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//An Interview with Anne-Marie Schleiner by Megan Lykins, Emily Hall
Tremaine Curatorial Fellow
for "All Digital" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland,
showing January to May 2006
1. How did you come to gaming, or game modding, as a medium for
artistic expression? Do you consider gaming an art form in and of
itself? Is game modding recognized in the gaming culture, or is it
more of an artistic movement?
I was playing games while I was in graduate school at CADRE(Computers
in Art Design Research and Education) at San Jose State University in
the late 90's with my friends. I recognized computer games as a
cultural medium ripe for artistic exploration. I think game modding
is both a phenomenom that occurs independently of traditional art
contexts as well as a tactic employed by artists with an education in
art and awareness of contemporary art contexts.
2. In PS2 Diaries you reference many of the games you played as
a child and young adult; is this how you commonly arrive at your
material, through your own experience with the games? Are there any
games you specifically do not or will not use? If so, why not?
No, I am often interested in games that I dont like to personally
play. I enjoy voyeuristically watching other people play games to
learn about what kind of modes of play and environments there
are. For instance I dont play often online role playing games but I
think they are an interesting form of electronic community space and
I like to talk to players and learn about their online lives…kind
of like being an anthropologist of gaming culture a la Jullien Dibbel
but less diligently. I also enjoyed a lot when I went to Seoul, Korea
going to the electronics part of town where I found many romantic
dating games for teenage girls…a demographic that is pretty much
overlooked in the West. I played these games out of curiosity,
without understanding the language..
3. In addition to the gaming culture, what are some of the art
historical, philosophical, and political references or influences
that affect your work?
I am influenced by contemporary art, net art and historical
movements like Dada and 70 performance art and conceptual art. Im
also influenced by post-modern theorists, media theorists, culture
studies, feminism and gender studies…from Roland Barthes to Judith
Butler to Friedrich Kittler to Guy Debord and many others. I am also
a science fiction addict–my latest discovery is Louise Marley.
4. Role-playing has become a major aspect of many gaming
experiences. Viewers are able to adopt new persona and exist in
virtual, or as you call it, "game reality". In what ways does your
work explore notions of identity? Having dubbed yourself a
"cyberfeminist," in what ways do you specifically explore, analyze,
critique and modify the female identity in your work?
It depends which work and when I made it. In the online collection
of game hacks Mutation.fem I specifically address early female
avatars in shooter games and the dialogue that took place among their
mostly male creators about what they should be like. In my thesis
project way back in grad school, Madame Polly, I was interested in
the Lara Croft Tombraider phenomenom and explored different
player/avatar combos, like that of drag queen…In later works my
exploration of gender is less in the foreground but still a
component…its hard not to be when you are a woman working with
material in a very male dominated cultural arena..that of computer
games…also digital and net art can be like that . In OUT,
(Operation Urban Terrain)a live wireless series of performances in
the city and game interventions, I wanted the ground unit of 2
players in the city to be women as a kind of visual female affront on
Americas Army, the game were were intervening in.
5. Though PS2 Diaries is derived from video games, it is not
interactive. Are any of your previous works interactive or do you
have plans for interactivity in the future? How do you think
interactivity would or does change the conception of your work by the viewer?
Machinima is not interactive since it tells a story much like
narrative cinema using game environments…I have just completed
another project with machinima components (a documentary about MOUT
games and a performance called OUT) and have plans for yet
another. I seem to be moving away from interaction and away from
collaboration in my recent work whereas previously everything was
highly interactive and also collaborative with the audience and other
artists(like Velvet-Strike). Maybe it is just a phase. I feel like I
have some things I want to say on my own with more control over the process.
6. What are some of the misconceptions about digital art and
game modding that you've encountered from viewers, artists, or critics?
Many people in the art world, even younger generations, are turned
off by computer games, viewing them as a low class popular pastime so
they may have built in aversions to engaging with computer game
related work. In the 90's it took a while for even the proponents of
virtual reality art to recognize the potential of 3-D game
environments, which were below their cultural radar. And of course
digital art in general poses the problem of being very ephemeral and
difficult to collect to the art world…(the lack of the aura of the
singular object) Also the quickly changing formats make the work
difficult to view even a few years after it has been created.
7. What projects are you currently working on and what direction
do you see your work taking in the future?
I plan to do some work with machinima relating to police brutality
that will probably be displayed on portable playstations (psps). Im
also interested in developing some game work for cell phones in
collaboration with my husband Luis Hernandez…going to smaller
portable formats…and I plan to do some work that departs from the
arena of games following subjects that I am interested in such as
disruption of static environments and personal rebellion.
8. Who is Parangari Cutiri, from where does she come, what is
she like and what does she do?
She was an alternate persona I created to make net art and visually
more formal game and software and music pieces ..somebody who felt
different from my usually more conceptually informed artworks who
allowed me to explore other things(if I had another life sometimes I
think I would be a software programmer)…she came into existence
when I was curating the game/net art show Cracking the Maze and felt
like something was missing so I made a game mod to include in the
show under her name. A CD of a VJ/Hip Hop Game that she made has
been published recently called Heaven711. Check out my website
opensorcery.net for more info. Since I so rarely have an "object"
resulting from my work I was happy with how the folding cover of the
Heaven711 CD came out, with an essay booklet included and music from
collaborating artists.
http://www.opensorcery.net
http://www.mocacleveland.org/exhibitions\_details/ex\_details\_2006-ws.asp
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<font size=2>//An Interview with Anne-Marie Schleiner by Megan Lykins,
Emily Hall Tremaine Curatorial Fellow</font> <br>
for "All Digital" at the <font size=2>Museum of Contemporary
Art Cleveland</font>, showing January to May 2006 <br><br>
1.<x-tab> </x-tab>How did you come to
gaming, or game modding, as a medium for artistic expression? Do you
consider gaming an art form in and of itself? Is game modding recognized
in the gaming culture, or is it more of an artistic movement?<br><br>
I was playing games while I was in graduate school at CADRE(Computers in
Art Design Research and Education) at San Jose State University in the
late 90's with my friends. I recognized computer games as a
cultural medium ripe for artistic exploration. I think game modding
is both a phenomenom that occurs independently of traditional art
contexts as well as a tactic employed by artists with an education in art
and awareness of contemporary art contexts.<br><br>
2.<x-tab> </x-tab>In <i>PS2 Diaries
</i>you reference many of the games you played as a child and young
adult; is this how you commonly arrive at your material, through your own
experience with the games? Are there any games you specifically do not or
will not use? If so, why not?<br><br>
No, I am often interested in games that I dont like to personally
play. I enjoy voyeuristically watching other people play games to
learn about what kind of modes of play and environments there are.
For instance I dont play often online role playing games but I think they
are an interesting form of electronic community space and I like to talk
to players and learn about their online lives…kind of like being an
anthropologist of gaming culture a la Jullien Dibbel but less diligently.
I also enjoyed a lot when I went to Seoul, Korea going to the electronics
part of town where I found many romantic dating games for teenage
girls…a demographic that is pretty much overlooked in the West. I
played these games out of curiosity, without understanding the
language..<br><br>
3.<x-tab> </x-tab>In addition to the
gaming culture, what are some of the art historical, philosophical, and
political references or influences that affect your work? <br><br>
I am influenced by contemporary art, net art and historical
movements like Dada and 70 performance art and conceptual art. Im
also influenced by post-modern theorists, media theorists, culture
studies, feminism and gender studies…from Roland Barthes to Judith
Butler to Friedrich Kittler to Guy Debord and many others. I am
also a science fiction addict–my latest discovery is Louise
Marley.<br><br>
4.<x-tab> </x-tab>Role-playing has
become a major aspect of many gaming experiences. Viewers are able to
adopt new persona and exist in virtual, or as you call it, 'game
reality
