea: Yes. I’ve just started experimenting with teaching these topics this year on a new module called ‘Global Environmental Humanities’ that’s open to all level 2 undergraduate students in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. It’s been really fun. One of the games that we look at in class is Mexican-born programmer-writer and researcher Eugenio Tisselli’s La Puerta/The Gate (2017). This is a very simple 2D survival game where you have to learn the languages of various animals that you encounter in the game space in order to pass through the gate of the title. If you don’t do this fast enough your environment overheats and it’s game over. It’s available online and free to play if you want to have a go!

Screenshot from the La Puerta game.

The other game that we play in class is Sin Sol / No Sun (2018-20) made by Latina media and performance artist micha cárdenas and her team at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Sin Sol is an app for iPhone and iPad that uses Augmented Reality to layer the digital content of the game over your real surroundings. What I really like about it is that it makes you move around to explore the digital content, and it requires such a large amount of space that very few indoor spaces will suffice. You thus have to go outside and explore your own environment, whatever that might be, and it encourages you to see that environment differently through the lens of the climate change narrative in the digital layer of the game. In a classroom context, I have a strong sense that learning is taking place when I’ve lost all my students…

Tim: And where can we find out a bit more about this recent work? Is any of this in the public domain already?

Thea: I’ve very recently given a talk – specifically as a representative of CELCE – about my interpretation of Sin Sol for the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR). You can access the videorecording of the talk here. The article that it’s based on will also be published in a special issue of Romance Studies dedicated to ‘Green Hispanisms’ that’s coming out in March 2023.

Tim: And, just one last question: what are your plans for future research?

Thea: That’s the million dollar question. I have far too many criss-crossing research interests. However, I am currently exploring the possibility of writing an article with a couple of colleagues on the use of videogames both for pedagogical purposes and as a research methodology, all in the field of Latin/x American studies. Watch this space…