What happens when games account for the players’ identities? Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s work does just this. Traversing game design, performance, and sound art, the London-born, Berlin-based artist constructs stratified game experiences that depend on the player’s privilege. Someone who identifies as Black and trans will have a distinct gameplay experience; someone who identifies as cis and white will have a different one. Being careful about access, Danielle tells us, helps keep the archive autonomous. Her work not only fills in the gaps and ruins in the current archive but builds an archive for the future—one that centers on the Black trans experience.
Here, we speak with Danielle about the archive as an always-moving thing, why she’s attracted to low-fi aesthetics, and her new fascination with pirates.
In this episode of the Killscreen podcast, Jamin interviews independent designer, strategist, and world builder Rachel Joy Victor. They discuss the concept and practice of world-building and its importance in storytelling across various mediums. Rachel explains her world-building perspective as an interdisciplinary interplay of system design and human impact. What…
Artist, jeweler, metalsmith, and art conservator Lauren Eckert shows us what it means to look at craftsmanship through a contemporary lens. Drawing from inspiration from the objects in video games, religious iconography, and classic science fiction VFX, Lauren’s work gives metals and jewelry a life on screen—and similarly, digital objects a physical…
Sam and Andy Rolfes self-describe their work as “overly navel-gazing, obsessed-with-layers, weird.” From visualizing songs by Lady Gaga and BLACKPINK to facilitating mind-bending, improvisational performances at MoMA, the duo are in a perpetual toggle between real life and the screen. Cleverly using VR, mixed reality, figurative animation, and motion capture…
What happens when games account for the players’ identities? Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s work does just this. Traversing game design, performance, and sound art, the London-born, Berlin-based artist constructs stratified game experiences that depend on the player’s privilege. Someone who identifies as Black and trans will have a distinct gameplay experience; someone who…
