Natalie Paneng's quirky and cool virtual universe
Johannesburg-based artist Natalie Paneng blends theater, digital art, and performance to create playful virtual worlds that examine online identity and self-presentation.
theater
Chlöe Bass: Without participation, the public falls apart
Through installations like "Wayfinding" and "The Book of Everyday Instruction," multidisciplinary artist Chloë Bass examines how public participation and intimate encounters shape our understanding of shared spaces and human connection.
Kareem Ettouney: Imbuing gameplay with Impressionism
British-Egyptian artist Kareem Ettouney translates fine art sensibilities into interactive systems, transforming Dreams into a canvas where technology meets Mediterranean warmth.
Are videogames ruining Sleep No More?
She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. — To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s
Practice your improv in this videogame theater
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Commedia dell’Arte (PC, Mac) A COLLABORATION BETWEEN STUDENTS AT THE ENJMIN AND EMCA SCHOOLS Surprisingly, improv is about more than Amy Poehler making fart jokes. At the heart of great improv
Cheongsam to merge “virtual theatre” and videogames
Dubbed “virtual theatre” by its creators, Cheongsam is a game about chance encounters and the types of conversations that stretch until 3AM. It’s also about the role players have in creating a game’s story. Cast as a young man named Michael, you spend an evening getting to know an AI-controlled acqu
Fitz Packerton turns packing your bags into a theatrical videogame
The first note of suspicion arises in two boxes sat next to each other on a desk. The label on these boxes is blurred beyond detail by the low-resolution—it’s possible to make out that it depicts a cylindrical instrument, white and red in color. I told myself it must be batteries for the nearby hand
The epic theater of videogames
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (PC, Mac) By Crows Crows Crows Davey Wreden’s follow-up to his videogame satire The Stanley Parable earlier this ye
A play about male clinical depression is now also an interactive story
An Interview is not all black—little pops of colour occasionally surface—but you could be forgiven for thinking that you’ve fallen into a world of blackness. And so you have. An Interview is Manos Agianniotakis’ interactive adaptation of Bryony Kimmings and Tim Grayburn’s play “Fake It ‘Til You Make
Magic Flute reimagines the famous opera as an urban puzzle adventure
I can name few games based on renowned European operas, and even fewer based on famous Japanese adaptations of classic European operas. In fact, only Magic Flute fits the bill. Created by LabLike, Magic Flute is a tile-based puzzle game for iOS set in the world of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic
A videogame adaptation of Hamlet has been turned back into a stage show
To be, or not to be—that is a rhetorical question, and it gets at the challenges facing anyone who wishes to convert Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a videogame. Games are about the ways user choices can shape a narrative and Hamlet—well, let’s just say he prefers to keep his own counsel. Every level mus
An interactive theatre show brings out the capitalist monsters in most of us
Very few people get out of bed and plan to run a horrible sweatshop, but here they are, a collection of young, presumably liberal adults, doing just that. They are participants in Zoe Svendsen’s interactive play, World Factory, at London’s Young Vic Theatre. Audience members form teams. They sit in
Try to master the peculiar lingo of Victorian-era cockney slang in this videogame
Key to acquiring mastery of a foreign language is putting what you learn into practice. The red-faced pressure that overcomes you when trying to speak, say, French to a perplexed native speaker forces your brain to spew out something French-like. Eventually, with enough of this traumatic practice un
In space, everyone can hear you sing along
The Universe is a Small Hat blurs the line between audience and performer.
Uncover the hidden world of a grotesque peep show in Ghost Coin
“A ghost world, to us, is all about this ambiguity between what’s there and what’s not.”
Live-action graphic novel stars sludge-monsters from the planet Zygon
Comicbook commedia dell’arte.
Exploring the seedy underbelly of Velvet Sundown
The heir to DayZ is set aboard a chintzy yacht.
"A Rape in Cyberspace" gets remade for the IRL era
Julian Dibbell’s cyberspace classic is just as relevant as it was twenty years ago.
The future of videogames may be occurring in an old mail office in London
What can we learn from the interactive theater phenomenon?
Puppeteer reminds us that all the world’s a stage
We talk to director Gavin Moore about the fine art of play.