ESSAYS
ON VIRTUAL FLÂNEURIE
A theme that keeps returning in my research is the object of virtual walking and, more broadly, movement and presence. I’m thinking about and looking closely at the formation, enactment, and socio-spatial exploration and mobile imaginaries of digital media, such as those of the internet, video games, and social networks, and how they shape subjectivity and the human sensorium. How are bodies newly imagined and transformed, enacting a truly intersectional cyberfeminism? What social imaginaries are possible across digital landscapes?
KEYWORDS: presence, projected identity, embodiment, virtual gaze, tactility, walking simulator, life games, social VR, cyberfeminism
PERFORMING THE ARCHIVE
This is a little gif I created to show the main lobby of Carla Gannis’s wwwunderkammer.
I wrote about transmedia artist Carla Gannis’s expanding project the wwwunderkammer — a virtual and navigable 21st century cabinet of curiosities — for the Net Critique blog of the Institute of Network Cultures. This piece is based on two interviews I had over the summer with the inimitable artist, one of which took place while Gannis and I walked around as avatars in the wwwunderkammer. Gannis’s work is, among other things, relevant to larger questions about play: playing with form, ideologies, archiving processes, digital material and place, cultural knowledge, and individual and social identities. Read Performing the Archive here.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ABSTRACTION
This article discusses the developing power of the inherent abstraction of video games as a primary vehicle for expressive storytelling and unique player experiences, dating back to early arcade and computer games.
It was first presented as a paper in 2015 at the Different Games conference in Brooklyn, NY, then later published by First Person Scholar.