Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron

Progenitor

Sembl is inspired by and continues to take direction from its progenitor, Charles Cameron, aka Magister Ludi, hipbonegamer and the vagabond monk. Charles is the best-known translator of Herman Hesse‘s ’glass bead games’ into the real world.

Read more of Charles’ story.

Dr Catherine Styles

Dr Catherine Styles

Founder / Dialogue Architect

’Hailed’ by Charles’ conceptual games in 2003, I immediately wanted to play digitally – with things and relationships filling the board as players made their moves. Years later a digital form had failed to materialise, and I realised that this game could be the very model of radical dialogue I’d imagined making as part of my late-1990s PhD on informal learning in museums. I’ve been working on Sembl since then and am ever more convinced of its relevance.

Advisors

Derek Robinson personifies the containment-eluding philosophy of Sembl, and offers expansive, erudite counsel on analogical reasoning and pattern recognition, art and technology, language and consciousness. For him, Sembl is:

the gentlest way imaginable to invite people to learn to perceive their own perceiving, their own participation in the creation or the figuration of sense.

Douglas Breitbart had an instant clear vision of the broadest, deepest application of the idea of Sembl. Catalyst and provocateur, he impelled me to go forth and realise it, step by step.