10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17399
Relationships among theory, gaming, learning and socio-technical design are explored in the two contributions which compose the section. The theory in question is ANT, re-interpreted through critical making – an umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement. Sergio Minniti describes an ongoing project called Game of ANT, which draws upon the critical making approach to design an interactive technology and a workshop experience through which scholars and students can conceptuallymaterially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view. Game of ANT adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as war and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging with the competitive dynamics of socio-technical life. The commentary by Stefano De Paoli proposes new directions to develop the project, by deepening the concept of game and its value for design and learning processes.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17399
1
en
Sergio Minniti
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
game
Learning by Gaming: ANT and Critical Making
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
9
Crossing Boundaries
2018-08-06
2023-06-25
2018-08-06
2023-08-28
103-120
TS
Sergio Minniti
2018/08/06
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17399
103
Yachay Tech University
2038-3460
1
game
en
120
Learning by Gaming: ANT and Critical Making
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17399/16257
9
                                                                 Crossing Boundaries

Learning by Gaming: ANT and Critical
Making
             Sergio Minniti                              Stefano De Paoli
       Yachay Tech University (EC)                       Abertay University (UK)



    Abstract: Relationships among theory, gaming, learning and socio-technical
    design are explored in the two contributions which compose the section.
    The theory in question is ANT, re-interpreted through critical making - an
    umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholar-
    ship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement.
    Sergio Minniti describes an ongoing project called Game of ANT, which draws
    upon the critical making approach to design an interactive technology and a
    workshop experience through which scholars and students can conceptually-
    materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel
    points of view. Game of ANT adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as
    war and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game dur-
    ing which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging
    with the competitive dynamics of socio-technical life. The commentary by
    Stefano De Paoli proposes new directions to develop the project, by deep-
    ening the concept of game and its value for design and learning processes.

    Keywords: Actor-network theory; critical making; critical technical practic-
    es; physical computing; game.

    Corresponding author: Sergio Minniti, School of Mathematical Sciences
    and Information Technology, Yachay Tech University – San Miguel de Urcu-
    qui, Hacienda San José s/n, Ecuador – Email: sminniti@yachaytech.edu.ec



A Critical Making Approach to Actor-Network
Theory: Game of ANT
Sergio Minniti

Introduction: Making ANT
    In the last twenty years, multiple spaces of intersection between de-
sign practices and Science and Technology Studies (STS) have emerged,
differently contributing to a general attempt to bridge the divide between

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
9 (1) pp. 103-120 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                              2018
104                                                          Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

the social and technical sciences (Berg 1998; Bowker et al. 1997; Ingram
et al. 2007; Jensen 2008; Latour 2008; Suchman 2007; Woodhouse and
Patton 2004).
    More recently, scholarly interest in crossing the boundaries between
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and design has grown steadily as part of
this endeavor, supporting the double movement of “ANT towards de-
sign” and “design towards ANT” (Storni 2015). In doing so, scholars of
different disciplines have explored the manifold possibilities of intersec-
tion between ANT and design by reflecting, to cite just a few examples,
on how ANT might contribute to the design of information systems (IS)
(Díaz Andrade and Urquhart 2010; Hanseth et al. 2004), collaborative
and participatory design (C&PD) (Binder et al. 2015; Storni et al. 2015),
architecture and industrial design (Yaneva 2009), and Human-Centered
Design (HCD) (Steen 2011).
    In these researches - as well as many others whose discussion is be-
yond the scope of this article - the ways in which ANT and design, and
theoretical and physical work, intersect each other are multiple and dif-
ferentiated. Some common lines of inquiry include: the use of ANT as an
analytic device to contrast the “obsession with ‘objects’” dominant in de-
sign, as well as the asymmetrical human-centeredness of design practices
(Binder et al. 2015, 152); the adoption of ANT as a design tool that can
be used to problematize the “object-ness” of design objects by articulat-
ing the idea of designing “things” as socio-material assemblages or ob-
jects-in-design (Ehn 2008; Telier et al. 2011), thus rethinking design as a
process of heterogeneous engineering (Nickelsen and Binder 2008)
through which “things” are “drawn together” (Latour 2008; Storni et al.
2012); and the convergence of ANT and design to support a shared pro-
grammatic agenda towards socio-technical democracy (Binder et al. 2015;
Storni et al. 2015), merging Latour’s call for “making things public”
(Latour 2005a) with the objectives of “political design” (Björgvinsson et
al. 2010, 2012; DiSalvo 2010, 2012).
    Such researches have mostly investigated the ways in which ANT
might contribute to design theories, practices, and education, just ac-
knowledging the need for exploring the other way around (Storni et al.
2012). Yet, to offer its best, the crossing of the boundaries between ANT
and design should also follow the other direction, that is, it should actual-
ly explore the ways in which design might contribute to ANT, making
actual the parallel movement of “design towards ANT” that has remained
mainly programmatic (Storni 2015).
    In this article, I illustrate an ongoing project I am carrying out at
Yachay Tech University and in collaboration with Yachay FabLab, which
aims at developing novel ways to approach ANT through the design of an
interactive electronic game and the organization of workshops during
which participants use pre-assembled and coded electronic components
to create devices that let them behave as actor-networks, associate and
dissociate with each other to gain “power” within an imaginary socio-
Minniti & De Paoli                                                    105
technical world, and discuss about their experience as actor-networks to
foster both their socio-technical imagination and critical thinking about
ANT.
    In what follows, I propose some reflections on how a specific design
method termed critical making, developed and practiced by scholar Matt
Ratto in his Critical Making Labi at the University of Toronto (Ratto
2011a, 2011b; Ratto and Hoekema 2009; Ratto et al. 2014), might enrich
the ways in which we approach ANT by bridging the gap between physi-
cal and conceptual exploration.
    In order to do so, in our project we adopt some tools and methods
commonly used by makers and fabbers to rapidly prototype interactive
technologies (Walter-Herrmann and Büching 2013). More specifically,
we use Arduino-based physical computing,ii a technical practice that has
been widely celebrated as a means to develop ways of thinking with our
hands (Banzi 2008) and translate bits into atoms, and atoms into bits
(Gershenfeld 2012). This presupposes the use of ANT not merely as a
methodology for description, but rather its “translation” into an interac-
tive gaming experience through which scholars and students can concep-
tually-materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it
from novel points of view.
    To summarize the meaning of our project, it could be said that it is
about making ANT in a double sense: on the one hand, it implies using
makers’ tools to create interactive physical devices reproducing the be-
haviour of actor-networks within the socio-technical world; on the other
hand, it aims at enriching our understanding of ANT as a practice rather
than a theory, respecting an already celebrated feature of ANT (“Far
from being a theory of the social… it always was… a very crude method
to learn from the actors”, Latour 1999a, 20), while also proposing a novel
point of view on how it can be engaged with, by moving from the realm
of analytic deconstruction to that of conceptual-material construction.
“What if ANT starts to be in the business of designing new pieces of
technology and not just actor-network accounts of them?” (Storni 2015,
166).

Criticality, Technical Practices, and the Critical Making
Approach

    Critical making is an umbrella term for various distinctive practices
that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to
forms of material engagement in order to explore new ways of studying
the relationship between technologies and social life (Ratto 2011a). The
aim of critical making is “to articulate and develop novel modes of inter-
vention into dominant systems of information exchange and knowledge
generation” that “focus on assembling rather than deconstructing within
the modern technological society” (Ratto et al. 2014, 85).
106                                                          Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

    In order to reach this goal, critical making practices “theoretically and
pragmatically connect two modes of engagement with the world that are
often held separate - critical thinking, typically understood as conceptual-
ly and linguistically based, and physical ‘making,’ goal-based material
work” (Ratto 2011a, 253). Critical making has thus been described as a
materialist interventionist method (Sánchez Criado et al. 2016), which
seeks to “counteract the ineffectual linguistic bias of traditional critiques
of technoscience” (Ratto et al. 2014, 86).
    As such, it assumes the engagement between design and social re-
search should aim at exploring societal issues and social theories through
the fabrication of interactive prototypes, i.e. through making: it is “a kind
of pedagogical practice that uses material engagements with technologies
to open up and extend critical social reflection” (Hertz 2015, 1).
    Examples of such a combination of critical thinking with hands-on
making are the workshops organized by Matt Ratto, which are conceived
as shared making experiences where participants explore and inform dis-
cussions about topics such as, for example, distance learning, or the rise
of proprietary and closed walled gardens on the Internet, by constructing
and using interactive electronic agents that metaphorically operationalize
established sociological concepts through the execution of specific code
subroutines (Ratto 2011a; Ratto et al. 2014).
    Critical making shares its emphasis on the critical purpose of technical
practices with other contemporary design and engineering practices, as
well as forms of conceptual art, which also support a shift from focusing
on technical sophistication and function to criticality and expression. Rel-
evant examples of practices that explicitly refer to critical reflection as
both an integral part and outcome of technical, material work include:
 - Critical design, a design methodology popularized by Anthony
      Dunne and Fiona Raby (Dunne 2006; Dunne and Ruby 2001),
      which “leverages design to make consumers more critical about their
      everyday lives, particularly how their lives are mediated by assump-
      tions, values, ideologies, and behavioural norms inscribed in de-
      signs” (Bardzell and Bardzell 2013, 3297);
 - Critical engineering, a methodology introduced in 2011 by a group
      of artists-technologists signatories of the Critical Engineering Mani-
      festo (Oliver et al. 2011), whose aim is to prototype devices that re-
      veal the hidden socio-political assumptions embodied by main-
      stream technology. It looks “beyond the ‘awe of implementation’ to
      determine methods of influence and their specific effects,” through a
      sort of hacktivist process of reverse black-boxing:iii “The greater the
      dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and ex-
      pose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision”
      (Oliver et al. 2011; see also Parikka 2013, who interprets critical en-
      gineering as a more political form of media archaeology);
 - Critical technical practice, an approach to engineering originally de-
      veloped in the context of artificial intelligence research, which re-
Minniti & De Paoli                                                               107
      quires engineers to develop “an expanded understanding of the
      conditions and goals of technical work” (Agre 1997a, 23) and “a
      split identity – one foot planted in the craft work of design and the
      other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique” (Agre 1997b,
      155). This is made possible by combining a reflexive analysis of
      dominant and marginalized socio-technical forces with the produc-
      tion of novel technologies that embody alternative socio-technical
      configurations and redistribute power within society.
    However, notwithstanding the communal focus on merging critical re-
flection with hands-on practice, key differences between the aforemen-
tioned critical practices and the critical making approach exist. First, dif-
ferently from the formers, critical making is scholarship-oriented: it estab-
lishes explicit connections between the constructive process and specific
scholarly literature, which transform the shared experience of making in-
to a site for analysis and scholarly exploration (Ratto 2011a, 253).
    Second, critical making is process-oriented, in contrast to the general
tendency of critical technical practices to be object-oriented (Hertz 2015,
2). Critical methodologies generally focus on building refined objects to
generate critique, producing what have been defined as “critically made
objects”, that is, objects and technologies that overcome the limits of lan-
guage in stimulating critical reflections:

Things have the strength to hit you powerfully and forcefully. Critically engaged
language can do detailed surgery on a topic; critical objects can hit like an emo-
tional sledgehammer.” “Critically made objects have the power to be evocative
‘things to think with’… [which] enable individuals to reflect on the personal and
social impact of new technologies (Hertz 2015, 4-6).

   On the contrary, critical making places explicit emphasis on the pro-
cess (as opposed to the product) of making:
Critical making emphasizes the shared acts of making rather than the evocative
object. The final prototypes are not intended to be displayed and to speak for
themselves. Instead, they are considered a means to an end, and achieve value
through the act of shared construction, joint conversation, and reflection. There-
fore, while critical making organizes its efforts around the making of material ob-
jects, devices themselves are not the ultimate goal. Instead, through the sharing of
results and an ongoing critical analysis of materials, designs, constraints, and out-
comes, participants in critical making exercises together perform a practice-based
engagement with pragmatic and theoretical issues. (Ratto 2011a, 253).

    In the next section, I illustrate how we are adopting the critical mak-
ing methodology to approach ANT, designing an interactive technology
and a workshop experience that aim at fostering socio-technical imagina-
tion and generating critical thinking about ANT.
108                                                         Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

Game of ANT

    Drawing upon the critical making approach, I am developing, in col-
laboration with José Gerardo Acosta Arias from Yachay FabLab, a pro-
ject called Game of ANT, which focuses on the fabrication of interactive
devices that reproduce the behaviour of actor-networks within the socio-
technical world. Game of ANT adopts the Latourian vision of technosci-
ence as war (Latour 1987) and physically embodies this idea by proposing
a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or
non-human actors engaging with the dynamics of socio-technical life. Us-
ing pre-assembled and coded components, participants construct and
play with electronic “actors” that are able to associate and dissociate with
each other, thus forming multiple actor-networks that compete for gain-
ing “power” within an imagined socio-technical world. To win the game,
an actor-network needs to crystallize and become a black box (Latour
1999b) before its competitors. The working of the game thus reproduces
the basic principles of ANT and “translates” the sociology of translation
into a gaming experience through which participants can conceptually-
materially engage with ANT.
    Though it is an ongoing project that has not been tested in the field, I
will briefly describe the prototype and workshop parts of Game of ANT,
to illustrate how we aim at crossing the boundaries between design and
ANT by adopting the methodology of critical making.

The Prototype

    The Game of ANT prototype includes two kinds of devices based on
different Arduino microcontrollers: a master, based on Arduino Mega,
and a number of slaves, based on Arduino Micro (fig. 1).
    The master acts as a central unit, receiving inputs from and sending
outputs to the slaves via wired connections, and regulating the game pro-
gression according to the players’ actions. It emits sounds to communi-
cate to the participants that a round is over, and plays a jingle when the
process of black-boxing is complete and the game ends. The master also
shows the current state of the game via a 16x2 LCD display, which indi-
cates how many actor-networks exist in each round of the game, and how
much “powerful” the strongest actor-network is (see below for a descrip-
tion of how “power” is calculated). From an aesthetics point of view, the
central unit is designed as a cube made of black plexiglass, in order to
translate the concept of black box into physical form (Latour 1999b).
The slaves represent the “electronic agents” through which players exert
their agency during the game. Each slave is based on an Arduino Micro
and has the following main components:
Minniti & De Paoli                                                             109
-     1 potentiometer, a variable resistor controlled by an adjusting knob,
      which allows players to operate selections within a range of options.
      By using the knob, at the beginning of the game participants choose
      whether they prefer to play as human or non-human actors. During
      the next stages, they use it to select which other player they want to
      enrol to create or empower their own actor-network (Callon et al.
      1986);
-     1 7-segment LED display, which shows how much “power” the
      player has after every round;
-     3 buttons, through which players choose what kind of action they
      want to exert on the other actors (A, B, or C);
-     1 red LED and 1 green LED, which indicate if actions are successful
      or not.




   Figure 1: Electronic circuit of the Game of ANT prototype. For simplicity, it
 shows only the master (i.e. the black box, below) and three slaves (above). Cour-
                         tesy of José Gerardo Acosta Arias.


The Workshop

    The workshop during which Game of ANT is assembled and played
with is divided into three phases, each one including different activities:
(1) the construction and customization of the “electronic agents” (EA);
(2) the game itself; and (3) the informal discussion amongst participants
about their experience as heterogeneous parts of actor-networks.

   Phase one: assemblage and personalisation of the “electronic agents”
   During the first phase, each participant assembles her own EA using a
pre-coded Arduino Micro and the other electronic components, under
110                                                          Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

the guidance of the researcher. When the EAs are ready, they are con-
nected with each other, and with the pre-assembled central unit (black
box), by wired connections.
    A relevant activity, in this phase, is the customization of the EAs: par-
ticipants will be required to elaborate a brief description of the human or
non-human actor they want to impersonate, and to personalise their EAs
accordingly, by using common materials such as cardboard, scissors, duct
tape, and markers. The aim of this activity is twofold: on the one hand, it
aims at differentiating the “actors” participating in the game, thus repro-
ducing the heterogeneity which characterizes actor-networks (Callon
1986); on the other hand, its goal is to make participants develop emo-
tional connections with the EAs through the creation and personalisation
processes. This form of attachment (Gomart and Hennion 1999) is an es-
sential part of critical making, within which emotional connections work
as springboards for critical reflection (Ratto 2011a, 2011b).

    Phase two: the gaming experience
    The second phase consists of the game itself. Here, participants play
by using their EAs to associate and dissociate with each other, thus form-
ing multiple actor-networks that compete for gaining “power” within an
imagined socio-technical world.
    To create and dismantle associations, during each round of the game
players accomplish two actions: (1) select the player they want to target;
and (2) choose the kind of action they want to exert on their target (A, B,
or C). Once these actions have been performed, the central unit associ-
ates the EAs according to the communications established and the actions
chosen. This means, for example, that if the EA#1 establishes communi-
cation with the EA#2 and selects the option A, and the EA#2 also selects
the option A, the EA#1 and EA#2 associate with each other, inde-
pendently of the target chosen by the EA#2; if, during this same round,
the EA#2 successfully associates also with the EA#3, hence the EA#1,
EA#2, and EA#3 become part of the same actor-network. Through this
mechanism, actor-networks are created according to the multiple choices
of the participants and the relations resulting from the sum of their ac-
tions. EAs that participate in an actor-network, but are successfully tar-
geted by other EAs, dissociate and change their membership.
    The central unit also assigns a “power” value (PV) to the EAs which
are successful in creating associations. This means that when two or more
EAs associate with each other, their PV reaches the value of 1. This value
increases when the association is maintained, and decreases to 1 or 0
when an EA becomes part of a new actor-network or is taken apart and
isolated, respectively.
    Since the same EAs might be attracted by multiple actor-networks at
the same time, conflicts are resolved by assigning their membership ac-
cording to the different PVs: when, for example, an EA is successfully
targeted by two or more EAs participating in different actor-networks,
Minniti & De Paoli                                                      111
the former establishes an association with the EA that has the highest PV,
becoming a member of its actor-network.
   The game ends when two or more members of the same actor-
network reach the PV that is pre-defined by the researcher, depending on
the number of participants and the desired duration of the game. The
reaching of this PV represents the conclusion of the black-boxing pro-
cess, since it metaphorically means that the actor-network has gained
enough power, through the strengthening of the association between
some of its entities, to be considered as stable.

    Phase three: the concluding discussion
    In the last phase of the workshop, the participants who win the game
will inform public discussion on their gaming experience. In order to de-
velop their socio-technical imagination, they will be asked to elaborate
and discuss, in a few minutes, a common narrative about how all the enti-
ties they had chosen to impersonate might stay together, as parts of an
actor-network. Through this collective elaboration, prior identities are
expected to be manipulated and made coherent with each other, repro-
ducing the idea that the bringing together of actors (i.e. translation) is a
process of transformation, where actors are changed though their per-
formances and relations (Gad and Bruun Jensen 2010). This activity, to-
gether with the direct experience of playing ANT, is expected to be cen-
tral for stimulating critical reflection on ANT.
    The discussion completes the material-conceptual engagement of the
participants with ANT, concluding a workshop whereby participants
“together perform a practice-based engagement with pragmatic and theo-
retical issues” through a collective process of prototyping and a joint dis-
cussion of concepts and ideas, so as “to extend knowledge and skills in
relevant technical areas as well as to provide the means for conceptual
exploration,” using the prototypes “to express, critique, and extend rele-
vant concepts, theories, and models” (Ratto 2011, 253).

Conclusions

    The notion of critical making suggests a new form of technical prac-
tice, through which theoretical issues are materialized by participatory
means and explored both materially and conceptually. By developing
Game of ANT I aim at exploring how the dynamics of technoscience, as
conceptualized by ANT, could be projected onto an interactive technolo-
gy, through which ANT can be materially-conceptually engaged with. By
creating, personalising, and playing with this technology, as well as by in-
forming discussion on how the singular identities and entities deployed
during the game might stay together, the participants can enact a novel
mode of “making” ANT through their shared and direct experience.
    To accomplish this goal, the working of Game of ANT is designed to
reproduce the basic principles and dynamics of ANT. Drawing on the
112                                                         Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

principle of generalized symmetry, the game allows players to choose if
they want to play as human or non-human actors, to self-identify with en-
tities of different scale and nature, and to exert their agency through a
symmetrical mechanism.
     Players also act according to the principle of free association, estab-
lishing associations between heterogeneous entities that are always unsta-
ble, can be loose or strong, and only partially result from deliberate ac-
tions, since the process of association depends on the sum of players’ ac-
tions, as well as their different membership and “power”. This way,
Game of ANT replicates the process of translation through which actor-
networks form: each successful action of the players corresponds to a
successful translation, which leads to the enrolment of the targeted play-
er. By forming actor-networks players automatically become spokesper-
sons capable of enrolling other entities to gain more power (Callon 1986).
     Game of ANT takes seriously the Latourian vision of technoscience as
war (Latour 1987) and physically embodies this idea by proposing a war
game that reproduces the competitive dynamics of socio-technical life. It
“translates” the sociology of translation into a gaming experience through
which scholars and students can conceptually-materially engage with
ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view.

Acknowledgements

    I thank José Gerardo Acosta Arias from Yachay FabLab for helping
me transform my ideas into working technologies. I also thank Andrés
José Cueva Costales, Director of Innopolis, for supporting my collabora-
tion with Yachay FabLab.



                                    ***

Commentary on “A Critical Making Approach to
Actor-Network Theory: Game of ANT”

Stefano De Paoli

   When confronted with the problem of telling what the Actor-
Network Theory (ANT) is all about, it is not always easy to present con-
cepts or convince the audience (Latour 1996). This is often true especially
for conveying the notions of what it means to treat human and non-
human actors symmetrically and to be agnostic about the actors’ own ac-
counts of matters. Discussing this with students, especially social sciences
Minniti & De Paoli                                                         113
ones, which have been heavily trained in the “sociology of the social”
(Latour 2005b), is sometimes even more so difficult, as teachers need to
overcome existing preconceptions such as the foundational idea that so-
cial actors are by definition humans or institutions with defined roles.
Experiencing the critical power of ANT thus is sometimes not easy unless
one has spent a great deal reading the core books and articles, or unless
one is an engineer or a scientist of course (Bijker et al, 2012). The contri-
bution by Minniti A critical making approach to Actor-Network Theory:
Game of ANT has interesting elements to address the problem of telling
the ANT to students and the public but also, especially, for experiencing
it. The game of ANT translates ANT critical experience from texts and
language to a material-designed world via the assemblage of open source
electronics and then a phase of playing a game and a final discussion. This
offers students (or the public alike) a first-hand practical experience of ANT.
    A core point of the discussion with which Minniti opens his contribu-
tion is the relation of ANT with other fields and their reciprocal influ-
ence. Earlier in the paper, Minniti claims that it is relatively straightfor-
ward to see how ANT has influenced other fields. Minniti concentrates in
particular on the influences of ANT on the field Design (e.g. Storni
2015). However, Minniti also states that observing the opposite move-
ment, of how Design or material practices more generally could influence
ANT is a much less explored area, only perhaps just acknowledged in lit-
erature. The umbrella of critical making has some potential in this regard
as the making, which entails using cheap and widely available open
source electronics that are assembled to produce Do-It-Yourself innova-
tions, is an actor-networking sort-of design practice. This perspective re-
lies on the notion of critical making (Ratto 2011). It does seem then pos-
sible to start from the making and move subsequently toward the theory.
I am not sure, however, that at the current stage of development, the
game of ANT achieves the goal of influencing ANT, but the potential
may be there for the future.
    The aspect I would like to focus mostly to understand the previous
point is the gaming aspect of the contribution. This is perhaps the less
theorized area of the manuscript. Minniti proposes a game-like situation
(game of ANT) in which participants assemble a circuit (with different
Arduino boards, acting with different capacities and other electronic
components) and play a game whose goal is to create associations among
actants, which then could lead to a black-boxing and the winning of the
game. The critical part of this making-gaming exercise is the final discus-
sion of participants (e.g. students) on their respective translation process-
es. The making part is the assemblage of the game by players. The game
effectively seeks to translate concepts such as association or black-boxing
into a practical process experienced with the material at hand.
    I understand that the author focus is on the strengths of the critical
making approach. However, I was intrigued by the fact that Minniti ra-
ther than sticking to the notion of Making of ANT, which features in the
114                                                          Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

introduction title, translates this into the game of ANT. This translation
from making to gaming does come with a string of implications, which do
not appear acknowledged. There is indeed a question, which lies at the
centre of exercises like this one, which has to do with the notion of games
and gaming and how they are used to produce or experience knowledge.
Going back to the earlier point of the reciprocal influence between ANT
and other fields, a few years ago, at the EASST conference in Trento, one
of the conference sub-themes was on Digital Games and STS. The con-
venors had it clear that there was much potential for the use of Science
and Technology Studies, with Actor-Network featuring heavily, to better
understand and theorise digital games. However, during the opening of
the sub-theme, the convenors also raised the point that the relative oppo-
site movement was highly required, focusing on how digital games study
could influence and increase the capacity of Science and Technology
Studies. Like for the discussion on Design we touched before, this point
was just acknowledged but there was hardly any input on this from the
participants. Does the game of ANT have this potential to influence the
theory?
    According to an established definition: “a game is a system in which
players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a
quantifiable outcome” (Salen and Zimmerman 2003, 80). Minniti’s game
of ANT adheres to this definition. The game is a conflict among actants
(ANT as war, in the author’s words), within a set of rules (the selection of
opposing actors, a selection among three actions, the way actants win
over associations or lose them) and a quantifiable outcome (the reaching
of a set Power Value, or PV). To this extent, then the question translates
into whether the game of ANT brings something new to ANT or to the
understanding of ANT, that other games may not be capable of bringing.
To avoid immediately one potential misunderstanding, I think we should
bracket for a moment the question of whether games can be critical or
not. That games can have a powerful critical element is something we
have known for some time. La molleindustria for example has been pro-
ducing critical games for over fifteen years.iv The question we should ask
is rather, in what ways the game of ANT differs from other games? Is
there new potential in the game that other games do not have? Does the
game of ANT really reflect the dynamics of an actor-networking process?
    There certainly is an important element associated with the process
oriented nature of critical making on which Minniti relies. The focus is
not, apparently, on the object (e.g. the game) but on the making of it, or
better the assembling of it. However, the game of ANT is only partially a
process. The artificial conflict composed of the rules of the game, its
game space (or magic circle as it would be called in games literature) and
the winning outcomes are defined by the scholar from the outset. There is
an object-oriented component in the game of ANT, which does seem un-
avoidable to an extent. Otherwise, we would be required to let partici-
pants also create the rules and set the space of the game. In other words,
Minniti & De Paoli                                                      115
to be entirely process-oriented as the approach of critical making does
require, also the rules, the space and the outcomes of a game of ANT
should be in themselves a critical making process. Players, although effec-
tively connecting the Arduino boards (and the other required electronics)
and creating their “cardboard” characters/actants, play within a set of
rules and toward an objective which are defined from the outset. It is not
difficult to see that, for instance, we do this every time we play a board
game, like Snakes and Ladders or Risk. We take the board out of the box,
we assemble the game in the way that it is prescribed by the manual (for
instance in Risk we place our tanks on the world map depending on the
Territory cards that we have received) and, very likely, more experienced
players help out those that are new to the game. We throw the dices after
having declared which of the other player we want to attack and the con-
sequences of an attack may have varied impacts on the game for all the
players. Thus, the process of the critical making of the game of ANT ad-
vocated by Minniti is only partial as it is effectively the assembling of a
game-object that somehow already exists (putting together the Master
and the slaves, connect them and add the other electronic component
such as the switch or resistors, according to the game). The game of ANT
does seem to share this aspect with other games, which may perhaps also
have the potential of being themselves games of ANT.
    Further focusing on the gaming aspect, there is another relevant ques-
tion to ask: whether a game of ANT could be an “experience through
which participants can conceptually-materially engage with ANT”, as
Minniti suggests. The achievement of this relates ultimately with how we
come to say what is ANT. In ANT there are a topological and an ontolog-
ical components to account for the process of actor-networking (Latour
1996). The point then is whether these components can translate into a
game in the first place and then into a game of ANT. There is this very
interesting passage in A Thousand Plateaus Treatise on Nomadology –
The War Machine where Deleuze and Guattari (2004) use game theory as
explanatory case for the differences between the State and the war ma-
chine. They compare the game of Chess with another board game called
Go. Both games have their own space (a board), with rules and pieces
that are placed on the board. They notice that “chess pieces are coded:
they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their
movements, situations and confrontations derive” (Deleuze and Guattari
2004, 389).
    We could see chess pieces as actors in a sociological sense, with essen-
tial properties, whose properties codify in a rather strict and binary way
the relations among the pieces. Stretching a little bit this idea, we could
see chess pieces as actors possessing social roles in a Parsonsians way,
where the unfolding of social relations is dependent on the properties-
roles of social actors. On the contrary, “go pieces are elements of a non-
subjectified machine with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones”
(Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 389).
116                                                         Tecnoscienza - 9 (1)

     Go pieces are not coded like bishops or towers in a game of chess,
they are simple disks and have a “milieu of exteriority”. They are actants
whose agency is dependent on the relations they have with other actants.
This is an interesting intuition because it draws attention on the differ-
ences between games (or more generally social organisations) whose ele-
ments are in non-essential relations of becoming and games whose ele-
ments are in pre-defined binary relations (such as object and subject, us
and them). In games of becoming, the movement is not that of going from
point A to point B (like in chess) but one of occupying a smooth space
(topology) and the pieces relate to a non-essential ontology that allows
this topology to unfold, as a Go piece can be anything like “a man, a
woman, a louse, an elephant” (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 389). The
right question to ask then is whether the game of ANT is a game of be-
coming like Go with a non-essential ontology and a topological construc-
tion of networks or a game of binaries with elements or pieces having al-
ready codified properties which then determine a more or less linear spa-
tial unfolding of the game. The shape cutting of the actants (the Electron-
ic Agents or EAs) at the beginning of the game of ANT is an open ended,
becoming process. However, at the beginning of the game these actants
seem to play largely a non-human figurative role (Latour 1992), with lim-
ited or no agency. The game of ANT evolves with players’ targeting of
one of the other participants and selecting to exert one among three ac-
tions (A, B, C). The properties of each of these actions are not specified
in advance in the game rules (it is not A a punch, B the use of a sword or
C a diagonal movement or else), they possess exteriorities. This makes it a
promising indication that these actions can be anything, depending on the
shaping topology of the actor-network. They are not pre-codified in the
game as properties or roles of the actants. They seem indeed relations of
becoming. Moreover, the associations (or failed associations) which are
outcome of the selected action are not limited to the targeted participant
but independent and can extend to other actants in the network depend-
ing on their power. When there are conflicts in the potential associations,
brute force determines which actor-network is successful. It does seem
there is also a component of becoming in the association process. The fi-
nal discussion, although not strictly part of the game, sees network-
builders (the players) offering an account of their actor-networking. This
is where the agency of the non-human figurative actants, shaped at the
beginning of the game, is revealed by players. There is, in my view, thus
great potential in the game of ANT to “enrich the way we approach
ANT”, though the game is not yet there to offer something that can influ-
ence ANT.
     To conclude, it was enjoyable learning about this experience, but I
would suggest that what is perhaps worth developing further in the con-
tribution is a reflection on the game of ANT as a game in the first place
and as a game of becoming in the second place. While from what I see
the game displays the right topological and ontological elements, much of
Minniti & De Paoli                                                             117
the discussion seems conflated on the making aspect rather than accom-
panying this also with a discussion of the gaming aspect. Both aspects
should be acknowledged and theorised upon. I would speculate indeed
that it would be possible to have a critical-making experience by design-
ing a game in which actors have defined properties and where the game
unfolds with a linear spatiality, like a game of chess with Arduinos. This
game may still be classed as critical making, but an imaginary game thus
conceived will not enrich our understanding of ANT. This is the transla-
tion from making to gaming that I was signaling earlier in the commen-
tary, which is somehow implicit in the paper. The implications of this
translation I would suggest deserve reflections.



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   i
       Http://criticalmaking.com/ (Accessed March 12, 2018).
   ii
        Arduino is a single-board microcontroller created at the Ivrea Interaction
Design Institute, commonly used for fast prototyping and to build interactive
devices that can sense and control objects in the physical and digital world. See
https://www.arduino.cc/en/guide/introduction (Accessed March 13, 2018).
    iii
        According to Latour (1994), the notion of reverse black-boxing describes
the process through which the invisible features of a technology become visible
due to an ‘error’ or failure to function correctly. Recent contributions by Snake-
Beings (2016, 2017) highlight how DIY practitioners and makers often re-
function technologies on purpose, transforming reverse black-boxing into a
strategy for increasing the participatory potential of materials. Here I adopt the
notion of reverse black-boxing in a similar way, to underline how critical
engineers intentionally reveal the hidden features of mainstream technology
through their creations.
    iv
        http://www.molleindustria.org/ (Accessed March 12, 2018).
