About

Over 12 years of art practice I have produced artworks through research in countercultures, conspiracy theories, new-age esoteric practices, speculative and science fiction and fantasy. The consistent strand of inquiry across these interests is a fixation with alternative and utopian ideologies that work against the dominant and often oppressive systems we inhabit. In recent years I have focussed my research toward gaming – play itself is an act of resistance in a world that values utility, efficiency and conformity.

In the increasingly dominant sub-genre of ‘open-world’ video games, players have the freedom to explore expansive interactive fiction-worlds, where mechanics of control and agency are uniquely employed to mediate the participatory experience of a nonlinear narrative form. Yet, despite claims that ‘Games are the defining artform of the twenty-first century’ (Lantz, 2023), much of their poetic potential is limited by an increasingly risk averse industry, preoccupied with technological novelty and unchallenging narrative tropes.

Could these ludic control-systems be repurposed as tools in art practice?

This research will establish a new mode of ludo-poetic practice, experimenting with game mechanics in the development of new artworks that use fiction and play to model and manifest alternative ways of living, thinking and being. Activated by the newly defined field of study ‘fictioning’, outlined by Burrows and O’Sullivan in Fictioning: The Myth-functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy, this project will take an experimental approach to examine open-world game mechanics as tools for ‘assembling new and different modes of existence’ (Burrows and O’Sullivan, 2019) in mixed-media and installation-based artworks.

I will analyse a series of open-world games selected for their exemplary use of key mechanical systems, and experiment with utilising them as tools in my own art practice, developing new approaches for contemporary art to create and reshape worlds of fiction and reality.