Artistic Interventions into Digital Spaces

Angela Washko's work

While Twitter and YouTube performances often explore the performance of identity as much as they do the artist's political leanings, intervention into digital spaces artworks often have a directly political aim: to transform and disrupt the online spaces the artists interject themselves into. 

The spaces that artists have interjected themselves into are as diverse as Craig's List, online live action role playing games, Reddit, Facebook, what have you. Any online space where people interact, that is public, can be "intervened" in, with varying consequences.

Often, it is the spaces themselves (or more precisely, the politics of the people who inhabit them) that the artists take issue with; it is no coincidence that two of the spaces that two of the artists you are learning about this week are spaces that deal with gaming and war.  In early 2012 Angela Washko founded "The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft" as an intervention within World of Warcraft, the most popular multiplayer role playing game of all time. Instead of  following the quest structure of the game, Washko discussed with players the ways in which they addressed women and how they felt about the concept of feminism. Washko was interested in the impulse of the player-base to create an oppressive, misogynistic space for women within a physical environment that is otherwise accessible and inviting. 

In the video you watched for today, Washko discussed several male players' decision to play female avatars and also got into a discussion with a female player about her belief that if you wear revealing clothing it's your fault that you get raped (hardcore slut-shaming).   

Joseph DeLappe's "dead-in-iraq" began in March of 2006, to coincide with the 3rd anniversary of the start of the Iraq conflict. As he explains on his website: "I enter the online US Army recruiting game, "America's Army", in order to manually type the name, age, service branch and date of death of each service person who has died to date in Iraq. The work is essentially a fleeting, online memorial to those military personnel who have been killed in this ongoing conflict. My actions are also intended as a cautionary gesture. I enter the game using as my login name, "dead-in-iraq" and proceed to type the names using the game's text messaging system. I stand in position and type until I am killed. After death, I hover over my dead avatar's body and continue to type. Upon being re-incarnated in the next round, I continue the cycle. As of 12/18/2011, the official withdrawal date of the last U.S. troops in Iraq, I completed the input of the last 200+ names into the game, for a total of 4484 names."   

Another project of DeLappe's is an intervention into Craigs List, where he: "create[d] a series of ads on Craiglist, the first one as depicted below, posted to Reno Craigslist 'Dictator Seeks New Job!'."

Both of these artists use language to interject themselves into these spaces. Washko uses friendly and curious dialogue in World of Warcraft (much in line with her concept of a diplomatic council), while DeLappe uses the language of memorial and the dog tag in his "dead-in-iraq" intervention. In his Craig's List project, he uses the language and formatting of Craig's List in order to mock the unquestioned authority of a dictator. 

In Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern's Wikepedia interventions, arguably a more playful (yet still subversively political) project, they play with the language of citation itself, questioning in the space of the world's first crowd-sourced online encyclopedia, just who has the authority to speak with authority.  In this way, we see that artists intervening in digital spaces must consider the way language operates in these spaces in order to successfully intervene within them. They must consider how they might use and twist the language of these spaces in order to successfully create a project where their audience might think more deeply about their own prejudices, as well as the boundaries and unquestioned politics of these spaces themselves.

While each of these projects you are studying this week has a rather political bent, as you begin thinking about your own interventions into digital spaces, you could certainly take a more absurdist or playful approach if you don't wish to intervene in a political manner. Either way, though, you'll need to think about what the rules of the game are, so to speak--what is the platform intended for, and how can you bend, twist, or "interject" yourself into the platform in a way that makes viewers think about the platform itself in a new way?

READING/WATCHING FOR TODAY:

• Angela Washko's "Council of Gender Sensitivity in World of Warcraft"  (watch in full)
  Interview with Angela Washko
• Joe DeLappe's "dead-in-iraq"  
  Joseph DeLappe write up
   

• Joe DeLappe's "Assad on Craigslist" 
  Joe DeLappe Assad interview
• Scott Killdall and Nathaniel Stern's Wikepedia Art