Merging performance and intervention within the context of gaming, new media artist Stephanie Rothenberg
demonstrates Pan-O-Matic's latest project that uses audience participation to teach valuable lessons about
the far-reaching environmental devastation and exploitive labor practices caused by the global computer video game
industry. By applying this fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry as a model, Rothenberg
examines our larger relationship to technology as consumers, and how it is intrinsically linked to capitalist models of
technological obsolescence. As we enter the game world of play, our role as participant soon becomes evident: we are
the workers creating the interfaces upon which we have become so dependent. Through role-play and rapidly repeated
movements, we discover the economics of bodies in motion are alive and well in the gaming word regardless of our
post-industrial age.
A workshop, to be held at 5pm in The Lounge at Asbury Hall, will precede Rothenberg's
presentation. Usernomics 1.0 is a collaborative workshop that allows participants to deconstruct found materials,
such as keyboards and other electronic waste, and then recombine their parts and program them to create custom gaming
interfaces. This workshop took place during the Bent Festival NYC at Eyebeam, an arts and technology research space where
Rothenberg has been an artist in residence. Key words: hacking, circuit bending, open source, DIY.
September, 2007 - 2007