mygroundzero

// art, feminism and playful multimedia // www.annamariandrea.itch.io // @annamaria0523 //

[mygroundzero]

[mygroundzero]

A.WAY

A.Way is a short texture interactive novel about dissonances, desires and fears.

You play as Ayvee, a girl looking for her real self and struggling between the desire of starting a new life, and the fear of abandoning what she has now and, Tera.The story unfolds through Ayvee narration of her deepest thoughts. In this flow of thoughts and dissonant mood you will decide how Ayvee is going to behave with Tera, or in “jailbreak” situations. Indeed, Ayvee will face lonely escape moments (like smoking or dating a third person) where she could act differently from what she usually does, to overcome the feeling of failure tied to the impossibility to break with Tera and to express her real self. Anyway, while she might want to smoke a cigarettes, she knows Tera wouldn’t approve. This escape moments interrogate players about their set of values and priorities when their choices seem to be governed by opposite feelings: personal needs, and other people’s expectations.

To explore the feeling of cognitive dissonance ­ an emotional situation in which you are overwhelmed with multiple contrasting thoughts that prevent you from being certain about which decision to take ­ every time you will be asked to take choices, four similar options will appear dynamically one after each other, as different dissonant thoughts come to our mind in confused ways.Choices are also timed: like in reality the feeling of not taking action is tied to the time that passes, so in the game there’s a limited amount of time for selecting your option. Nightmares are part of the story too, speaking for Ayvee’s subconsciousness and suggesting something is not working. 

The visual art also contributes to the game aesthetics. Each characters is identified by one animated textures. When both of the characters are in the scenes, the textures overlapped each other creating starving optical effects and evoking the silent fight between two intertwined identities.Special thanks to Irene Camporeale and Anita Verona for the contribution to the design of the first prototype. And also special thanks to We Are Müesli.

Past Exhibition: ICIDS 2016

[mygroundzero]

DADA RECOGNITION, 2016

It is a work I made for Dadaclub.online project by Link Art Center.

It is inspired to Alannah by Paul Citroen.

A reinterpretation of  the “ready made” approach, in the age of facial recognition and photo filters application.

Snapchat profile of the project: https://www.snapchat.com/add/r.paulcitroen

The project is based on a popular mobile application, Snapchat, and the possibility (or failure?) offered by its facial recognition system, able to identify faces also on images of faces (or objects and drawings similar to faces).

I printed a copy of the artwork and then I created a custom profile on Snapchat application (you can follow me here: https://www.snapchat.com/add/r.paulcitroen). In this profile I’m collecting snapchat pictures and video of the artwork, and me with the artwork: the facial recognition system recognizes Alannah’s face and so multiple filters can be applied and overimposed. In the same way the artist added link drawing to the silver gelatin print, so I modify the artwork adding snapchat filters as a further level.

Ongoing exhibition > Dadaclub.online: The Exhibition, March 25 - April 8, 2017, Spazio Contemporanea,Brescia, by Link Art Center http://www.linkartcenter.eu/archives/4354

Catalogue: Link Art Center (Ed), Dadaclub.online, 2017. Paperback, English,Color, 136 pages, 19,05 x 19,05 cm. ISBN 9781326939427)

[mygroundzero]

ART+FEMINISM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 2017 - 1st Milan edition

Selected photo

[mygroundzero]

Motherboard Italia

Siamo stati ad Art + Feminism, l'edit-a-thon organizzato da Wikimedia Italia per rivendicare l'importanza del ruolo delle donne all'interno dell'enciclopedia libera http://bit.ly/2npeVVh

ART+FEMINISM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 2017 - 1st Milan edition

Press Coverage by Motherboard Italia

[mygroundzero]

ART+FEMINISM Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 2017 - 1st Milan edition

I co-organized in collaboration with BASE Milano and Wikimedia Italia the first ART+FEMINIMS Wikipedia Editathon. It is a world wide campaign aimed at overcoming gender gap on Wikipedia, by organizing edit a thon events aimed at creating new Wikipedia articles about female artists and also introducing new female editors to Wikipedia.

The event was focused on the creation of new italian Wikipedia articles about of female artists working in the field of authorial videogames and digital art. The selection of articles I curated for the event, also included exhisting pages to translate from english, but also side voices relevant to the topic art and feminism (for example feminist videogames, videogames directed by women, gender representation in video games, etcetera).

The event started with an introduction I made about the topic and theme of the editathon, followed by a special introduction from Claudia Molinari, visual artist and game designer, co-founder We Are Muesli. 

More details

[mygroundzero]

SPELL

Thermostats allow people to set the temperature they desire, even if personal thermal comfort perception is tied to a number of external stimuli. Here we investigate dependability of people’s thermal comfort, from the multi-sensory features of environment (light colors). We want to prototype a system that influences people’s thermal comfort through other stimuli instead of temperature changing. The preliminary Spell research envisions a smart system for heating control that proactively compensates temperature variations using light color variations, accomplishing both the objectives: to satisfy user request for thermal comfort, while optimizing energy consumption. Two preliminary experiments were made: one demonstrates that people’s perceived temperature is different from the actual temperature in a space; the second one shows how lights color affects the temperature perceived by people. 

As a result we derived preliminary guidelines for the prototyping Spell system envisioning a diverse smartphone interface where we change the parameters of the information required as input and output.

Indeed, the UI design instead of asking for temperature setting as usual, asks people to input their feeling by tapping on the screen. The two color gradient starts changing accordingly (while activiting the rest of the heating-light system): by tapping on I FEEL WARM the light blue increases, the opposite, by tapping on I FEEL COLD.

Project with: Marco Spadafora, Alessandro Nacci, Donatella Sciuto, Margherita Pillan

Publication: The paper can be found in the Proceedings of UbiComp 2014

Conference Poster

[artandfeminism]

This is Who We Are. This is What We Believe in.

In 2013, four friends gathered together to discuss an idea for amplifying the voices of women online and promoting Wikipedia as a site for challenging that silence. That discussion became an initiative called Art + Feminism. 

The steps to encouraging a woman to be heard and to be visible in her community are fraught with resistance and ridicule. Beginning this project, we knew that our role would not only be to empower women - we use the most expansive definition of that term - to edit online but to stand with them as they are challenged by those who do not see value in their voice and who do not see value in them. Art + Feminism is about making Wikipedia better, as a tool for open access to reliable information, but it doesn’t end there. It’s about dismantling systems of thought that ignore the presence and input of women in the room and diminish or erase entirely their place in history.

We don’t see ourselves as masters of social progress or change. Nor are we here for press coverage, or lines on our CVs. (We laughed pretty hard when we were described as a fast growing company. It’s more like a bunch of nerds video conferencing from their bedrooms.) What we are is a group of people brought together by our belief in women and their work. And we’re bound by our wish for women to have all the resources they need to release the full force of their power into the world.

As a campaign and as individuals, we know what it is to be heckled and to have folks make assumptions about our identities and orientations. We know what it is to be ignored. We know what it is to be silenced. We know that many of you reading this, if not most of you, are all too familiar with these experiences. But 4 years ago, we made a commitment to do this work, not for ourselves but for the betterment of representation of all women: Black women, trans women, Bengali women, queer women, Puerto Rican women, cis women, White women, women who struggle economically, women who seek to use their resources to do good in world, women like you.

A wise woman once said that every day you show up, you’re re-educating people as to who you are and what you believe in. Today, for us, is no different.

We believe that feminism is a lens that throws all systems producing inequality into doubt and a reflective process through which we can work to dismantle interconnected modalities of oppression.

We believe in working collaboratively in brave, friendly spaces because liberation is a collective process.

We believe that art is fundamental to the creation of thriving, open societies. So, too, are open access educational resources.  

We believe that representation matters.

We believe that the experiences of women are varied and complex and we value and honor these differences in embodied knowledge.

We see our greatest achievement as a participant walking into a workshop and learning that they can exist on Wikipedia and be a critical convoy of information for women like them and women they might not ever fully understand, but believe in.

We draw inspiration from sheroes past and present: the women of BLM and Idle No More, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Judith Butler, Berta Cáceres, Kathleen Hanna, Dolores Huerta, Malala Yousafzai, Cecile Richards, Nina Simone, Angela Davis, Sandy Stone, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and on and on.

And we intend to enact these beliefs in the world in a spirit of serious joy!

In addition to these beliefs, we hold space for communities of support and accountability. Our growth and development means nothing without you, the hundreds of organizers who work with us and the thousands of participants who have made this initiative a reality. Art+Feminism is a DIY project, and we try to keep it radically open, so that groups can make it their own. As hard as we try to bring excellence to every single task we take on, sometimes we will disappoint. We ask that you give us the gift of holding us accountable when we do. Our openness to feedback is critical to our evolution, though we draw the line only at criticism meant only to obstruct our work or diminish its value. This project, like Wikipedia itself, is a work in progress. And like you, we’re learning as we go. We are Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, McKensie Mack, and Michael Mandiberg, the lead co-organizers of Art + Feminism.

Are you ready to edit with us?

[mygroundzero]

We’re bound by our wish for women to have all the resources they need to release the full force of their power into the world.

[artandfeminism]

This is Who We Are. This is What We Believe in.

In 2013, four friends gathered together to discuss an idea for amplifying the voices of women online and promoting Wikipedia as a site for challenging that silence. That discussion became an initiative called Art + Feminism. 

The steps to encouraging a woman to be heard and to be visible in her community are fraught with resistance and ridicule. Beginning this project, we knew that our role would not only be to empower women - we use the most expansive definition of that term - to edit online but to stand with them as they are challenged by those who do not see value in their voice and who do not see value in them. Art + Feminism is about making Wikipedia better, as a tool for open access to reliable information, but it doesn’t end there. It’s about dismantling systems of thought that ignore the presence and input of women in the room and diminish or erase entirely their place in history.

We don’t see ourselves as masters of social progress or change. Nor are we here for press coverage, or lines on our CVs. (We laughed pretty hard when we were described as a fast growing company. It’s more like a bunch of nerds video conferencing from their bedrooms.) What we are is a group of people brought together by our belief in women and their work. And we’re bound by our wish for women to have all the resources they need to release the full force of their power into the world.

As a campaign and as individuals, we know what it is to be heckled and to have folks make assumptions about our identities and orientations. We know what it is to be ignored. We know what it is to be silenced. We know that many of you reading this, if not most of you, are all too familiar with these experiences. But 4 years ago, we made a commitment to do this work, not for ourselves but for the betterment of representation of all women: Black women, trans women, Bengali women, queer women, Puerto Rican women, cis women, White women, women who struggle economically, women who seek to use their resources to do good in world, women like you.

A wise woman once said that every day you show up, you’re re-educating people as to who you are and what you believe in. Today, for us, is no different.

We believe that feminism is a lens that throws all systems producing inequality into doubt and a reflective process through which we can work to dismantle interconnected modalities of oppression.

We believe in working collaboratively in brave, friendly spaces because liberation is a collective process.

We believe that art is fundamental to the creation of thriving, open societies. So, too, are open access educational resources.  

We believe that representation matters.

We believe that the experiences of women are varied and complex and we value and honor these differences in embodied knowledge.

We see our greatest achievement as a participant walking into a workshop and learning that they can exist on Wikipedia and be a critical convoy of information for women like them and women they might not ever fully understand, but believe in.

We draw inspiration from sheroes past and present: the women of BLM and Idle No More, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Judith Butler, Berta Cáceres, Kathleen Hanna, Dolores Huerta, Malala Yousafzai, Cecile Richards, Nina Simone, Angela Davis, Sandy Stone, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and on and on.

And we intend to enact these beliefs in the world in a spirit of serious joy!

In addition to these beliefs, we hold space for communities of support and accountability. Our growth and development means nothing without you, the hundreds of organizers who work with us and the thousands of participants who have made this initiative a reality. Art+Feminism is a DIY project, and we try to keep it radically open, so that groups can make it their own. As hard as we try to bring excellence to every single task we take on, sometimes we will disappoint. We ask that you give us the gift of holding us accountable when we do. Our openness to feedback is critical to our evolution, though we draw the line only at criticism meant only to obstruct our work or diminish its value. This project, like Wikipedia itself, is a work in progress. And like you, we’re learning as we go. We are Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, McKensie Mack, and Michael Mandiberg, the lead co-organizers of Art + Feminism.

Are you ready to edit with us?

[outofthekitchenarchive]

Out Of The Kitchen, Onto Your Screen, Into The Ether: A Case For An Online Art and Feminism Social Movement Angela Washko, 2014

[kijkdoos]

Techniques relying on hand-based devices such as joysticks, pointers or data gloves, tend to reinforce an instrumental, dominating stance towards the world. Our approach was intended to counter the medium’s bias with a vision of the medium as a channel for “communion” rather than control.

Char Davies http://www.immersence.com/publications/char/2004-CD-Space.html (via kijkdoos)

[onlyloversleftalivefilm]

[rosemaryvan]

Maria. Metropolis. 

[mahliann]

Constricting knowledge: ‘More rigour’, tone policing and white feminism in game studies

I presented three papers at the most recent DiGRA conference in Dundee. I’m an honours student (in Australia it’s an additional year on top of an undergraduate degree, which can work in lieu of a Masters so as to go straight into a PhD program) and this was my first international conference. Before DiGRA, I had already presented at four other Australian conferences (I’ve now presented nine papers since my first in July 2015). I know I’m young in academia, but I do work very hard and I’m not completely inexperienced as my age and qualifications might suggest ~(￣▽￣)

My work and what I care about usually revolves around looking at identity politics in regards to gaming and gaming culture guided by an intersectional feminist sensibility. My training is in philosophy, so I’m most comfortable with argumentative and theoretically heavy work. But I’ve spent the last year trying to unravel these tendencies, so as to shape a more inclusive trajectory of research. I’ve extended myself from my arm-chair ponderings into ethnography, and experimented with my writing to garner a more diverse reading audience. Diversity work is not an intellectual exercise and I see academic traditions as often inhibiting to these objectives. I don’t mean that we all should popularise academic research, but that it’s important to note that sometimes we are limiting ourselves in problematic ways if we only consider the white and masculine institutionalised understandings of ‘rigour’ as the be all and end all of what constitutes ‘good academic work’.

People often comment on my very personal style of writing and some have described it as ‘gonzo’, honest and vulnerable, or as a sort of pilgrimage. I’m happy to use any academic terminology as long as I can get my point across - I guess it’s the philosophy in my blood which compels my work to exist as a conversation which encourages engagement, rather than exist as a static historical artifact.

Every philosophy student at one point studies epistemology, and so I’ve had the privilege of being trained to think about the limitations of ‘objectivity’ (I align with the school of thought that there are ‘degrees of truth’), but the point I would like to draw here is the superficial dichotomy of ‘objective’ against ‘emotional’ and tensions of ‘truth’. Women (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/), people of colour (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/08/stereotype-angry-black-girls-racial) and feminists (http://www.bustle.com/articles/143248-to-the-men-who-call-me-an-angry-feminist-heres-why-you-need-to-stop) and their experiences of pain and mistreatment are consistently dismissed as being ‘overly emotional’. It’s such a common reaction that there’s even a term for people telling women and POC’s to be ‘less emotional’: ‘tone policing’ (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument).

I am particularly tired of being told to make my work ‘more theoretical’ (trust me, the theory is always there, even if I’ve chosen to make it unpronounced so as to focus on something more important). I realise there’s meant to be a role of ‘guiding’ a younger academic to improve her work - but these ‘make it more rigorous’ suggestions are extremely unhelpful and upholds institutionalised whiteness and hegemonic masculinity. Like suggestions of ‘more nuance’ (https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf < I really love this paper), ‘more rigour’ works on the cross-section of ‘connoisseur’ elitism and restrictive ideas of ‘knowledge production’. ‘More rigour’ can be asked by anyone regardless of the quality or style of research in question - you can always ask someone to be ‘more rigorous’. ‘More rigour’ is a positioning of a senior to dominate a lesser scholar - it acts to serve nothing but to establish a violent power dynamic. As women and POCs are already socially dismissed as incapable of ‘being objective’ from being ‘overly emotional’, I observe the ‘more theory, nuance and rigour’ criticisms as another form of discouraging and policing women and people of colour in academia.

So, I presented a paper at DiGRA about Vivian James (Gamergate’s avatar) co-authored with my supervisor. I had been terrified to present this, since I am fully aware of the reaction Gamergate has had to women, feminism, and to criticisms made against their ‘movement’. So I went into this knowing I was going to step on some big angry toes. Furthermore, being a WOC feminist games studies scholar meant that I would eventually pop up on Gamergate’s radar. Depressingly, being a target was inevitable (after briefly uploading the paper, it was dogpiled by Gamergaters: http://imgur.com/a/TB5nP).

It was the second paper I had to present at DiGRA, back-to-back, without caffeine and wicked jet lag. During question time, a well-established feminist scholar suggested to add ‘more theory’ so as to give the paper ‘more substance’. Exhausted (physically and emotionally), all I could muster was a firm ‘thank you’. I’m not hostile towards constructive criticism - I welcome it (as seen in how much I value making my work ‘engaging’). But I was a little shocked that someone who promotes feminist game studies glossed over the fact that she was talking down to a young woman of colour presenting a paper criticising Gamergate. I felt the months of affective labour of preparing for a Gamergate paper reduced into merely being another ‘intellectual exercise’ of academia. 

Moreover, relying extensively on theory is only one approach to feminism. One of my favourite scholars once said that she was excited to see us in game studies moving beyond ‘the feminist paper’ and how young scholars were integrating feminism as simply second nature. Producing feminist work doesn’t always have to be reliant on feminist theory - it boxes in the work feminism aims to do, by maintaining a singular (rather white and classist) ideal of feminism.

We are well aware of the toxic masculinity of gaming and the devaluing of feminist work by wider academia (https://mvlindsey.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/journal-of-broadcasting-media-chess-shaw-2015.pdf). Those who want to make game studies a welcoming space for diverse voices need to be more thoughtful and reflexive of the institutionalised racism and sexism structuring academic practices. New and diverse voices need to be given the room to explore what it means to be ‘new’ and ‘diverse’ - they immediately stop being ‘new’ and ‘diverse’ voices when they are required to be indoctrinated into traditional and hegemonic styles of knowledge production.

(๑꒪▿꒪)*

[mygroundzero]

#SORRYNOTSORRY this is my statement

It has happened, and there’s nothing I can do. I don’t mind to be defined as a feminist or not, but I can’t prevent myself from expressing my opinions, ideas and feelings in every situation I feel hurt by someone or something. 

They taught me to be polite, friendly, gentle and follow common rules. But they didn’t teach me to see woman objectification, to see racism or to appreciate diversity. They didn’t teach me that minorities exist, probably because (even if I recognize my privileged position as a white person), I’m part of them since I’m a woman. 

But now, it’s not anymore the time for being that kind of person. I grew up, my eyes and my mind are open and I’m going to say what I think everytime. I will always do this intelligently and without hurting anybody, because it is my right as a human being. As in the same way it is my obligation to preserve the right of expression and freedom of every human being in this world. 

But the consequences of such behaviour are most of time hard to handle. 

This society IS NOT ready yet.

And as more I’m stronger in defending my idea as a woman (for example about sexism, and especially in close minded context like where I grew up), as more I can feel the hate, real hate, the ignorance and the oppression. I couldn’t imagine that becoming a better women with less fear, paradoxically it would have meant be more vulnerable, or seen as the boring girl who tries “to teach” and unable to take (sexist) joke for fun. ‪

It’s going to be hard, and it’s gonna take time before I’ll be strong enough. 

But I’ll never go back, that’s impossible.

#‎SORRYNOTSORRY ‬‪#‎HATERSGONNAHATE‬

[mygroundzero]

JODI: Variable Art for the ZX Spectrum (Dundee Contemporary Art)

[mygroundzero]

Waiting the days I’ll work just on this.

Since I tried Memento (now Remake), I’ve had a lot of ideas. Indeed, I can’t do 3d modeling, but with this software I have some chance. Maybe.