Interview with Mary Flanagan

Jess: I’ve been thinking about the idea of works-in-progress and issues of exploration and am wondering what kind of aesthetic possibilities do you see available in an online environment that might not be tangible on a more static platform like cd-roms?

Mary: Most CDROMs have the ability to be networked so that they can at least provide some of the same possibilities as completely networked artworks and games. . . however, I know of few artists at this time who continue to create artistic CDs. Rather, working on the network or in installation/application seems to be the norm. For example, if an artist is using a game engine to make artwork (such as the Unreal engine ) the application and assets may require download or complete distribution as a packaged work. Compare this to a changing and updatable database or applet accessible quickly through a browser, you have distinct differences. However, the dichotomy between “static” and “nonstatic” is not absolute. Most commercial online games, for example, distribute base code on CD, then updates, patches (as well as user created content) online, ends up being a choice for the artist as to what kind of work they wish to make. Some projects are still just too big for the web, too textured, too intense in their processes or 3D graphics.

So the idea of work in progress, in industry is called a prototype, in writing, a draft. There are always different audiences for works-in-progress. A web based project for example can have many testers for the work to receive critique and feedback before it is finished. The scope and scale of which is, quite different from say a studio visit to see an in-progress installation.

In more “static” and “net” based work, both can involve multiple users or multiple readings, and both can be augmented and changed due to the network surrounding them. As an artist I choose to try and do web-accessible work as much as possible to allow the maximum number of user/participants to enjoy the work. Traditional art circles, however, still prefers objects to place into galleries and sell (and buyers, collect), and not something that merely can be accessed on the web. So here, too, economic choices come into play for a variety of artists wishing to sell their work or at least having it seriously considered along with other arts currently housed in more traditional institutions (art objects, film archives, etc).

Regarding aesthetic possibilities, well I personally like the immediate and fluid feeling of a web-based application, the feeling that it can unintentionally occur or happen on the screen while a user thought he or she was just surfing. The unintentionality of simple discovery and the ‘everydayness’ of integrating art into other computer activities is compelling to me.

Jess: Perhaps because I’m researching web fictions written by women, I’m finding your ideas of access and unintentionality resonating with a cyberfeminist thinking. If cyberfeminism, broadly explained as optimism in the “digital turn” combined with feminist thought, (like that of Rosi Braidotti’s), might be said to revolve around a theories of representation (of women), then how might online media like The Adventures of Josie True begin to question the (relationship?) interaction of (enabling?) technologies and women’s lives?

Mary: Well my thinking has changed recently about feminism and media that relies on design + code structures… Instead of matters of representation (issues I worked on in the late 1990s in several essays), my attention has turned towards thinking and reworking computer-media specific things such as ‘game goals’ and ‘architectures’ as important sites for social change and activism. How we participate in digital culture, how we are framed — as consumers or as producers — is fundamental to this notion.

When I worked on Josie, this was not yet my thinking, so developing the Josie character with friends and students was definitely more about representation. Josie is not too thin -she is average. She has often been mistaken for a boy. She is both fashionable and unfashionable. She is Chinese American but also has been referred to as “anime,” which suggests that anime characters are either ‘white’ or a whole other group altogether. Her role models in the game: Ms. Trombone, Science Teacher, and Bessie Coleman, Aviator — are decidedly African American. So here, representing adventurous, smart, and scientific women of colour is very important to enhancing all player’s exposure to ‘what constitutes a hero.’ We simply don’t get enough diverse heroes and this is very important for everyone: man, woman, white, black.

I’m certainly a cyberfeminist. I’m overly optimistic. But I’m not one to believe that new technologies can replace old hierarchies of power — look at who is making the new technologies, and look how they got there. How can this system change? My belief is that by changing who authors systems, there may be some kind of change, at least through empowering and sharing knowledge. In part IT is a knowledge economy. Therefore, this certainly means networking women together to support their success in technological arenas as much as possible as they become authors. I think it also means shifting how we teach technology, as well as who designs hardware and even programming languages, too. . .(these lofty-bordering-on-insane-suggestions can only come from someone optimistic, don’t you think?) One step at a time… : )

Jess: The more I re-read your answer, the more I wonder whether matters of representation are really so different from “game goals” and “architectures.” As you say, changing the authors of systems can mean also changing hierarchies of power. But by changing the authors aren’t we also changing representation? I mean, as a woman thinking about representation, you created Josie with specific goals in mind. Is changing game goals perhaps a further step in this direction?

Mary: Matters of representation I believe can be abstracted to these larger systems and architectures, so yes, changing game goals and larger system designs is a further step in the direction started with games like Josie True. Diversity and variety matters in what we see and how we as players, consumers, and participants are framed. For example, games which promote sharing or have goals of ‘giving everything away’ vs. ‘accumulating’ might offer entirely different perspectives on success in play and, potentially, the real world around us. This may or may not affect the way things ‘are seen’; in a way, it is a kind of ‘getting under the skin’ or surface in ways theorists such Barthes talks about in his Mythologies (among many many others) and what I write about in my work on feminist game design. Because every image, object, sound, or gesture is susceptible to the imposition of meaning, designers must be conscious in all steps of this meaning-making process, perhaps especially when it is completely created from code.

Changing the authors of such systems may indeed alter how such design processes are approached. That’s my hypothesis, but it is only proven in small cases because massive scale social change to change hierarchies of authorship has not yet happened. There is the very real danger of reproducing the status quo. Bell Hooks discusses this in terms of teaching in her 1994 Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, and other feminist thinkers who see radical social change as only possible in changing systems of power.

Jess: How might women destabalise “old hierarchies of power” as interactors with games and as designers/producers of games?

Mary: So how might women and other disenfranchised groups destabalise “old hierarchies of power”? Certainly one way this can happen is through asking different kinds of questions and by asserting different kinds of goals. And ultimately by making work with differing perspectives, values, and communities which bleeds through to larger culture. One of the failures of the feminist movement has been its cohesion to itself. For example, ‘women’s studies’ should not only happen in a certain course but across courses and fields. How many editors of books or art exhibitions are conscious of ensuring equal representation of women, of people of colour, of people with varying functional abilities or interests? Making the tools, knowledge, and context available to all for diverse visions of community, space, place and beyond is an accessibility issue.

As consumers, women already destabilise hierarchies. Look, for example, at the case of The Sims games. Here, fan culture and machinima, as well as re-skinning and unplaying such games, is popular. Gamers re-skin, re-design, and indeed, re-issue popular games such as The Sims and manipulate their own Neopets web pages, offering their own interpretations and inventions for play. It is helpful to know that according to last year’s ELSPA white paper, the typical female gamer in the UK is 30 to 35 years old, plays around seven hours a week and spends £170 a year on games. The positioning of consumption as a game goal in itself is cause for further investigation, if only because it so closely resembles real-world corporate messages and the everyday practices of ‘consumers’ according to Willis, however, “Consumerism has to be understood as an active, not a passive, process ”active, for it is a type of play which also includes work”. Along with consumption, however, critique can come about: a great deal of pleasure is derived from subverting these set norms and exploring the boundaries of what is, and is not, permissible. I’ve linked these subversions in some of my essays to historical models of playing with domestic situations: Victorian doll fiction has been replaced by fan fiction generated by Sims players, and Victorian practices of doll funerals have translated into macabre Sims play with the ability to have the virtual dolls suffer, become malnourished, or even set objects on fire within the ‘normative’ suburban environment.

So, subversion of existing systems, and the making of new examples and experiences, seem to be a few of the approaches we can take as ‘culture jammers’ in a quest to create new models for play, for art, and for culture.

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1 http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml
2 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374521506/002-4660078-6525628?v=glance&n=283155
3 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374521506/002-4660078-6525628?v=glance&n=283155
4 http://www.elspa.com