Ian Bogost Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Literature Communication and Culture Title and Abstract The Aesthetics of Philosophical Carpentry In my 2012 book Alien Phenomenology, I propose the name "carpentry" for the practice of philosophical craftwork, and I encourage philosophers to become engineers who make things (including, but not limited to texts). This proposal is a general one, and could be applied to any aspect of philosophy or the humanities, but in the context of speculative realism in general and object-oriented ontology in particular, the craft practice of philosophical carpentry requires just that: the development of a speculative craft practice. This talk covers my own thoughts on an aesthetics of carpentry, as well as some examples of my own work-in-progress in that vein. Biography Ian Bogost is a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on videogames as cultural artifacts. He thinks about how to contextualize videogames, the rhetoric of videogames, and the relationship between computer hardware and expression. He also designs videogames, and the co-founder of a small publishing company. His most recent books are How to do Things with Video Games; Alien Phemenology, or What it’s like to be a Thing and Persuasive Games: the Expressive Power of Videogames. Recent Publications “Videogames and Ideological Frames.” Popular Communications, 4:3 (2006): 165-183. Alien Phemenology, or What it’s like to be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Ian Bogost’s website: http://www.bogost.com/