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It’s my second time back in Cambridge since I graduated in 2011. I stayed away for a long time because of trauma, as well as the awkwardness of my trans identity rapidly unfolding. When I studied here I was highly masking my neuroqueerness, living in a state of deep and dangerous denial. After graduating, I didn’t know how to engage with this place, especially with the people I knew here, during a period of rapid transformation and healing. -
Towards Algorithmic Argonauts?
I enjoyed this Humans on the Loop essay which considers various layers of social, capital, psychological, and technical predictive engines. In general, I’m less optimistic about our ability to secure agency while existing in spaces run by and for surveillance capitalism, but the point about improvisation will stay with me for some time. I often consider various forms of marginalisation as a reciprocal process: being an “edge case” outlier to statistical norms, existing amid constructed norms that centre the privileged, and being pushed even further to the margins in response to those norms. -
Pride, queer haunting, and Geralt of Rivia's itchy doublet
I've realised recently that a surprisingly large number of things are both gay and homophobic at the same time. There are things that only make sense to me in the context of queer life, but that are also compelled to disavow their participation in queerness. The result is that they feel haunted by the lives that they refuse to animate. A lot of these uncomfortable politics can be encapsulated by an item of clothing worn by Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, usually at the behest of one of his girlfriends. -
Cis Penance first preview
I’ve put out the first little bit of work on Cis Penance, which will eventually be a massive collection of interactive portraits of trans people in the UK. I' aim to release new portraits on a regular basis for a while until the full thing is complete. The first portrait I’m sharing is of Rainbow, a non-binary person in Northern Ireland who talks about living a non-normative life with joy, creativity, and self-expression after experiencing homelessness, human trafficking, and systemic racism. -
Interactive Portraits: Trans People in Japan, release for International Transgender Day of Visibility
vimeo.com/401492347 It’s International Transgender Day of Visibility, and you’re socially isolated. I just published a game that allows you to have interactive dialogues with 12 characters, based on real interviews with transgender people in Japan. Hang out, explore, get to know some folks! Interactive Portraits: Trans People in Japan by Zoyander Street -
Call for participants: UK interviews with transgender people for interactive documentary installation about experiences of waiting
I am looking to interview more transgender people across the UK for my next art project. Details are below, but if you need any more information please do not hesitate to reach out. Please share this with anyone who you think might be interested! Project information Overview "Cis Penance" aims to use videogame-like installations to draw attention to issues affecting transgender people in the UK, with a particular focus on how institutional and social structures alter our relationship to time and our life paths, through lengthy waiting processes. -
SHEFFIELD call for interviews for transgender interactive documentary
In one week, I’ll be part of a show at Site Gallery in Sheffield with other artists on the Freelands programme. The show will run until the end of the month, and while I’m there, I hope to carry out interviews with local transgender people, for a forthcoming project with a working title of “Cis Penance”. I’m very keen to hear from anyone who might be interested in being interviewed - please check out the details below! -
Arts Council Project Grant for "Empty Carriage: An Interactive Self-Portrait"
[caption id=“attachment_3351” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”]Coach-built pram in Rosemary’s Baby (1968)[/caption] I’ve been awarded an Arts Council Project Grant to turn a vintage coach-built pram into a games console. I’m making a game for it that uses my interactive portraits approach to portray myself. Whereas my other interactive portraits are based on interviews, this one is based instead on a guided inquiry to see through the illusion of self. Using multiple-choice dialogue options, players will ask the mini-me a series of questions that prompt an examination of every aspect of consciousness, turning over every phenomenological stone to try and find any sign that there is really a “me”. -
BELFAST call for interviews for transgender interactive documentary
I’m going to Belfast between 24th June and 11th July to spend some time at the PS2 art space. While I’m there, I hope to carry out interviews with local transgender people, for a forthcoming project with a working title of “Cis Penance”. I’m very keen to hear from anyone who might be interested in being interviewed - please check out the details below! Project information Overview "Cis Penance" aims to use videogame-like installations to draw attention to issues affecting transgender people in the UK, with a particular focus on how institutional and social structures alter our relationship to time and our life paths, through lengthy waiting processes. -
AMAZE Berlin events, including talk with Squinky!
I’ll be in Berlin next week for some cool events connected to the Rainbow Arcade exhibition at the Schwules Museum, as part of AMAZE festival. Come along and/or let me know if you want to hang out! Rainbow Arcade meetup Monday, April 8 • 14:00 - 18:00 Not sure I can get to this with my flight, but thought I would list it here anyway as it looks nice - details are on the Games Week Berlin website. -
Mozilla Festival
My work is being displayed at Mozilla festival, for the Art + Data exhibition. The Art+Data experience — part of the Mozilla Artists Open Web project — engages artists, designers, technologists, and researchers in an artistic exploration of a healthy web. With an online gallery (https://foundation.mozilla.org/opportunity/artists-open-web) and an exhibition during MozFest, Art+Data will also feature artists in residencies (on site and online) and creative, interactive sessions. Thirty-six art projects will be showcased, and all (including digital and analogue processes) will focus on data knowledge and usage. -
Festival of the Mind
[gallery ids=“3178,3177,3176,3175,3180,3197,3198,3199,3200,3201,3202,3203” type=“rectangular” link=“file”] Last month, the first five of my interactive portraits were included in Futurecade in the Sheffield Millennium Gallery, as part of the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind. These are kind of like a cross between Tamagotchi and an RPG dialogue system, and they present dialogue taken verbatim from interviews I carried out with transgender people in Japan as part of the Creator Ikusei residency. I’m going to make 13 in total, six of which are supported by Arts Council funding via the Making Ways project. -
Interactive Portraits updates from February-May
www.instagram.com/p/BfXicvX… www.instagram.com/p/BfaxCSJ… www.instagram.com/p/Bg6wCw4… www.instagram.com/p/BiezI0Y… www.instagram.com/p/BikfqWj… www.instagram.com/p/BimriEf… -
Skeleton in a Beret at Whose Body, Whose Space?
[su_note note_color="#ffffff" text_color="#032938"]On November 6th, I’ll be speaking on a panel at the Showroom Workstation event Whose Body, Whose Space? Skeleton in a Beret will be screening, alongside films about disability arts, public toilets, and airplane seating. This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, which takes place across the UK from 4-11 November 2017.[/su_note] [su_row][su_column size=“1/3”][su_button url=“https://www.facebook.com/events/133272400738084/” background="#3b5998" size=“6” center=“yes” icon=“icon: facebook”]Facebook event[/su_button][/su_column] [su_column size=“1/3”][su_button url=“https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/whose-body-whose-space-film-screening-and-discussion-tickets-35889210595?aff=efbneb” background="#ff8000" size=“6” center=“yes” icon=“icon: ticket”]Eventbrite page[/su_button][/su_column] -
Dublin Fringe Queer Oasis
This week I’m presenting work at the Dublin Fringe festival as part of the Fully Automated Luxury Gender Oasis by Trans Live Art Salon. I’m giving a reading of my chapter from the Queer Game Studies book on Friday, and I’m also exhibiting my interactive fiction piece “Elixir”. I’m super excited to be involved in a project that explicitly calls for utopian queer marxist world building! Here’s a piece in the Dublin Inquirer where they talk about it -
Dublin Fringe Queer Oasis
This week I’m presenting work at the Dublin Fringe festival as part of the Fully Automated Luxury Gender Oasis by Trans Live Art Salon. I’m giving a reading of my chapter from the Queer Game Studies book on Friday, and I’m also exhibiting my interactive fiction piece “Elixir”. I’m super excited to be involved in a project that explicitly calls for utopian queer marxist world building! Here’s a piece in the Dublin Inquirer where they talk about it -
Queer Game Studies is out now!
I have a chapter on community histories in this book edited by the excellent Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw. I’m very excited to get my copies through, there are some really amazing contributors featured in the volume including Jack Halberstam, Kathryn Bond Stockton, Katherine Cross, and Robert Yang. The book mainly came out of the early Queerness and Games Conferences, which had a profound impact on the work I’m now doing in my PhD. -
BFI Flare festival screening Skeleton in a Beret
Great news! The short film I made with a team as part of Transforming Cinema, Skeleton in a Beret, is being screened at the prestigious British Film Institute in London for the Flare LGBT festival. Details of the screening for this and a bunch of other fantastic films (I’ve seen Alice and Ayla and they’re both great) can be found on the BFI Flare website. -
Check out this behind-the-scenes footage from Skeleton in a Beret and other Eden shorts
[su_vimeo url=“https://vimeo.com/191379223”] I’m really looking forward to being able to show my short documentary film, ‘Skeleton in a Beret’, to more people soon. At the moment it’s still making its way through festivals and isn’t available online, but you can still learn more about it if you’re curious. This behind-the-scenes video, made by other participants in the Eden Shorts project, shows how much work went into the film, and discusses the importance of trans people working together to create our own media representations. -
A film I made, 'Skeleton in a Beret', is up for an award this Sunday
Update: it won! My short documentary film about trans people and videogame avatars, ‘Skeleton in a Beret’, screens for the first time tomorrow in Sheffield, at the Transforming Cinema festival. It is nominated for a Rising Star award! Also at the festival will be the inimitable Fox Fisher, and the remarkable organisation Trans Media Watch. Please go and check it out if you can! -
Games to actively help trans people during trans awareness week, from the Action for Trans Health Bundle
It’s trans awareness week, a time of year when trans people work extra hard for visibility, civil rights, and access to necessary medical care. Media coverage during this week risks recapitulating the same tired old stories about famous trans people, without necessarily increasing awareness of the challenges that trans people face, and without doing much to elevate the voices of trans people with intersecting oppressions. The Action for Trans Health bundle is an example of trans people and allies getting together to create art work that expresses a part of the trans experience. -
Games to help you get through all this awful shit, from the Action for Trans Health Bundle
Many people are having trouble getting to sleep at the moment, and no wonder: the world looks like a dark place right now and anxiety is understandable. There are problems in the world that self-care simply cannot even put a dent into, but in order to fight those problems we do need to find ways to heal. This feels like a strange time to promote a charity art project, but I don’t want to hold back for too long from getting the word out about the Action for Trans Health bundle. -
Now live: Action for Trans Health games bundle
The Action for Trans Health games bundle is now live, right in time for the weekend! Pay what you want for 17 items, including games from the One Day Jam and materials on activism and the NHS. Some of my favourite games from this bundle include a foreboding space where a massive countdown timer hangs in the sky, a Twine about a trans teen having his period at school, and a patience-building Pico-8 game that forces you to wait for the exact right moment to act. -
Memory Insufficient: Women in Games History
Last month I asked for submissions for a collection of essays on women’s history in games. That collection is now ready! Check it out. I plan to make this a regular thing, at least for a little while. So to that end, do check out the call for submissions at the end of this latest issue. The next issue will be about Asian Histories in Games, and my goal is to get at least seven essays by May 15th. -
I made a post-dating sim card game!
This weekend there were two game jams running at the same time: one was a challenge to make dating sims (mostly with Twine) and one was a QUILTBAG-themed jam which I think was proposed by the MIT game lab.
I kind of had separate ideas for each theme at first, then I realised I really ought to just make one idea work for both jams. So I was going to make a twine game about fruitlessly trying to find love in a bad relationship, but then I decided I didn’t have the emotional energy to put myself through that this week.
So instead, I made a card game about couples trying to plan their futures together. I wanted to make a dating sim that wasn’t about courtship, but about what happens after you end up in a long-term relationship with someone. I’m really interested in the difficult strategy at work in negotiating your life path when it’s become clear that you are going to share that life with another person with their own goals. I got my partner to help me test the game and design cards.
It still needs iteration for balance and extra chaos, but here’s the basic structure of the game I made yesterday:
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Call for submissions on women's history in games
This year’s Women’s History Month theme is “Women inspiring innovation through imagination.” It aims to shed light on women’s contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Women have often been shut out of histories of science and technology, and this carries through into the way that histories of video games are told. I’m hoping to put together a nice pdf collection of articles at the end of the month that celebrate the history of women as innovators in the video games industry. -
Announcement: Manga girl seeks herbivore boy
Great news! My undergraduate dissertation, which I wrote in 2010, is going to be published in a book. Manga Girl Seeks Herbivore Boy is a collection of four dissertations on gender, all written by Japanese Studies undergrads at Cambridge in the past couple of years. My own chapter in this book is about how fatherhood is portrayed in the textbooks they use for moral education classes in Japanese schools. The thing I’m most proud of in my contribution to this book is the methodology; I built on an ethnographic technique called Domain Analysis to visually map out the semantic fields of words relating to the father-child relationship. -
What is a game? It depends who's playing
After observing an argument on Twitter about Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia, I wanted to put some ideas down. Some game critics and theorists, most famously Raph Koster, find that Dys4ia does not offer what they expect from a game. Their response to this is to say that it, or parts of it, are not a game.
I like Anna Anthropy's work, but I also try to be clear-eyed about the fact that a lot of Dys4ia could be built in PowerPoint and isn't a game. That's not a value judgement. My value judgement of the piece as a work of expressive art is pretty high.
Like Raph, I also really value and respect Dys4ia. I value it for the conversations it provokes, and for its landmark place in the landscape of trans-themed game development.
