UPCOMING
2011
Mid January / Exhibition with the Writing Machine Collective, Hong Kong
2010
October 8,9,10 / Speaking at Indiecade
September 6-7 / Trinity College Dublin
August 13-14/ Games for Girls WorkshopChicago
info{at}maryflanagan{dot}com
PAST
2010
May 24/ Games for Change Games 101 Workshop NYC, at Parsons/The New School
May 14/ Digital Humanities Symposium at Dartmouth College Hanover NH
June 7-9 / Trinity College Dublin
May 6-7 / Values in Design Workshop NYC, at NYU
April 12-16 / Keynote Speaker DIGITEL 2010 Taiwan, The IEEE 3rd International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning
March 14th / Keynote Speaker, Playing the City/Giocando la città, Modena Italia
2009
November 16 / Montreal International Games Summit panel
November 2 /MIT Gambit Lab and in the Purple Blurb lecture series
November 3 / Hood Museum Gallery Talk, Hanover NH
August 2009 / Show of perfect.city
South Korea
May 27-29 / Games for Change
March 27-April 1 / I will be in Hong Kong giving a series of consultations and talks
March 23-27 / Game Developers Conference 2009
March / L.A. Alumni group talk
February 2009 / Talk at the Transart Institute
2008
November / Talk at RISD
November / Talk at DIGRA NYC
October 30 - Nov 3 / Talk at Computer Space, Sophia Bulgaria
October 17 - 19 / Keynote at Future and Reality of Gaming
Sept 13 2008 / Massively Multiplayer Game Launch @ Conflux Festival
August / UC-Santa Clara Values in Design Workshop
July / Games, Learning and Society workshop
June / Games for Change NYC Panel
May / V2 Lab Talk, Rotterdam
April / Cornell Talk
March / Brooklyn Poly Panel
March / AERA Panel
February / GameLab Talk NYU
February / GDC Panel
January / Savannah Talk
January / Georgia Tech Talk
2007
October / Cinekids talk, Amsterdam
October 4 / Beall Center exhibition with GrandTextAuto folks
September 24-28 / Presentation of “A Method For Discovering Issues Around Values in Digital Games” at Digital Games Research Association (DIGRA), Tokyo
September / Presentation of “Locating Play and Politics: Real World Games and Political Action” at The Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Perth Australia
July / Maine College of Art visiting artist
June / MacDowell Colony Residency, New Hampshire
April / Game Design Heuristics for Activist Games, Full Paper, CHI (Computer Human Interaction Conf.)
April / Women in Games Conference, UK
April / Artists Talk, Rutgers University
April / Heading in Different Directions, Emerging Terrain in Games and Simulation Symposium, RPI
April / Artists Talk, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Film Program
March / Artists Talk, School of Visual Arts March
March / eVALUating Games, NYU Workshop, NYC
March / [giantJoystick] in Feedbach, [domestic] in Gameworld, Laboral Art Center Inaugeral Show, Asturias Spain
February / Feminist Visualities conference, Cornell University
January / Graduate Colloquium and Exhibition Talk, Georgia Institute of Technology January
2006
December / Women Making Science: Problem, Progress, Power with The Feminist Press
June / panel organizer, “Trailblazers” at Games for Change conference, NYC
April-Maydistinguished visiting scholar at BTH Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
April / Keynote Speaker, Code Conference Miami Ohio University
April / Artist’s presentation at the Neuberger Museum of Art
March / Serious Play presentation and Panel organizer, Serious Games Summit, GDC
March / Presentation at Living Game Worlds: Design Processes and the Future of Expressive Computing, Georgia Tech
January / American Folk Art Museum Panel, “I Taught Myself Everything I Know: Autodidacticism in New Media Art” organized by Mark Tribe, Brown U.,
December 2005 - 2006 / Residency, creative material group Portland Oregon
Speaker at College Art Association, Boston
Guest speaker at Columbia University, Women in Computing, NYC
The Virtual 2006: designing digital experience, Södertörn University, Stockholm
Nordic Games Conference, Malmo Sweden
exhibition of [giantJoystick] at HTTP gallery, London
Premier of collaborative work on Turbulence
Reading of e-texts in October
Artist’s Talk, Bowling Green State Univ. Ohio in conjunction with gallery installation
2005
October / Microwave International Media Festival Exhibition, Hong Kong
September / AIGA Design conference
June 1-10 / Guest and Keynoter at ICT summer school, Stockholm
April / Juror for Southshore Arts Center TechArt II show, part of Cyberarts Boston
March / keynote speaker at U FL games conference
February / juror on the New York State Foundation for the Arts grant program
February / speaking at St. Louis Museum
February / showing [domestic] at ARCO in Milan
Residency in December at iPark, CT
UW-Milwaukee Film Program Colloquia inaugeral speaker for critical studies program
two papers given at DIGRA
conference in Vancouver
speaking about game design for girls at the Btween International Festival in the uk, http://www.btween.co.uk/
Co-curating an art and games show to coincide with digra spring 2005
visiting speaker/visiting critic this spring at Pace University, Parsons, Georgia Tech, MassArt, nd Stockton College in New Jersey
2004
November / I’ve just been to UNIVERSITÉ PARIS IV-SORBONNE to give a paper called “Playculture: Work, Leisure, and the Digital Vernacular” at the Leisure and Liberty in North America conference
2003-2004 / I was an invited speaker at the Inter Society of Electronic Arts conference in Helsinki, University of Auckland (multiple engagements), Emerson college, Columbia University, The Art Institute of Chicago, MIT Media Lab, the Plaything Conference Keynote speaker in Sydney Australia, and the NY Law School. Upcoming engagements include University of Maine, St. Louis Center for Contemporary Art, the Steirischer Herbst festival in Austria, the British HCI conference, + the Sorbonne in Paris, among others.
October 2004 / showed work and speaking at the steirischer herbst festival in Graz Austria.
Sept 2004 / spoke at the University of Maine, “Code & Creativity IV Games: Making & Unmaking the World.”
August / Talk with collaborator ken perlin at InterSociety of Electronic Arts (ISEA) conference, Helsinki, “Cultural Softwares: Artistic Tools & DIY Networks;”
August / [ineffable] at siggraph
August / invited to BANFF canada new media summit/thinktank on mobile technologies
July / speaking at Teacher Institute for Contemporary Art at the Chicago Art Institute
June-July / [domestic] @GiganticArtSpace, NYC
June / National Womens Studies Assn conf panel
April / University of Auckland International Strategic Opportunities and Research Collaborations visit
Also article on subversive use of computer games going online at the New York Law School Review (peer reviewed journal) www.nyls.edu/lawreview
March 18 - May 16 / [phage] at the Guggenheim, Seeing Double show, panel discussion May 8th
March 24 / Presidential Roundtable, Gender and Computer Games
March 17 / Talk at Emerson College
Talk at Columbia’s Digital Media center
2003
Visit to Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergargen program, MIT Media Lab
Plaything, Sydney Australia October - premiere of [domestic] game project
December / Artist’s talk, UC-Colorado Springs
November 4-6DiGRA Conference in Utrecht
May 19 - 23 / Showing work at the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Melbourne
May 19 / [search] opening
May / Visiting Artist and Artist Presentation, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
April 16-19 / “SIMple and Personal: Domestic Spaces and The Sims” Joint meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations, New Orleans
Feb 27 - Mar 1 / “[search]-ing” 9th Biennial Symposium for Arts and TechnologyAmmerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College
February 7 - 9 / INTERACTIVE FUTURES: New Stories, New Visions Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival - http://www.vifvf.com/ University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
The State of Play: Panel at NY Law School
Harvestworks Residency
NY Law School-Information Society Project at Yale Law School State of Play conf
Carbon Versus Silicon: Thinking Small/Thinking Fast Banff New Media Summit
2002
December / Co-host at Melinda Rackham’s subtle.net
November 23 / 2002 [contamination] installation at MotelHaus, Eugene OR
November / Artist talk at U Washington
October 10 - 16 / [phage] at the Moving Image Center, Auckland
July - Aug / The Physics Room, New Zealand- Installation
May / Showed work + gave talk at Experimenting Arts and Sciences Conference, Aarhus Denmark
April / Showed work in “Northwest Documenta” in Salem OR showcasing Pacific NW contemporary art
February 7 - 9 / Gave a paper “The ‘Nature’ of Networks: Space and Place in the ‘Silicon Forest’” at the Nature and Progress: Interactions, Exclusions, Mutations Conference, University of Paris-Sorbonne
[remotion] Internet Artwork at CODEDOC, Whitney Artport
[search] Internet Artwork premiers “Mapping Transitions” exhibit, University of Colorado, Boulder
FutureScreen 2002 Sydney Australia - in the “all star data mappers” show
[collection] in the Whitney Biennial
2001
Santa Cruz Art League showcases work in arts and technology show
Talk at the UAAC in Montreal in October about transgenic art and feminism
September / [rootings] premiering at turbulence.org website
August / Showed [collection] at The Banff Centre New Media Institute
April - July / Visiting Professor, Interactive Artist Computer Science + Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1 Sec. 4 Roosevelt Rd, TaipeiWork on multidisciplinary human-computer interface projects
March / “Artist’s Talk” Reina Sophia Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Madrid
January 21 / [The Perpetual Bed] Stuttgart Filmwinter Special 3D exhibition, Stuttgart Germany
February 28-March 3 / College Art Association, “The Surreal, the Hyperreal, and the Virtually Real” Panel Participant
2000
June - December / DIGITAL2000: International Competition and Exhibition New York and Philadelphia. The exhibition of the winning works will travel to the following venues: Central Fine Arts Gallery in SoHo, NYC, the Technology Gallery at The New York Hall of Science (NYHOS) (Sept.18-Nov.26), and Silicon Gallery in Philadelphia (Dec.1-31). Showing [phage]. Juror: John Ippolito, Guggenheim.
July 23-28 / Siggraph 2000 New Orleans
July 22-27 / work going to be at VRML show at Art Gallery at Siggraph 2000, New Orleans
August 2- 4 / Digital Arts & Culture Conference, Bergen Norway showing installation
21-24 February / ACM SIGGRAPH sponsored Web3D/VRML Symposium Monterey, CA, USA
VRML Art 2000 - VRML-ART 2000 shows important advances in the content and structure possible in the Web 3D medium. The works amplify a new wave of creative output by artists and designers, who have specialized on internet
February 21-24 / Web3D-VRML 2000 Monterey, CA, USA
April 14 - 15 / Urban Girls Conference, Buffalo NY
May 21-27 / 6th annual Computer Arts Festival, Maribor, Slovenia
An interview with Vermont television about Metadata games;
also here
With E. Navas for a gallery show at CalIT2
In a Podcast with MIT for Critical Play
Speaking in podcast with the Brainy Gamer
Documented in video during her workshop at Games 4 Change conference in New York
Caught the 2008 SXSWi conference in Austin TX
In an artist’s talk at Columbia University, and
Glimpsed in a video about a nifty robot show she co-curated in 2004.
2009
I.D. The International Design Magazine /
October 2009
Slam Multimedia (in German) /
October 2009
Dartmouth Professor Creates Recession-Inspired Video Game. Wired Campus: Chronicle of Higher Education. /
March 2009
Games Magazine /
October 2009
Labeling Library Archives Is a Game at Dartmouth College by Marc Beja /
August 2009
2008
FLYP / Move over Whitman, there’s a new poetry in town
by Chris Bravo & Lindsey Schneider
Nashua telegraph / New endowed humanities professor at Dartmouth has got game
by Dave Brooks
NotesOnGameDev / Mary Flanagan: Designer, Tiltfactor
by Beth A. Dillon
How Video Games Can Help in the Classroom, and in the World, Chronicle of Higher Education/ Mary Flanagan: Designer, Tiltfactor
by David Debolt
Concord Monitor / ‘Social activist’ with a joystick
by Martin Downs
2007
El Comercio, Spain / Por fin, un museo del siglo XXI Part 1, Part 2
by Miguel Moran Gijon
Nueva Espana, Spain / El motor del la Ciudad de la Cultura se pone en marcha
El Mundo, Spain / La Laboral pone a Gijon en vanguardia
by Patricia Del Gallo
ABC, Spain / Gijon apuesta por el arte y la tecnologia con un pionero laboratorio de ideas
by Natividad Puldo
La Razon, Spain / Los videojuegos ganan la partida al arte
by J. Ors
La Voz de Asturias / Laboratorio para el arte
by Blanca A. Gutierrez
[giantJoystick] featured at Indycade 2007
2006
Mary Flanagan featured in “8 Bit”, a documentary film about art and video games
ABC News / Turning 8-bit Video Games Into Art (video)
We Make Money Not Art / [giantJoystick] review
by Regine
Make Magazine / [giantJoystick] Review
The Guardian UK / Giant Joystick on Exhibition in UK
GAMASUTRA / Event Wrap Up: Girls ‘N’ Games
by Beth A. Dillon
ineffable in New Media Art
by Mark Tribe (Editor), Reena Jana (Editor), Uta Grosenick (Editor)
Rhizome / A new Play-List
by Irene Wu
BBC Online / The Taking Part that counts!
by Ryan O’Riordan
Make Magazine Online / Giant Atari 2600 Joystick
Entry posted in Blog by Phillip Torrone
Creative Europe / Game/Play
Entry posted by Gillian White
Aeropause / Giant Atari Joystick
Bernie DeKovan, Of Art and Fun / The Game/Play Blog
Posted by Pat Kane
Weird Gizmos / Top 5 Strangest Atari Gadgets
Posted by Tina
Gay Gamer / Joystick Envy
Resonance / Micro Clear Spot (radio)
15 min slot on Tuesday 15 September at 13.45
Haringey Gazette / week 31
National Newspaper Supplement
Guardian Guide North and London / Preview
by Robert Clark
National Art and Architecture Magazine
Saturday 29 July 2006
Blueprint Review
October 2006 issue
2005
neural.it / ineffable review
by Eleonora Calvelli
2003
Fine Art Forum / reload Review
by Linda Carolli
Syndey Morning Herald, Australia / Quite Contrary
by Jacqui Taffel
2002
Newsweek / Are Museums Obsolete?
by Michael Rodgers
Eugene Weekly / The Space Between Edges
by Lois Wadsworth
k Reviews Archive / Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture
Reviewed by Michael R. Mosher
Afterimage / Reloading Cyberfeminism. - Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture - book review
by Katie Mondloch
The New York Times / Never Mind the Art Police, These Six Matter
by Holland Cotter
I Love You Virus Show / Virus Charms and Self-Creating Code
by Alessandro Ludovico
Looking for Art in All the Wrong Places
by Jon Ippolito & Joline Blais
2000
The Montreal Gazette /
True Role Model in Cyberspace: University Professor invents Free Internet Game to Empower Young Girls.
By Kate Swoger
2nd November 2000
The Chronicle of Higher Education / Professor Creates a Web-Based Game for Girls
By Nina Willdorf
1999
—Eric Zimmerman, game designer and co-author of Rules of Play
“Mary Flanagan has written a marvelous book in Critical Play. As an artist and scholar, Flanagan examines play through sources that range from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and Johan Huizinga to Marcel Duchamp and the often-overlooked Roger Caillois. Flanagan examines games and play from dollhouses to board games, from Alberto Giacometti to Fluxus, enabling us to see what it is that makes play critical. The core issue of the book is creating forms of play that ask important questions about human life. After a grand romp through the territory and history of play, Flanagan provides a crisp practical theory in her game design model. What a book! I’m ready to shake the dice and start again.”
—Ken Friedman, Professor, Dean, Faculty of Design Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
CRITICAL PLAY: RADICAL GAME DESIGN
2009
For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry—and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture.
Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of “playing house” include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims; her discussion of language play includes puns, palindromes, Yoko Ono’s Instruction Paintings, and Jenny Holzer’s messages in LED. Flanagan also looks at artists’ alternative computer-based games, examining projects from Persuasive Games and Gonazalo Frasca and other games created through the use of interventionist strategies in the design process. And she explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns—among them Darfur, worldwide poverty, and AIDS—can be incorporated into game design.
Arguing that this kind of conscious practice—which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium—can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.
Read the first chapter and see more at the MIT Press website.
re:skin
2006
re:skin is a collection of fiction and theory engaging with issues that surround the technological manipulation of the body. From plastic surgery to fur implants, from illegal tattooing to skin grafts, the use of technology to alter the physical body is, for women writers, less a tool for empowerment than a means to construct alternative, multiple selves. Bodily boundaries are malleable, and bodily markers which distinguish bodies are reprogrammable. The pieces gathered reskin claim that the technologically mutable body is neither simply liberating nor limiting, but offers instead narratives of ways of living in, and adapting to, a technological culture.
Preview the table of contents, and see more at the MIT Press website.
reload: rethinking women + cyberculture.
2006
Cambridge MIT Press, 2002
The co-edited collection reload is a volume which mixes
women’s cyberpunk fiction with theoretical investigations into
cybercultural aspects such as web communities, fan culture, subjectivity in computer games, cinematic representations of cyborgs, and artists’ technological projects. MIT Press website
Similitudini. Simboli. Simulacri:(SIMilarities, Symbols, Simulacra)
Bittanti, Matteo + Flanagan, Mary
Milan: Edizioni Unicopli, 2003
This co-authored book, in Italian, explores domestic space, player experience, and the fan culture of The Sims.
Exploring the Creative Potential of Values Conscious Design: Students’ Experiences with the VAP Curriculum.
with Jonathan Belman (in press). Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
Designing Games to Foster Empathy.
Cognitive Technology, 14(2).
with Jonathan Belman (in press).
Instructional Methods and Curricula for Values Conscious Design.
Loading: The Official Journal of the Canadian Games Studies Association, 3(4).
with Jonathan Belman and Helen Nissenbaum (2009).
Play, Participation, and Art: Blurring the Edges.
Context Providers.
Margot Lovejoy, Christiane Paul, Victoria Vesna, eds. Bristol, UK: Intellect Press, 2010
Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games: A Case Study for Critical Play.
with Anna Lotko
Proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association, Uxbridge UK, 2009
A private correspondence to David Theurer: Written by H. P. Lovecraft, 12th January 1919, released by Mary D. Flanagan.
Well Played.
Drew Davidson, ed. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon/ ETC Press, 2009
The Sims: Suburban Utopias.
Space Time Play. Synergies Between Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism
Birkhäuser Publishing, Basel Boston Berlin, 2007
RAPUNSEL: How a computer game designed based on educational theory can improve girls’ self-efficacy and self-esteem.
Proceedings of the American Educational Research Association
Plass, J. L, Goldman, R., Flanagan, M., Diamond, J., Dong, C., Looui, S., Hyuksoon Song, H., Rosalia, C. & Perlin, K.
Chicago, April 2007
Locating Play and Politics: Real World Games and Political Action
Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference
Perth Australia Dec 2007
A Game Design Methodology to Incorporate Social Activist Themes.
Proceedings of CHI 2007
Flanagan, Mary, and Nissenbaum, Helen.
New York, NY: ACM Press, 181 - 190
Rethinking the F Word: A Review of Activist Art on the Internet
National Women’s Studies Association Journal (Special Issue: Feminist Activist Art) Volume 19, Number 1
Flanagan, Mary and Looui, Suyin
Spring 2007, 181-200
Feminist Art Activist Roundtable
National Women’s Studies Association Journal (Special Issue: Feminist Activist Art)
Volume 19, Number 1, Spring 2007.
My Profile, Myself in Playculture
Exploring Digital Artefacts
Johan Bornebusch and Patrik Hernwall, Editors. M3 Publication, 2006, 20-29
Making Games for Social Change
AI & Society: The Journal of Human-Centered Systems
Springer London: Springer, 20(1), January 2006
The ‘Nature’ of Networks: Space and Place in the Silicon Forest
Nature et progrès : interactions, exclusions, mutations
Ed. Pierre Lagayette. Paris : Presses de l’Université. Paris-Sorbonne, 2006
New Design Methods for Activist Gaming
Proceedings from DiGRA 2005
Mary Flanagan, D.C. Howe, Helen Nissenbaum
16-20 June, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Troubling ‘Games for Girls’: Notes from the Edge of Game Design
Proceedings from DiGRA 2005
16-20 June, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Values at Play: Design Tradeoffs in Socially-Oriented Game Design
Proceedings of the CHI 2005 conference on Human factors in computing systems
Mary Flanagan, D.C. Howe, Helen Nissenbaum
CHI 2005, 2-7 April, Portland, Oregon
Une Maison de Poupee Virtuelle Capitaliste? The Sims: Domesticite, Consommation, et Feminite
Consommations & Sociétés: Cahiers pluridisciplinaire sur la consommation et l’interculturel
Ed. Mélanie Roustan et Dominique Desjeux
the bride stripped bare to her Data: information flow and digibodies
Data Made Flesh
Thurtle et al. 2003
Next Level: Women’s Digital Activism through Gaming
Digital Media Revisited
Edited by Andrew Morrison, Gunnar Liestøl & Terje Rasmussen, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003, 359 - 388
Developing Virtual Performance Spaces
American Puppetry
Ed. Phyllis T. Dircks. New York: Theatre Library Association, 2004
Hyperbodies, Hyperknowledge: Women in Games, Women in Cyberpunk, and Strategies of Resistance
reload: rethinking women + cyberculture
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002, 425-454
navigable narratives: gender +narrative spatiality in virtual worlds
Art Journal
Vol 59 no. 3, Fall 2000, 74 - 85
Response to Celia Pearce: About Computer Gaming
First Person
Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge: MIT Press
Mobile Identities, Digital Stars, & Post-Cinematic Selves
Wide Angle: Issue on Digitality & the Memory of Cinema
21:3, 1999
Digital Stars Are Here to Stay
convergence: the journal of research into new media technologies
Eds. Julia Knight + Alexis Weedon, University of Luton, Summer 1999. Print and Internet
Spatialized MagnoMemories
Culture Machine 3 - Virologies: Culture and Contamination
Eds. David Boothroyd and Gary Hall. 2001
domestic
2003
software / controller / computer
[domestic] explores personal memories and the construction of space within memory in a 3D computer game environment.
As an artist’s computer game modification, [domestic] breaks visual conventions by creating a claustrophobic, conceptual environment in which images take on iconic readings. The picturesque family snapshot, for example, is mingled with the crisp square framework of computer game level geometry, creating a particular sense of scale and abstracted sense of space. A mix of photographic images and unstable texts layer the environment to reframe the act of memory, specifically, of childhood experience intersecting with spatial, temporal, and visual conventions within an interactive environment.
The work approaches interactive storytelling conventions by loosely depicting a childhood memory of a house fire. Created primarily of texts from within and extruding out of the walls, the work’s creation of the virtual house becomes a container for memory, a movements from the memory. Players shoot “coping mechanisms” at the walls and at the growing fire within the space in order to contain it as it threatens to consume the world — and the player.
This personal, ethnographic work on memory poses the question, what are the ways space and memory are cognitively tied, and can such ties be re-experienced? What is the role of narrative and memory in computer games, and how do game environments, particularly the physical architectures constructed in game environments, radiate cultural and social meanings?
Because the game is built in the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine, there is an anxiety produced between traditional 3D action play and the exploratory nature of the [domestic] experience, as well as a tension generated between popular 3D games’ post industrial spaces and the more abstract home space created in [domestic].
[domestic] premiered at the Playthings Exhibition in Sydney Australia in October 2003, organized by DLux media|arts.
Read about [domestc] in the 2006 book New Media Art
Additional credits:
Andrew Gerngross, weapons designer
[rootings]
software / computer
[rootings] is a collection of experimental games in which player participants explore experiences of time and memory within a set of game/narratives.
The individual components in the work are loosely based around different life episodes that have to do with time-passing, skipping, rewinding, time travel, and memory.
Elements of quantum mechanics and string theory open the door to scientific inquiry about time in the 21st Century, inquiries which can begin with our daily domestic, personal experiences. We can think about remembering an episode in one’s life within the context of scientific theories of time, for example, as more like a simultaneous event, parallel world, or constant, not simply a memory or a past happening. This project uses scientific background in perception of time and the physics of time in string theory to tease out ideas about time in narrative, mental order/disorder, and interactivity.
In [rootings], we encounter time in unusual ways; each string or episode itself is a recurring or cyclical event which takes the form of an abstract yet interactive “arcade style” game. Here, I am using game systems as materials and methods by which to explore these boundary zones, involving both intellectual hypotheses and the commonplace as locations and manifestations of socio-technological phenomenon-both the conditions of time and memory are extremely difficult to study and are heavily subjective.
The main interface of [rootings] is based on a reverberating circuit diagram. The brain, an organ composed of over 50 billion nerve cells, is connected by axons and dendrite conduits. Any type of activity in the brain (hearing a sound, problem solving, reading) sets off neural circuits throughout the nerve cells. While every experience creates new pathways, some of the circuits created repeat over and over, marking out a fixed location and becoming part of memory. These reverberating circuits start with input which produces a signal, which in turn becomes encoded within a neuroloop, producing a short-term memory function. A reverberating circuit, for example, creates physiological memory.
[rootings] encourages players to begin digging around in these circuits, using the physiological actions of clicking, tracing, and the repetitive process of game play to reinscribe memories from maker to player.
The heart of this research project is based around recent readings in physics, neurology, and most notably, string theory, which support the idea of tangible simultaneities, much like real, visceral memories or deja vous. The work deals directly about time and memory through rich imagery and sound and through the perspective of a woman maker and through the use of stories and relationships in personal, everyday, almost mundane occurances to show that such slips of time are equally everyday happenings.
[rootings], like other web art projects, is not “created” unless users are interacting with it. The work becomes a blend between research, process, and performance. Like Andre Breton and other critic/makers, I celebrate lapses in time, perhaps because in the very act of making creative work one loses oneself to time utterly.
[kaleidoglobe]
2004
[kaleidoglobe] is a video projection on a large spherical projection surface utilizing images of routine domestic work typically performed by women. The images began as documentation of three generations of women in my family preparing traditional holiday foods like popcorn balls. These images and others were digitally manipulated using effects similar to those created with a kaleidoscope. The images mutate into semi-intelligable abstractions, sometimes suggestive of the human form and the rhythm of these transformations follows those of domestic labors.
[kaleidoglobe] was originally exhibited at the A.I.R. Gallery in New York and as part of Siggraph computer graphics conference in 2004.
[from the ranks]
2007
Installation and performance at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Skiles Gallery.
I come from a family with a long history of service in the US military, beginning with a great great grandfather who served during the Civil War, my father, brother, uncles– and even my niece, who raised her newborn near the Air Force base where her husband was stationed. I never really questioned taking the The Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) in high school. It was the closest thing I had to an IQ test. In fact, the test seemed more relevant than higher education entrance exams, at least in the context of the rural midwest, where a steady and reliable job is considered of the utmost importance.
During an artist’s residency on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta (home to Moody Air Force Base, Fort Gillem, Fort McPherson, Dobbins Air Reserve Base and the Atlanta Naval Air Station) I started playing the online video game America’s Army, created by the US Army for recruiting purposes (click here to see/play the current version) with a renewed curiosity about “the rest of America,” particularly the South which provides 40% of all military enlistees (1). Cultural theorist Paul Virilio suggested “…it was easier to understand the Gulf War by buying American video games than by watching the news on television…We didn’t see concrete events…but we did see war transformed into a video game, with the same image repeated over and over…” (2).
[from the ranks] draws upon the imagery generated in the playspace of America’s Army. I set up a video game station in the gallery and used captured screengrabs to create a series of images and texts reflecting on the role of the military in everyday US culture. These images were rendered using computerized embroidery machines, giving a domesticated and homespun subtext to the original digital images of war and violence. The embroidered works, a mixture of framed works and utilitarian objects like camoflauge T-shirts, are indistinguishable from sewn materials generated by the human hand. All the materials for the works were collected at second hand stores or purchased at WalMart, the store second only to the PX in popularity among military families.
The works engage with the role of the military in my everyday life, from the standardized tests and recruitment visits to family memorabilia, and how present feelings about these experiences are discovered in contemporary computer-based images.
references
1 Tyson, Ann Scott (4 Nov 2005) “Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn To Military.” The Washington Post. Available Online: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302528.html
Accessed 15 January 2007.
2 Sans, Jérôme (2000) “The Game of Love and Chance: A Discussion with Paul Virilio.” Available Online: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/vy2k/sans.cfm.
