Queertopia

Concept Text:

queertopia: ai nightmare fantasy will see deconstruction and reformatting of GTA through reskinning characters and assets. Humans will be reskinned with a taxonomy of nonhuman creatures, drawing on queer cryptozoological folklore. Such characters will reference previous works developed for queertopia and include Bigfoot, Mothperson, and Kraken.

Once the mods are implemented, a script will randomly trigger controls to play the game autonomously. Screen recordings of the gameplay will be published on a YouTube channel. Mods and instructions for their implementation will be open-source and published online.

Grand Theft Auto’s codeset influences not only it’s players but also to emerging video formats like automated children’s videos, which co-opt the game’s algorithms to create pseudo-educational videos set to nursery rhymes, many of which retain violent themes of the game and garner millions of views. queertopia: ai nightmare fantasy will use similar methodologies but will use them in order to directly challenge the game itself, inverting the game’s hetero-masculine fantasies of violence and ownership.

Uploads of the game will also challenge YouTube’s algorithms for filtering content, notorious for autonomously flagging LGBT content, uploads will likely face restrictions or content take downs.

All software necessary will be provided by myself.

Bio:

I am a digital artist and technologist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. I was born in Boston, MA and grew up spending much of my time on the internet befriending strangers and finding numerous cyber boyfriends. Using technologies like gaming, augmented reality, the web, and mobile applications, my work explores issues of queerness, visibility, and fantasy. My work has exhibited at queertech.io and FILE festival. I received a BFA in Interactive Arts from Pratt Institute in 2018.