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Late last year, while having a very normal time in my post-viral fatigued brain, I felt the very normal urge to drop absolutely everything and make some interactive fiction about anarchist raccoons. Raccoon vs. Wetherspoons elaborated on an analogy that I’d made in my post on this blog, Why Aren’t Leftist Video Essayists on Peertube? - at some point, your use of corporate (digital) spaces means actively choosing not to support community-owned alternatives. -
Is 'Society' in the Room with us Now? | Intrapology S01E02
Is ‘Society’ In The Room With Us Now? 21st November 7pm UK time Hedi (Fadumo Hassan) is a rising star of the tech world, and nobody knows they are secretly an alien anthropologist. Hedi is optimistic about the future - we’re going to solve all our problems with increasingly powerful technology, just like Star Trek. But when the tech world lets them down, it’s up to the audience to decide how they will respond. -
Screening at Edge Hill University
An edited recording of the September performance of "Assigned Earth at Birth" is screening this Wednesday, at an event on the topic of genre in media made by and for trans people. The video will drop on theIntrapology Patreon on Thursday. It will be a public post, and if you sign up as a Patreon supporter you'll be notified automatically. Also, next week we're performing the next episode, "Is 'Society' in the Room with us Now? -
Intrapology: Assigned Earth at Birth tickets link now live!
Tickets are now available for Assigned Earth at Birth, via our audience partner Now Play This. It would mean the world to me if you shared the link with someone who would love the show. Tickets page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/intrapology-assigned-earth-at-birth-tickets-1016657880087 Photo by Holly Revell Assigned Earth at Birth 26th September 2024, 7pm UK time Tea (Xander Graves) has discovered that they are not an ordinary human - they are a transdimensional being, assigned to earth to study humans. -
Intrapology Autumn 2024 dates
I have so much exciting news to share about Intrapology in the coming weeks. For now, the important thing is this: we have three performances scheduled before the end of the year, and I want you at all three of them. Here are some handy Google calendar links so that you can save the dates! Episode 1: Assigned Earth at Birth with Now Play This Festival 26th September, 7pm UK time -
VIDEO panel discussion at book launch for INCITE: Digital Arts and Activism
The Photographer's Gallery have very kindly posted the full video of a panel discussion between myself and other artists who contributed to INCITE: Digital Arts and Activism. There's some great stuff here, including Joseph DeLappe's critical encounters with memorials, Martin Zeilinger's wry "proof of cake" system, and Maja Zeco's reflections on islamophobia and European identity. I stop faffing with technology and start actually talking at 43:10 [youtu.be/sIDvq3W5z...](https://youtu.be/sIDvq3W5zHw?t=2586) -
Arts Council Project Grant for Intrapology
In absolutely amazing news, Intrapology has managed to get a £60,400 grant from Arts Council England. It will allow us to create and perform a five-episode first season, as well as share the process and our software! This has been several months in the making, after a lot of work, care, and kindness from many different people and organisations. We've really had to fight for this grant and use every resource available to keep things together - everyone who backs the project on Patreon contributed to this, by showing that we have support in addition to their funding. -
Moving Between World(views) with Database Narratives
I had the honour of being invited to write about my research and art practice, including Intrapology, for Henry Jenkins's PopMatters blog. In particular, I consider how multiverse stories can play a role in making life more bearable for one another, and how we practice shared worlding when modernist grand narratives can no longer be relied upon to shape social consensus. I came to understand what it means to be a genderqueer person and a transgender man because I encountered the stories of other transgender people, through meeting people in LGBTQ+ community spaces, watching documentaries made by other trans people such as Fox Fisher’s My Genderation project, exploring trans people’s blogs and video-blogs, and playing indie games in the early years of the queer games movement. -
Cis Penance at Trafo Gallery, Budapest
This evening I'm doing a remote event with Max*ine Vajt of No Fun Collective, connected with an exhibition programme at Trafo Gallery in Budapest. The exhibition is on until 7th April, and includes work by Bassam Al-Sabah, Hollow (Gyula Muskovics, Tamás Páll, Viktor Szeri), Denis Kozerawski, Lawrence Lek, Paula Malinowska, Tabitha Nikolai, and Sin Wai Kin. 19:30 - 21:00 Lecture performance with Zoyander Street Moderated by Maxine Vajt Venue: Trafoclub -
Intrapology at Lincoln Arts Centre Demo Night
Date: 21 March, 7pm Running Time: 120 min Location: Studio 2, Lincoln Arts Centre We're performing the first 20 minutes of Assigned Earth at Birth at this night of test performances in Lincoln. I'm particularly chuffed that we're performing alongside the wonderful Ashley Gregory, an extraordinarily talented person I met when working on an interactive play with Sheffield Theatres Young Company. Ashley Gregory – Adam & Eve (& Steve) A divorced loser unwittingly encounters the original couple, jaded by their mortal marriage, and must learn what it means to be a mortal. -
Cis Penance at Now Play This 2024
Cis Penance is going to be displayed at Now Play This, definitely one of my favourite festivals! Details below. 6 April - 14 April 2024 (excluding Monday 8 April) Somerset House New Wing and River Terrace General Admission: £9 / Concessions: £6.50 / Family Ticket: £26 (Two adults and up to three children) Events: daytime events free as part of general admission, ticketed evening events £6 each Festival Pass: £30 -
Intrapology at ASSEMBLE Festival Scratch Night #2
I'm developing a new episode of Intrapology, with the support of a couple of fantastic scratch performance nights. It's a karaoke jukebox musical with parody lyrics chosen by the audience! You know, because making a live, interactive, online/hybrid show wasn't technically challenging enough already 🫠 One of the scratch performances is part of ASSEMBLE festival at Streatham Space Project (LONDON!) on 4th May, alongside other short test performances about migration, heritage, and home. -
Book launch for INCITE: Digital Arts and Activism
Date: 06:30pm - 08:00pm, Thu 07 Mar 2024 Price: £8, £5 concessions Location: The Photographers' Gallery Join us for a book launch and panel discussion to celebrate the publication of INCITE: Digital Art & Activism. Join us for a book launch and panel discussion to celebrate the publication of INCITE: Digital Art & Activism. This collaborative artist book features creative responses from artists, scholars, and activists connected through the Digital Art and Activism Network. -
The email that lost me a collaboration
When preparing for the November 2023 performance of Assigned Earth at Birth (Episode 1 of Intrapology) I contacted a musician to ask if I could use a piece of music he'd published on Bandcamp. Before giving me permission, he wanted to understand the message of the piece of work I was creating, to make sure his work wasn't being used to support something he could not stand behind. After I sent him a script of the section the music would have accompanied, he had some follow-up questions. -
I/we need queer disabled online art
'Layered principles, values and activities for creative, anti-oppressive and trauma aware practice' collage from Sunderland et al. (2023) Trauma Aware and Anti-Oppressive Arts-Health and Community Arts Practice Among other things, Intrapology is a way of processing rage and a sense of abandonment as a queer disabled person. Everyone I Know Is Sick and we don’t know why. Why are almost all my queer friends chronically ill? Why are there so few doctors who understand our health needs? -
Patreon launch for Intrapology (Assigned Earth at Birth)
I've launched a small Patreon for my big dream project! It would mean a lot to have just a few people put their support behind the Intrapology Patreon at this early stage. The Patreon will have regular updates on the development of this project, reflections on the performances that we've done so far, as well as notes on the theory, historical context, and cultural influences that I'm researching for the show. -
INCITE: Digital Arts and Activism
I've been so excited for this book to come out, and it's finally ready! It's a gorgeous risograph-printed collection of contributions by a number of artists. Mine focuses on the wonderful character designs that June Hornby made for Cis Penance, and highlights three key moments from the interactive conversations with trans people. Details below... Buy from Peacock & Worm INCITE: Digital Art & Activism is a collaborative artist book featuring creative responses from artists, scholars and activists connected through the Digital Art and Activism Network, Edited by Joseph DeLappe (Abertay University) and Laura Leuzzi (Robert Gordon University). -
Worlds in Play conference
I'm excited to be taking Intrapology to the Worlds in Play conference at Arizona State University this January, presenting a performance of Assigned Earth at Birth - I'll be there in person, both actors will join by video call, and the audience will shape the performance live through the app that Squinky and I made. I'm really looking forward to showing and discussing this project with an audience specialising in the meeting point between theatre and games, and learning from what other people are doing in this space. -
Social Model & More Festival
Tickets for the Social Model & More Festival are now available! You can book a place at the performance of Assigned Earth at Birth on the Theatre Deli website - buying a ticket will get you access to the whole festival, though you might still need to book a place on other workshops and performances. Social Model & More page for Assigned Earth at Birth And don't forget that I'm taking orders of some really cool shirts that say Assigned Earth at Birth on them! -
Sightlines Festival
Next week I'll be on a couple of panels for Sightlines Festival, an online week-long festival exploring more topics around performance and wellbeing, with a specific emphasis on Bradford and the North of England. Image of schedule for Sightlines Festival - screen reader friendly details are available on sightlinesfestival.co.uk I'm on the Friday 13th October 5pm panel on Neuroqueerness and Performance, and the Saturday 14th October 1pm Chronic Illness and Theatre panel. -
Assigned Earth at Birth Shirts for Intrapology at Typeset CIC
https://shop.typeset.space/products/aeab-shirt I'm making a limited run of shirts with local social enterprise Printed By Us, selling through Typeset. It's a kind of crowdfunding campaign, in that we'll be able to make the shirts when we hit 30 orders. Order now from shop.typeset.space! I'm putting together some merch for the first episode of Intrapology, to sell via my community bookshop, made by local social enterprise Printed By Us. -
Interactive Soup 12th September 2023
I've very kindly been offered one of five spaces to pitch a project at Interactive Soup this September, at Theatre Deli Leadenhall. I'm going to pitch Intrapology, in the hope of winning some funding for the November performance of the pilot episode, 'Assigned Earth at Birth'. Intrapology is a weird project that I care a great deal about, and I'm grateful for these rare opportunities to perhaps reach the incredibly specific kind of person who would love neuroqueer interactive social constructivist sci-fi online theatre. -
Social Model & More Festival November 2023 - Assigned Earth at Birth, Intrapology
I'm thrilled to be working on an interactive play for the Social Model & More Festival at Theatre Delicatessen this November. 'Assigned Earth at Birth' is a live-digital hybrid, interactive sci-fi comedy about doomerism, neurodiversity / neuroqueerness, and the pain of living in a world that works against your survival. Building on the test performance at Barnsley Live in March this year, 'Assigned Earth at Birth' will be the first episode of Intrapology, a new interactive speculative fiction series that I really, really want to make. -
Event with No Fun Collective, Prague
Date: 13.05.2023 Beginning: 18:00 FREE ENTRY / IN ENGLISH etc. galerie z.s. Sarajevská 68/16 Praha 2 120 00 Czech Republic IČ: 22738924 The project was financially supported by the City of Prague, the State Cultural Fund, and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Cis Penance is currently included in a fantastic exhibition of queer games at Etc Galerie in Prague, created by No Fun Collective. They're organising an event this Saturday, which I'll be joining remotely. -
DYCP Award
Amazingly, somehow I've gotten one of the coveted DYCP grants from Arts Council England! I'm really pleased as this almost sorts out the rest of my year, and takes away a lot of question marks about what I will be doing next. The grant is going to allow me to spend a few months developing my skills and knowledge on accessible design for web and games, as well as adapting my practice to Multiple Sclerosis. -
Reviewing my practice in 2022
In this post, I share an overview of my art practice in 2022 - what I got done, where you can find it, and some of the stuff that happens that doesn't lead to public outputs. Additionally, I share some thoughts on adapting my practice to new disabilities -- in my case this is due to MS, but I feel far from alone in navigating this, as a lot of other people have had to do the same as the COVID-19 pandemic reveals itself to be a mass-disabling event. -
Climate playmakers focus group
I'm involved in a research project supporting the development of an episodic game about climate change, and we are looking for people involved in climate activism, research, and advocacy to participate in a focus group. For more details please see the full call for participants. Purpose of the study The study is designed to understand what experts in climate science, game design and climate activism understand to be the priorities for climate change communication and action, and how these ideas might be brought to life through a live episodic online game. -
Critical Distance Fundraiser
Critical Distance, a non-profit I volunteer for on the board of directors, needs help. We have been archiving and contextualising online games writing for 13 years. We are asking for help to allow us to continue operating, and perhaps even invest in building longer term resilience. I'd be very grateful for any help spreading the word: https://www.gofundme.com/f/critdistance This is one of my favourite organisations in general, not just because I got to be their Senior Curator for a little while. -
Essay Jams and Collaborative Writing as a Community Event
Last year I worked with Joey Eschrich on a collaborate writing event with Critical Distance, and we recently wrote an article about it that has just been published. Here we consider how the essay jam, and Critical Distance’s larger editorial structure, capture productive tensions in community-led, community-responsive publishing. We also suggest future directions for structuring collaborative writing activities, from figuring out incentives for participating authors to creating a culture of dialogue around drafts and ideas in progress. -
Imaginary Papers Issue 12
I wrote a short essay in the "Science Fiction Frames" format for Arizona State University Centre for Science and the Imagination's newsletter Imaginary Papers. Building on a presentation I gave a few years ago, it's a discussion of how speculative wearable devices support the narrative of Simon Amstell's 2017 mockumentary Carnage, including a quick comparison with Donna Haraway's Camille Stories. Check it out here: https://mailchi.mp/asu.edu/imaginary-papers-issue-12-nov-2022 Fun side-note: until I rewatched Carnage, I have completely forgotten that Amstell had actually anticipated a global pandemic and written it into the timeline that leads up to a utopian future society where animal exploitation has ended. -
Interactive Portrait Cushions at BitBash Chicago / Chicago Humanities Festival
An installation of Interactive Portraits: Trans People in Japan will be hosted at BitBash Chicago's event on 12th November as part of the Chicao Humanities Festival. This is the afterparty for The Social Mind, an afternoon of talks and discussion on big tech, algorithms, and mental health, created in partnership with The Verge. Find out more and get tickets from the Chicago Humanities Festival website. -
Desperate Livin interactive archive
This year I've had the pleasure of doing a little project with Raju Rage and Studio Voltaire, creating a web experience for their online archive of transgender health resources. They launched it this week, and you can check it out at desperatelivin.com. [www.instagram.com/p/CkJEzZp...](https://www.instagram.com/p/CkJEzZpMZG2/) They reached out to commission this after they had included Cis Penance in an online exhibition. Since their archive includes a lot of zines and artist-made publications, the rough DIY aesthetic of Cis Penance felt like a good fit. -
Bundle for Ukraine
A quick note that my book Delay: Paying Attention to Energy Mechanics is in the itch.io Bundle for Ukraine, which has already raised $5.5 million for the charities International Medical Corps and Voices of Children. The bundle includes content from 736 creators, making it an incredible way to get hold of a huge collection of indie games and other material hosted on itch.io, while supporting charities responding under the horrifying conditions of Russia's senseless war. -
Sheffield Theatres Bank Cohort
I'm delighted to share that I'm one of a number of artists receiving support from Sheffield Theatres for the next year as part of the Bank Cohort! I'll be building on some of the work I did last year, and trying out some new ideas, as well as finding new ways to do fun things with theatre and games. I'm incredibly pleased, and very uplifted by the warmth and openness of the folks at Sheffield Theatres. -
Caroline Sinders: Feminist Data Set
I'm excited to be in conversation with Caroline Sinders this Saturday at Site Gallery, in the final event of their Digital Residency. Caroline's art research practice addresses the potentials and injustices of tech, with a focus on exploring liberatory alternatives to the extractive big data industry. Sign up here. Also, earlier that day, I'll be hosting another in-conversation event at Typeset, between author Tair Rafiq and Dr. David Hartley, co-founder of the Narratives of Neurodiversity Network. -
Squinky Collab live performance next week!
The interactive live performance of my collab project with Squinky is next week, and tickets are still available! Details below. About this event Video Call Calamity is an online interactive play about the awkwardness of video calls, and the scripts and protocols that we use to try to pass as ‘normal’. Audience members are invited (but not forced!) to take on the roles of two of the main characters, while the rest of the audience creates the script live, through voting and text chat. -
CSI Skill Tree: Kentucky Route Zero
On 27th July, as part of a series of online events run by Arizona State University’s Centre for Science and the Imagination, I will be talking about Kentucky Route Zero with Rachel Carr, a scholar of Southern U.S. and Modernist literature, as well as Women’s and Gender Studies, at Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky. We’ll be talking about gothic motifs of places that carry trauma, figurations of rural and post-industrial landscapes, and the role of play and art in how the game imagines post-capitalist ways of living. -
Reclaiming the Rainbow Photo Challenge
I am one of three judges on Andro & Eve's Reclaiming the Rainbow Photo Challenge - details below. Please send in your weirdest visual experiments with rainbows! Reclaiming the Rainbow Photo Challenge is a way to raise awareness of the Pride flag as a symbol of safety, build connections, and celebrate the strength of the South Yorkshire LGBTQ+ community through this difficult time. Are you LGBTQ+ and living in South Yorkshire? -
Joining NEoN's trustees
I recently had the joy of becoming one of 8 new trustees of digital arts festival North East of North (NEoN). At a time when arts and culture organisations are under extraordinary pressure, I'm excited to play even a small role in this fantastic organisation's work supporting and showcasing digital art, elevating marginalised voices, and exploring new ways to serve audiences that are often excluded from art spaces. Learn more about NEoN and the other trustees at the link below! -
Raju Rage with the Right Lube: Desperate Living
Cis Penance is currently on display online at Studio Voltaire, as part of artist Raju Rage's research project with trans writing project The Right Lube. They are doing work around trans self-medding and bodily autonomy, under the following statement: “We stand for self-agency in determining our own heath requirements and gender definitions and not having to rely on a medical system that is often a barrier for trans people for multiple reasons, such as not meeting requirements and fitting definitions that are cis gender determined, not having access to services, gatekeeping and waiting on a national health service that has been cut, wanting autonomy from medical recognition, plus more. -
Ludonarracon panel April 23rd
Update 26 April: you can now watch this panel here! [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPiJOWAOrIA) I'm very excited to be on a panel at Ludonarracon next week about narrative structure and placemaking in games. Ludonarracon is a digital festival of indie videogame storytelling that I often referred to last year when looking for interesting and inspiring things to play and new ways of thinking about the medium, and you should definitely check it out if you are interested in stories or interactive media. -
Collaboration with Squinky as part of "New Conversations"
I'm delighted to announce that I'm starting a project in collaboration with Dietrich "Squinky" Squinkifer, as part of "New Conversations", a programme funded and delivered by the British Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Farnham Maltings, and the High Commission of Canada in the UK. I'm excited to be part of a cohort of participants thinking about critical issues such as disability, land, gender, and racial justice. Squinky is one of my favourite artists, and also someone I feel incredibly lucky to be able to call a friend. -
30 characters now playable in the Cis Penance WIP update
To go with the launch of Space Studios London's Art + Tech showcase, today I pushed a big update to Cis Penance! Check out the rest of the artworks on display here: https://spacestudios.org.uk/art-technology/deep-play-showcase/ With today's update, there are now 30 characters you can interact with in the work-in-progress build. Each one represents a different person I have interviewed - some going by names they use elsewhere, some going by pseudonyms I've assigned arbitrarily to preserve their anonymity. -
DEEP PLAY: Art + Tech Residency Showcase
I'm updating the Cis Penance work in progress build for next week, when it will be featured as part of the showcase of work created during the Art + Tech residency organised by Space Studios, London. I'll also be on a panel hosted in Mozilla Hubs, which is currently one of my favourite ways to be in online spaces! Showcase: DEEP PLAY 4 – 19 Mar 2021 Launching: Thu 4 Mar, 12pm GMT here -
Event: Social Gold - MONUMENTS & MEMORIAL. Social Art Network, Sheffield
(Featured/header image is from Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley's Black Trans Archive) Next week I'll be showing a preview of a video essay about monuments and memorials in some recent indie games (Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Black Trans Archive; Origame studio, Umurangi Generation; Cardboard Computer, Kentucky Route Zero; Finji, Night in the Woods). Wed, 24 February 2021 18:30 – 20:30 GMT Register online This is part of an online event showing early work created as part of the Social Art Network's " -
Book Launch: Old Land New Waters, Freelands Foundation
I have a chapter in this forthcoming book, which features work by artists selected for the first year of the Freelands Artist Programme. The book launch is being held online on 17th February 2021. Alongside excellent, insightful critical writing by curator Edward Ball, contributors to the book write about, and create visual works reflecting on, topics such as the materiality of media, historical memory, and the performance of identity. Details of the book launch event can be found below. -
More characters added to Cis Penance
I just pushed a new update to Cis Penance, doubling the number of characters. It feels very satisfying to see a "queue" of people begin to form. Play the latest work-in-progress Including the 13 that are now shown in the work-in-progress, I have collected 45 interviews - this is the minimum I planned for, but I think more interviews would better show the scale of the issues that this piece aims to highlight. -
Cis Penance soundtrack out now
Liz Ryerson has just released the soundtrack that she created for Cis Penance! It's twinkly and warm and stormy and lush. I strongly suggest that you buy it IMMEDIATELY, because it's Bandcamp day, when the platform waives its revenue share and artists get all the money. gogogogogogogogo [bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=2706657088 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false] -
Cis Penance update - seven characters, one world
I pushed a big update to Cis Penance today! Not only is the number of characters now up from 3 to 7, but also, the first hint of the main motif is finally coming through - the long queue of people, representing social and bureaucratic structures such as the waiting lists for Gender Identity Clinics. Also, there are now three different pieces of background music. Please give the new version a play and let me know what you think, especially if something looks wrong. -
Sheffield Creative Mornings talk
On Friday 25th September I'm giving a talk on zoom with Sheffield Creative Mornings, at 08:30am UK time! Registration opens on Monday 21st; be sure to register before 8pm on Thursday, so that they have time to send the zoom link. -
Cis Penance update - RBMicah and Hailey
An update to the Cis Penance preview just launched, with two new characters. Check it out, and get in touch if you are interested in contributing an interview. -
Open City Documentary Festival Expanded Realities Exhibition
The work-in-progress of Cis Penance will be on display online this September as part of an exhibition for the Open City Documentary Festival. We will host a mix of curated and newly commissioned work from artists and practitioners pushing the boundaries of interactive non-fiction storytelling. The exhibition will be free to access and available internationally from 9th – 15th September. A full micro-site that has been specially built to host the exhibition will launch soon. -
Getting started with LED embroidery
As part of the Art + Tech residency with Space Studios, London (which they have kindly allowed me to do while continuing to “reside” in lockdown in Sheffield) I’m getting my head around LED embroidery at the moment, with the view to creating a very large piece this year for the Cis Penance interactive portraits project. I feel like I’ve got my head around the very basics now - what can electroconductive thread do as a material that both makes attractive shapes and also forms part of a system? -
Panel talk at The Artist's Journey #3
I’m excited to be speaking on a panel with Manish Harijan (artist) and Lady Kitt (artist, researcher and drag king) on 13th February as part of a two-day event about art careers at Sheffield Institute of Arts. The theme is “improfessionalism”, which feels fortuitously positioned alongside the “indisciplinarity” theme of the event at King’s College that I got to speak at last year. While ‘professionalisation’ suggests the positive, necessary steps to becoming an artist, there are ‘improfessional’ practices that exist at an off-kilter relation to this imperative. -
Cis Penance workshop in Dundee
This weekend, Jennifer Booth will be facilitating a workshop for the Cis Penance project, as part of NEoN Festival. We did a similar workshop this summer in Sheffield - the goal is to work collaboratively with LGBTQ+ folks to create a piece of visual artwork reflecting queer life paths and our relationship to time. This version of the workshop is going to have an extra element, incorporating tech toys such as a line-following robot or electroconductive ink, to further play with representations of systems, glitches, and discontinuity. -
Interview in Our Favourite Places
Our Favourite Places is a site that reviews cultural stuff in Sheffield, and is an incredibly helpful resource that comprehensively covers all kinds of venues, events, and local businesses. This week they have published a lovely little profile of my work: ourfaveplaces.co.uk/meet-the-… Speaking of interviews, but going in the other direction, where I’m the one asking questions: I’m keen to get more trans interviewees lined up for the next two weeks at Site Gallery. -
Site Gallery platform exhibition
Having returned from a fascinating and disorienting residency in Belfast (I’m still looking for interviewees from Belfast by the way) I’m now back in my own studio preparing work for the forthcoming work in progress show at Site Gallery this August. I’m going to show the interactive portrait cushions as well as some newer work that is still taking shape - a big part of my aim for the show is to start conducting interviews with transgender people in Sheffield, so please get in touch if that aspect interests you. -
Mid docfest update
Docfest is about halfway done, and it’s been so lovely so far. The Interactive Portrait Cushions are hung right of the entrance to the exhibition space, and I’ve had great conversations with people about the unique pleasures and challenges of handmade computers. I just finished a panel discussion with IP Yuk Yiu about his piece, to Call a Horse a Deer, comparing our approaches to simple interface design for conceptually complex works. -
Critaoke
I’m going to embarrass myself this Saturday by performing a Karaoke version of Sara Ahmed’s “Feminist Killjoys” to the tune of Chiquitita (I haven’t called it Critiquita, but gosh that seems like a missed opportunity now). Details below. Description Join us as we mark the closing of Re-collections with Crit-a-Oke – a free cabaret event featuring live performances, projections and karaoke. Crit-a-Oke feels like a late night party lecture. Squashing art criticism, theory and academic texts into a karaoke blender and sipping on the thinky musical smoothie that drips from the other side. -
Interactive portraits at Doc/Fest
Interactive Portraits has been selected for the Sheffield Doc/Fest Alternate Realities exhibition at the Site Gallery! Check out the other pieces in the show here: sheffdocfest.com/films/int… [gallery ids=“3335,3336,3337” type=“rectangular” link=“none”] Mine isn’t the only piece portraying LGBT issues. My Mother’s Kitchen by Maeve Marsde and Tea Uglow is an interactive documentary based on interviews with eight LGBTQI+ people, that takes shape around domestic spaces. Through the Wardrobe by Rob Eagle is an augmented reality installation centering on clothes and gender expression. -
Video: Collecting games at UC Irvine
vimeo.com/331049055 This is a short documentary that I made a while ago but never published, about a collection of videogames that has come to be used to teach students at UC Irvine. Back in 2017, I recorded a load of footage for a series of short documentaries about people who curate and archive games. I have a page for the whole series here. Some stuff got published on sites that briefly had a budget for freelance video, but there were multiple issues that led to the series never finishing. -
Now Play This 2019
Interactive Portraits: Trans People in Japan is going to Now Play This festival at Somerset House in London this April! It’s going to be shown alongside work by absolutely incredible artists including Brenda Romero, Tale of Tales, Harry Josephine Giles, and Sokpop Collective - an overwhelming thing to contemplate, so I’m trying not to think about it. Check out the website to see the whole list of beautiful artgames and book tickets. -
Talk for LGBT+ History Month this week
I’m giving a talk this week as part of Sheffield Uni’s LGBT+ history month events. I’ll be looking at queer games in a very messy and vulnerable way, so I’m kind of hoping it’ll only be a small crowd, but if you do happen to be around and want to come along I’d love to see you there. Details below. Lunchtime talk - Zoyander Street 'Exploring the recent history of " -
How gaming nostalgia can open up conversations about trans rights – Just Geek Stuff
Stephanie Farnsworth was kind enough to interview me about the interactive portraits project. Check it out here: https://justgeekstuffhub.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/how-gaming-nostalgia-can-open-up-conversations-about-trans-rights/ -
Rotherham display of interactive portraits: transgender people in Japan
Today is the first day of a three-week display of my transgender interactive portraits installation at Rotherham Open Arts Renaissance! More information here: Interactive Portraits Show in Rotherham I’m particularly keen to get groups in to have discussions about the work, so let me know (Zoyander at Gmail) if you have a group that would like to come see this. -
Pattern Swatches for Pico-8
A while ago I made myself a kind of digital haberdashery for Pico-8, that allows me to sample randomly-generated patterns and colour combinations. It is very simple, and mostly just looks like this: This is a useful tool when making other things in Pico-8, as it lets me choose from “ready-made” fill patterns and colour combinations, rather than designing them myself from scratch or having them be randomly generated in whatever cart I’m building. -
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. -
Freelands Artist Programme
In an amazing piece of good news, I’ve been selected for a new programme supporting artists in the UK! It’s a two-year residency that includes some financial support as well as mentoring, access to archive collections, and exhibition space in London as well as at the Site Gallery in Sheffield. twitter.com/site_gall… The other artists selected in Sheffield this year are Alison J Carr, Yuen Fong Ling, Sian Williams and Lucy Vann. -
Rainbow Arcade Kickstarter
This winter, some of my work is going to be shown in the Schwules Museum in Berlin, the oldest and largest LGBTQ-related museum in the world! The show is really important, as it not only puts videogames in the context of queer history, but also is (if I have this right) the first time that Adrienne Shaw’s LGBTQ games archive will manifest in a public, physical space. Today they launched a crowdfunding campaign for the exhibition catalogue, which would include essays by the contemporary queer games creators included in the exhibition, so that’s me, and some of my favourite games folks: Squinky, Robert Yang, and Naomi Clark. -
Creator Ikusei Residency for International Creators with Exploratory Projects in Tokyo, Japan
This is a little last-minute, but the residency programme in Tokyo that I took part in at the start of this year is taking applications until September 10th. You can learn more and apply here: https://creatorikusei.jp/en/application-guide-for-overseas-creators/ It’s not particularly common for me to come out of a creative development experience feeling positive and ready to recommend it to others, as I’m kind of sensitive to institutional inequities and the cult-like insider-group bullshit that surrounds creative fields. -
Vanishing Point listed in BFI's best video essays of 2017
The online version of BFI’s Sight and Sound magazine asked 30-odd video essayists to list their favourite video essays of the past year. Astonishingly, video artist Nelson Carvajal very kindly included something of mine on his list! Vanishing Point is actually the only video essay I’ve made so far; I made it early in the year for visual essay jam, and at first my goal was to adapt the video essay format by using visual language more and almost eliminating narration entirely - but then, I threw in a lot of primary source quotes, and it got very discursive in its own way. -
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] -
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. -
Abstract Games with Raph Koster
Here’s a documentary short I made during my trip down the West Coast of North America in January-February 2017. First Person Scholar very kindly commissioned the video, in which game designer Raph Koster talks to me about the expressive qualities of abstract game systems, and why he collects old folk games. Check out the full post for more detail on Koster’s work. www.youtube.com/watch www.firstpersonscholar.com/abstract-… -
Site relocated
head over to zoyander.cc -
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. -
Vanishing Point: a visual essay
I made a video for Visual Essay Jam about linear perspective, video games that position the player character towards a vanishing point that they cannot turn away from, and the general feeling of being pulled irrevocably toward the end of an era. [su_vimeo url=“https://vimeo.com/203545268”] -
The making of Portal 2: The Musical
I made a video about nerdy Vancouver, BC cabaret group The Geekenders for ZAM! Check out the full post here or the video below: [youtube www.youtube.com/watch This is the first of a series of videos I’m making during my trip down the Pacific Coast of North America. I’m interviewing various people working in and around videogames, learning about the work people do and the values that guide their projects. The videos are going up on a few different sites, so if you want to keep up with everything I’m doing, you should subscribe to the email list using the form at the top of this page so that you get the weekly list of links to everything I do in every medium. -
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! -
One Day Jam this Sunday!
A quick note that this Sunday is the One Day Jam, a little event to raise money for Action for Trans Health that I’m holding on the anniversary of the day I started HRT. Details here. -
Zoyander Street
I am a critical historical practitioner working with games and technology. My work looks at play, labour and games within material and symbolic systems of every scale: from the tiny emotional loops of caring for a virtual pet, to the massive macro network of meaning making in late capitalism. I work at the intersection between games and art in both digital and analogue media, creating writing, video, and interactive pieces. -
Language services for games
[su_note note_color="#fafafa"] Announcement On 20th October I will be back in the UK after almost three years working in the games industry in the San Francisco Bay Area and Vancouver. I’ll be continuing to do the work I’ve been doing for the past year: running Memory Insufficient, writing a history of mobile games for my PhD and my backers, and providing language services for games. I want to talk a little bit here about that last category of work. -
I've left Gamesbrief: here's how you can hire me and/or support my work
I just finished my final week at Gamesbrief, where I was Deputy Editor (here’s the announcement post). Aside from continued work on my PhD, my work is going to take two directions from now on: 1) Translation for games, digital art and new media I've been studying Japanese culture for almost a decade now, including four years study at Cambridge University and two years at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. -
Happy 9th September, Dreamcast fans!
Today is the anniversary of the Dreamcast's 9/9/99 launch in the US! Fifteen years ago people were excitedly opening their Dreamcasts for the first time. It was one of the most successful console launches in history, for a device that most people agree was far ahead of its time; it came with a modem for online play, the VMU enabled portable mini-games for multi-sited play, and it was home to all kinds of groundbreaking experiments in game design, graphics and storytelling. -
Conversations between languages
Some time last year I stopped blogging here and started using Medium instead. More recently, I’ve started writing more ‘interlingual’ pieces. That means trying to write in response to pieces written in languages other than English, to try and break out of the usual circle of English-language critically-minded games writers. These pieces have been getting a lot of traffic, and it’s been exciting to see people get enthusiastic about them. -
Meet me at GDC
Hey. I’m going to GDC this year on a press pass, and the emails from PR companies are starting to come through. It’s always great to meet new people and learn about new things, but I tend to be limited to only getting to spend time one-on-one with people who are spending lots of money trying to get their name out there. I don’t think this is right, and it feels like a missed opportunity for me. -
13 things I wrote in 2013
It’s been a good year. Here are thirteen of the things that were in it: 1. Silliness I shifted most of my ad-hoc blogging to Medium.com. One of the most popular posts there has been What do you think of when you think of Batman? It was a very silly write-up of a totally unreliable survey, refuting something foolish that a games publisher said in an interview. 2. Schadenfreude What has EA done now? -
2012 in writing
A Borderhouse post arguing that a camp video game character is not necessarily gay The latest piece in my series on PocketGamer about IAP design A post I wrote on Gamesbrief called 'How to crowdfund when nobody knows who you are' Effluent praise for indie game Lim A Borderhouse post on PTSD triggers in games. A well-liked piece about how I'm approaching design history in my book about the Dreamcast An extract from an early draft of that book about materials in Skies of Arcadia I'm expecting to hit a big milestone for Dreamcast Worlds in the next week or so, so detailed updates and lots of extracts should be on the way soon. -
Don't leave me in a ditch: why you should self-censor the em-dash
[caption id=“attachment_905” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”]
CC Paul de los Reyes[/caption]When I’m editing prose, my main concern is readability. Normally the entire process is mostly made up of adding subheadings, breaking up long sentences, and removing parentheses.
Language is a very crude way of expressing yourself. As a writer, you can only say one thing at a time. Film directors have full use of a two-dimensional image plane and sound, and can pack in lots of carriers of meaning at the same time. Lighting, music, script, acting, body language, mise en scene, setting… all of these things and more are actively communicating to the viewer all the time. Game designers have all that, plus haptic response and input, range of movement, rules systems, and space design. Multiple things can be communicated at different levels of explicitness at the same time.
Written language has to struggle with putting three-dimensional ideas into one-dimensional form. Readers have to be able to walk in a straight line, looking straight ahead with blinkers on, and still see everything they came to see and understand why they should keep on walking.
This is why I hate the em-dash.
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The science behind non-virality
[caption id=“attachment_1024” align=“alignleft” width=“300”]
FlickrCC, Gideon[/caption]When I’m in London, my favourite hobby is to go to cafes and eavesdrop. I particularly enjoy it when a boy speaking in flawless RP is telling someone else his brilliant ideas that will make them all famous and successful. “Facebook is the future,” he declaims over a soy chai latte, “it’s all about advertising.” He takes a sip, nods and pretend to listen while the other person speaks, and then announces, “what we need to do is make a viral video.”
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Landlords are arseholes: on Steam Greenlight
For a much better post on this issue, go here.
Remember that theory that the internet is morphing from anarchic communitarianism into restrictive cyber-serfdom?Valve’s crowd curation platform for video games, Steam Greenlight, has only been around for a week or so, and already it’s managed to annoy almost everyone. Users who want to review games have to wade through piles and piles of crap before finding anything of interest. Erotic content has been summarily taken down out of fear that it might cause offence, regardless of how artful or interesting it might be, putting an early question mark over how far Valve are handing over gatekeeping responsibilities to the crowd.
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The Marooning of Thirsty Ann
To thank people for supporting Dreamcast Worlds and sharing it on their social networks, I published a story about pirates that I wrote when I was about 7 or 8 years old (I’m not really sure, it could have been later). The Marooning of Thirsty Ann is included here in the photographs below. -
I love YouTube comments
It’s so nice when people clear up complicated issues in a single paragraph. Show’s over folks, I don’t need to write a book anymore!
Good idea about release book for the history of Dreamcast.But everybody knows the story,so if you want know the real story what happen to Dreamcast,you should ask Peter Moore,Bern Stollar and another ex supervisors of Sega.First,I will tell you what happen before of downfall of Dreamcast. It was Microsoft plan from the beginning,the Dreamcast it was an experimental console.End. ;)
Video is below the cut, go join the YouTube comments here. Oh, and for the record, I already cite more than one Bernie Stolar interview in the book, and I interviewed design and planning leads for Skies of Arcadia at Sega headquarters last summer. -
"How frustrating this whole business of studying is"
I’m wading through Bruno Latour and finishing my dissertation this month, feeling ever more terrified and hopeless. There is so much to do, and too little time in which to give the material the quality of treatment it deserves. But in the middle of my despair, Latour presented me with an encouraging rant part-way through Reassembling the social. Paragraph breaks have been added, because Latour’s overflowing, impassioned verbiage does not translate well into blog format.
What is an account? It is typically a text, a small ream of paper a few millimetres thick that is darkened by a laser beam. It may contain 10,000 words and be read by very few people, often only a dozen or a few hundred if we are really fortunate. A 50,000 word thesis might be read by half a dozen people (if you are lucky, ever your Ph.D advisor would have read parts of it!) and when I say ‘read’, it does not mean ‘understood’, ‘put to use’, ‘acknowledged’, but rather ‘perused’, ‘glanced at’, alluded to', ‘quoted’, ‘shelved somewhere in a pile’. At best, we add an account to all those which are simultaneously launched in the domain we have been studying.
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How to use Wikipedia
I’ve kept putting off writing this article, because I go on believing that one day people will realise that Wikipedia is both an encyclopedia and a huge bunch of ongoing discussions, and should be treated as both of these things. In fact, only a select number of librarians seem to be aware of this seemingly obvious fact. Instead, I hear endless wailing about how terrible Wikipedia is and how no self-respected academic should even think about using it for research.
No, you shouldn’t cite Wikipedia. You shouldn’t cite encyclopedia Brittanica either. That by no means implies that Wikipedia is useless as a research tool. Not only is it as useful as any other encyclopedia; it teaches you far more, because of its transparency. So, I’m getting it off my chest: five things that Wikipedia is good for, and how to make best use of them.
