The following essay is a study of the theatre-play Min Arm, a translation and performance by Per Lasson for Fria Teatern in Stockholm 2009-2010. Actor, director and playwright Tim Crouch wrote the original script My Arm in English in 2003. With basis in intermedial theory, as defined by Jörgen Bruhn, as well as Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory on post-dramatic theatre this study investigates the meaning-building processes in Min Arm as a theatrical performance. Concepts of the difference between stage play and performance text are borrowed from and inspired mainly by Eli Rozik’s Generating Theatre Meaning. By using Roland Barthes concept of intertextuality as an inherent part of every text, which places it in a social context, Min Arm is placed in a broader intertextual and intermedial discourse. Starting from the notion that a theatrical performance has a unique ability to combine verbal and non-verbal signs this study maps out how the audience becomes part of the meaning- building systems in Min Arm. The theatre play will be labelled a hypermedium, as it acts as a framework for several other visual media. To incorporate Min Arm and performance studies in a larger scope of artistic tradition this study uses Jurij Lotman’s theories on art among other modelling systems and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s notion of the ”willing suspension of disbelief” that is the basis for generating meaning in the theatre-performance. The main body of the essay takes three directions after a description of Min Arm’s plot and staging: the different texts of Min Arm, the play as a hypermedium and Min Arm in a broader context. The study sets out to answer questions on how Min Arm’s seemingly simple story manages several layers; what relationship Min Arm has to theatre as a medium; and how meaning is created in Min Arm. By doing so the investigation reaches at two inherent themes of Min Arm, which concern recipient meaning construction and the transformative qualities of the text.

Du serious game à l'Artgame, le jeu vidéo s'est détaché de l'industrie du loisir pour devenir l'un des médiums les plus attractifs de ce siècle. La gamification, notamment, traduit une aspiration au ludique qui pénètre les mentalités des individus contemporains et leur rapport au monde et à autrui. Que ce soit dans son industrie, dans les mouvements des serious games, des Games For Change et également de l'Artgame et du Game Art, l'avènement de la société du jeu total est manifeste. Comme le jeu avant lui, le jeu vidéo apparaît comme un espace de représentations, véhicule de l'esprit du temps. Perpétué ou mise en critique, celles-ci se déploient à l'intérieur des représentations formelles et structurelles de ces objets vidéoludiques. Formant des « architectures rhétoriques », les jeux vidéo doivent être considérés comme des hypermédiums afin de découvrir les discours et les tensions socio-politiques en jeux.Conçus par des sujets culturels, les jeux vidéo véhiculent les idéologèmes transmis par leurs game designers. A travers leurs créateurs, ces formes artistiques sont telles des prismes qui permettent de faire apparaître les enjeux contemporains à travers différents matériaux artistiques dont ils se font le porteur : image, musique, texte, mécanique, systèmes de gameplay, etc. Face à une gamification dont l'objectif est d'édulcorer le monde pour le rendre fonctionnel dans une société néolibérale aliénante, certaines œuvres vidéoludiques, notamment dans le domaine de l'Artgame, dévoile le potentiel émancipateur, critique et revendicateur du jeu vidéo. Chez elles, les territoires vidéoludiques sont, au contraire, saisis comme une « technique du réveil » des questions philosophiques fondamentales, des actes sociétaux nécessaires et d'un engagement politique vital chez l'individu contemporain. / From serious games to ArtGame, the video game broke away from the entertainment industry to become one of the most attractive media of this century. Gamification, in particular, reflects a desire for fun penetrating the mentality of contemporary people and their relation to the world and to others. Whether in its industry, in the serious games movement, or the Games for Change and also the ArtGame and Game Art, the advent of the society of total gaming is obvious. As with all forms of games previously, the video game appears as a space for representations, a vehicle of “l'esprit du temps”. Perpetuated or criticized, these representations unfold within the formal and structural representations of these videogames. Forming "rhetorical architectures", video games must be regarded as “hypermediums” to discover discussions and the socio-political tensions at play.Conceived by game designers, who are “cultural subjects”, video games convey their “ideologemes” transmitted from a time. Through their creators, these art forms are like prisms that can show the contemporary issues through the various artistic materials : image, music, text, mechanics, gameplay systems, etc. Faced with gamification aiming to sweeten the world to make it functional in an alienating neo-liberal society, some video games, especially in the field of ArtGame, unveil the emancipating, critical and demanding potential of video games. Among them, the video game territories are, instead, considered as an "awakening technique" for fundamental philosophical questions, necessary societal actions and vital political commitments in the contemporary individual.