UPCOMING

2011

–Talk at the Hood Museum, Hanover NH at the new Fluxus exhibition (likely May/June), “Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life.”

–Talk at the AIGA Chicago, Design Thinking 2011 series

23-25 May  2011  / Gaming as Gateway to Computing for Girls and Women, NCWIT Summit on Women and IT: practices and ideas to revolutionize computing, NYC

6th May 2011  / Metadata Games for Archives and Libraries,” American Council of Learned Societies, Washington DC May

info{at}maryflanagan{dot}com

PAST

2011

2nd April 2011  /“Developing and Open Source Metadata Games System for Archives and Libraries,” New England Archivists, Brown U, Providence April

23 March 2011 / NHIP Conference Manchester, 7:30-4:30
Tiltfactor launches its New website, and new Immunization game!

7th – 8th March 2011 / University of Maryland
Digital Cultures and Creativity (http://dcc.umd.edu), Visit and Talks

4th – 5th March 2011 / Technologies of Meaning Conference
Johns Hopkins University and Maryland Institute College of Art
Exhibition of works in the [borders] series , Maryland Institute College of Art

3rd March 2011 (11:30am Thurs March 3) / Digital Media and Learning
Designing Learning Futures Conference, LA
Workshop: Real World Games (for Civic Action Platforms) with Susanna Ruiz, Benjamin Stokes

http://dmlcentral.net/conference2011

28th Feb – 2nd March 2011 / Game Developer’s Conference
Education Summit Panel, San Francisco
Building and Growing a Game Lab

16th February 2011  / Mary Flanagan Artists Talk
Bloomfield College, New Jersey.

14th February 2011  /“Relational Aesthetics + Mediation: Rule systems” Parsons MA in Media Studies program talk

12th February 2011  / Participant, Art/Technology Global Sample, a centennial panel at the College Art Association, curated by Mark Tribe and Chris Csikszentmihályi

30th January 2011 / Mary Flanagan Artists Talk
Writing Machine Collective Exhibition, Youth Square, Chai Wan Hong Kong

15th – 30th January 2011 / Exhibition of three works in the [borders] series
Computational Thinking in Existing Art Forms WMC_e4
(Writing Machine Collective) Youth Square, Chai Wan Hong Kong

15th – 23rd  January 2011 / Thinktank
METAL culture, Southend on Sea UK
with Artist, Author, and Organizer Ruth Catlow, Furtherfield.org and Rachel Lichtenstein, Artist and Author

October 8,9,10 / Speaking at Indiecade

September 6-7 / Trinity College Dublin

August 13-14/ Games for Girls WorkshopChicago

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

[arborescence]

[unnatural elements: avatarportraits]

[borders]

career moves

[collection]

[collection] from mary flanagan on Vimeo.

corporate ladder

[domestic]

[double]

[from the ranks]

[ghost city]

[giantJoystick]

[theHouse]

[ineffable]

[kaleidoglobe]

[matsu:goddess]

[meme.garden]

[PERFECT.CITY]

[the perpetual bed]

[the perpetual bed] from mary flanagan on Vimeo.

[phage]

[phage] from mary flanagan on Vimeo.

[remotion]

[rootings]

[rootwords]

[search]

she went back

[six.circles]

[xyz]

]]> http://www.maryflanagan.com/imagesvideos/feed 0 http://www.maryflanagan.com/writing http://www.maryflanagan.com/writing#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:43:54 +0000 admin http://www.maryflanagan.com/dev/?page_id=142

“In Critical Play, Flanagan uncovers a secret history of games buried deep inside folk culture, experimental media, and the world of art. Critical Play should be required reading for anyone who cares about the cultural importance and future potential of games.”
—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.

Values At Play

2011

The book Values at Play with Helen Nissenbaum is in production with MIT Press.

Book of Jing: Withholding Agent

2011

The Book of Jing: Withholding Agent is Book One of The Book of Jing graphic novel series, with Jonathan Jay Lee.

Exploring the Creative Potential of Values Conscious Design: Students’ Experiences with the VAP Curriculum. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture
with Jonathan Belman, 2010.

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

An Appreciation on the Impact of the work of Sonia Landy Sheridan.
The Art of Sonia Landy Sheridan.
Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2009, 37-42.

Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games: A Case Study for Critical Play.
Proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association
with Anna Lotko, Uxbridge UK, 2009

Creating Critical Play
Artists Rethinking Games.
Eds Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, and Corrado Morgana. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010, 49-53.

A private correspondence to David Theurer: Written by H. P. Lovecraft, 12th January 1919, released by Mary D. Flanagan.
Well Played.
Ed. Drew Davidson. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon/ ETC Press, 2009

The Sims: Suburban Utopias.
Space Time Play. Synergies Between Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism
Eds. Friedrich von Borries, Walz, Steffen P. Walz, Mattias Böttger. Birkhauser Publishing, Basel Boston Berlin, 2007, 150-152.

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

]]> http://www.maryflanagan.com/writing/feed 0 http://www.maryflanagan.com/domestic http://www.maryflanagan.com/domestic#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:41:15 +0000 admin http://www.maryflanagan.com/dev/?p=128 software / controller / computer

[domestic] uses a software engine normally used to generate violent first-shooter video games in order to reconstruct a remembered childhood space where a dramatic event has taken place: a house fire.

The participant navigates an oddly constructed domestic space. Spaces alternate between claustrophobic hallways and rooms with seemingly endless ceilings, breaking with the visual conventions of 3D gaming in its more predictable interpretation of physical space. In [domestic], participants encounter an ambiguous rendering of scale. Family snapshots and shifting, morphing unstable texts line the surfaces of the space. The snapshots, soft-focus images of typical domestic scenes, are projected overwhelmingly large, bringing the perceived scale of doorways and rooms into question. The perfectly crisp and squared walls typical of computer game geometries further abstract the sense of space.

Players encounter fire in the space and are able to shoot “coping mechanisms” at the walls and at the growing fire in order to contain these as they threaten to consume the world and the player. These mechanisms are manifested as book covers from romance novels, popular as an escape from the mundane aspects of domestic life.

[domestic] functions as both a virtual, interactive installation and a flexible means of storytelling, where the navigator is free to explore and linger. There is a subtle anxiety between traditional 3D game conventions and discovery in the highly stylized nature of the [domestic] experience.The ‘house’ depicted is less a physical space as a psychic one, a container for memory, with texts lining and extruding from walls. Recalling simple childhood memories (“it was springtime. A little muddy”), the world offers conflicting impressions and suggests a gap in memory (for example, a staircase built from the word ‘reconstructed’).

The work provokes the questions, what are the ways space and memory are cognitively tied and can such ties be re-experienced? What role, if any, does narrative and memory have in contemporary computer games? How can we ‘see’ memory?

[domestic] premiered at the Playthings Exhibition in Sydney Australia in October 2003, organized by DLux media|arts.

Read about [domestic] in the 2006 book New Media Art

Additional credits:
Andrew Gerngross, weapons designer

]]> http://www.maryflanagan.com/domestic/feed 0 http://www.maryflanagan.com/rootings http://www.maryflanagan.com/rootings#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:55:17 +0000 admin http://www.maryflanagan.com/dev/?p=48 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.

]]> http://www.maryflanagan.com/rootings/feed 0 http://www.maryflanagan.com/kaleidoglobe http://www.maryflanagan.com/kaleidoglobe#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:47:54 +0000 admin http://www.maryflanagan.com/dev/?p=32 [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.

]]> http://www.maryflanagan.com/kaleidoglobe/feed 0 http://www.maryflanagan.com/from-the-ranks http://www.maryflanagan.com/from-the-ranks#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:27:05 +0000 admin http://www.maryflanagan.com/dev/?p=8 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.

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