Contemporary temporalities resignified: representations of past and future in the game Tormenta RPG

• Grant number: 15/24618-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Communications - Theory of Communication
• Principal Investigator: Mônica Rebecca Ferrari Nunes
• Grantee: Pedro Ernesto Gandine Tancini
• Host Institution: Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project researches the role of representations of past and future in the resignification of consumer cultures temporalities. The editorial publications for the fictional setting Tormenta RPG are elected as object of study. RPG, Role-Playing Game abbreviation, consists of a role-playing game format, in which players build and experience playful narratives, in an improvised, collaborative and imaginative way; and Tormenta RPG promotes a universe where such matches set their narratives. This editorial product denotes to be especially relevant for this research because it nourishes the characteristic of articulating elements relating to different historical periods and interrelating them in a single environment of temporalities under construction. Thus, the study discusses how the culture quality of memory operates such representations on behalf of encoding a specific internal time to the setting, which, in turn, is interpellated by the forces of the contemporary context of consumer cultures, globalization and mediatization. This work investigates, therefore, resignification processes generated by the connection between the game environment of meaning production and the temporality of the culture in which it operates. The methodology involves bibliographical research around the concept of time, memory and consumer cultures, with reference to authors such as N. Elias, Z. Bauman, P. Norra, A. Huyssen, I. Lotman, and C. Campbell; as well as documentary research consisting of Tormenta RPG characters descriptions analysis based on semiotics of culture studies. This research is expected to demonstrate the qualities that memory, through culture expressions as the RPG, creates in the composition of present temporalities. (AU)