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This game reimagines the glitch aesthetic as an emotional breakdown

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. WHAT NOW? (Browser)  BY ARIELLE GRIMES Arielle Grimes has developed tremendously as an author of videogames over the past year. She has expressed grief, sorrow, kindness, and love through her interactive art. But her first foray into the medium focused on translating the stress she felt around that time into a bite-sized snapshot of her life. Called What Now?, it had you meandering between the landmarks of her room, reflecting on it a piece at a time. If you moved without stopping, allowing all of the…

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Glitch Wizard makes corrupting media as easy as applying Instagram filters

Glitches aren’t just a subcategory of digital art anymore. Adopted and popularized in various forms by everything from Marble Hornets to Game Jolt, the aesthetic has become the latest social media craze to transform average Joes with an iPhone and a Wi-Fi connection into true artistes. And while that may sound like a jaded take on the versatile Glitch Wizard app, it isn’t. It’s a celebration of art’s increasing accessibility, and the chaotic and ephemeral beauty of the internet’s user-generated content. there really is a fair amount of artistry involved  The Glitch Wizard app empowers users to glitch out every piece…

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The Stranger is a "delicate mess" and would rather you left it that way

Every videogame world makes a foreigner of us. As the player, you always come into a new virtual space as a tourist. Through exploration, you learn how to properly maneuver and experience the alien world. Yet one aspect of the foreigner experience is missing from videogames: the true citizens of this alien world don’t mind your tourism. In fact, game designers usually try to make the player’s transition from tourist to citizen as quick, seamless, and painless as possible through streamlined tutorials.  Certain games, like Far Cry 3, literally renders the player a tourist. But by making the foreignness of the player into the…