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PROJECTS
My work involves constructed realities, including computer-mediated performance, net-based improvisation, online role-playing games, avatar performance, playable media, nonlinear narrative, fictive art, geofiction, and (not least) "real life". Many recent projects have involved networked performance and computer role-playing environments. Language, image, and enactment are of equal importance to me as broadband channels for the imaginal. Below is information about recent large-scale collaborations or long-term projects. Information about older or shorter projects can be found in the "archive" area.
Demotic 2004-2006is a performance work about American Memory, a single character whose many voices are woven together into a complex texture of language, sound, and music. It is an improvisation in which actors, avatars, and musicians create a kind of covert national anthem. Created in collaboration with director Robert Allen, sound artists Cuca Esteves and Jeff Ridenour, actor Tracey A. Leigh, and the Plaintext Players, it premiered at the Beall Center for Art & Technology in July 2004. A new version premiere had its East Coast premiere at the Baltimore Theatre Project in November 2006.
ALT+CTRL 2004is a unique festival of independent and alternative games, showcasing the most innovative new concepts in computer games by independent developers, artists, and game modders. Not unlike the Sundance Film Festival, ALT+CTRL seeks to cultivate a vibrant, independent game community and highlight novel experiments in game design, game genres, methodologies, and approaches to game play. ALT+CTRL is a sequel to the ground-breaking exhibition SHIFT-CTRL (see below). I co-curated ALT+CTRL with Robert Nideffer and Celia Pearce.
Galileo in America 2004is an experimental theater work about Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo, the FBI surveillance of Brecht during his American years, and the HUAC hearings. Staged readings of this work in progress for which I am the scriptwriter were held at the Goethe Institute L.A. and the Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades, in October 2004.
The Roman Forum Project 2003is a mixed-reality performance work examining the American political scene between the postelection crisis of 2000 and the invasion of Iraq. Drawing on five Roman characters from the 1st century C.E., a time when Rome's republican government was under great strain from the stresses of building and maintaining a large empire, it critiqued America's vision of its role in the world. An ensemble work designed for nontraditional spaces, it is a kind of "media commedia" melding Internet technologies, video projections, and classical Greek and Roman theatrical traditions. It was created in collaboration with director Robert Allen, sound artists Cuca Esteves and Jeff Ridenour, the Plaintext Players, and a group of actors. A sequel to The Roman Forum 2000 (see below), it premiered at the Beall Center for Art and Technology in March 2003.
Reading Frankenstein 2003is a multimedia performance work about artificial life, recent research in neurological processes related to reading and perception, and Mary Shelley's classic gothic novel. It was created in collaboration with director Annie Loui and neurobiologist Jim Fallon. A half-hour workshop production of an early version of the work was held at the Beall Center for Art & Technology in May/June 2002. The finished work premiered at the Beall Center in May/June 2003.
SHIFT-CTRL 2000was the first major North American exhibition to examine how artists work with games, gaming, and related technologies. SHIFT-CTRL included a mix of installations and networked pieces, looking critically yet playfully at how games have been altering social systems as they emerge to occupy cultural center stage. The exhibition's three featured areas--Role-Playing Games and Shared Social Spaces; Evolvable/Emergent Systems; and World Hacks/Rewriting Existing Worlds--included work by such artists as Rebecca Allen; Perry Hoberman; RTMark; Mongrel; Eddo Stern; Natalie Bookchin; Negativland; Jodi.org; Ken Feingold; Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau; Grahame Weinbren; Lisa Brenneis and Adriene Jenik; Janine Cirincione and Michael Ferraro; Jane Prophet, Gordon Selley, and Mark Hurry; Lev Manovich and Norman Klein; and Eric Zimmerman, many of whom have been included in the numerous game art shows that have proliferated in the wake of SHIFT-CTRL.
The Roman Forum 2000was a series of linked online improvisations and stage events centered on the 2000 Democratic National Convention and set against the backdrop of Imperial Rome. This neo-Vaudevillean exploration by 1st century Romans breached the boundaries between the Internet, the real world, history, and the stage to forge a hybrid work out of the differing perspectives of each. It was created in collaboration with director Robert Allen, the Plaintext Players, and a group of actors.
The Museum of Forgeryis a virtual institute founded in 1993 and dedicated to promoting an appreciation of the aesthetics of forgery. A number of the ideas promulgated by the Museum--such as conceptual Photoshop filters or dumping grounds for old art--have since been taken up and implemented by other artists. I am the museum's founder and director.
The Plaintext Playersis a pioneering group of cyberperformers who have been creating live online improvisations since 1994. As the group's founder and artistic director, I direct many of their unique performances, which generally take the form of textual improvisations based on written scenarios. One of the longest-running groups of cyberperformers, the Players have recently been involved in creating mixed-reality works that merge cyberspace and realspace in various ways.