#david blandy

[theresattrpgforthat]

Any games with a lot of collaborative world building?

THEME: Collaborative Worldbuilding

Hello friend! I have so many games for you. At the end of this recommendation post is a list of other posts I've made that are directly related to this theme!

Data, Nerves + Acquisition, by Ben Newbon

Based on the Beak, Feather & Bone SRD, this game gives you a way to build out your world and develop communities within it organically, all the while creating your own stories and lore to fill in the gaps.

Built on another critically-acclaimed city builder, DNA uses a deck of cards to generate a city and the factions that live within it. Players will generate Data, which corresponds to a person or faction; Nerves, which corresponds to the faction the characters interact with; and Acquisition, which represents what each new faction’s goals are. At the end of the game you should have a city that is criss-crossed with territory, relationships, and threats that give the city a unique feel.

Data, Nerves + Acquisition is designed to create a cyberpunk or futuristic city, although the creator states that the setting is still rather flexible.

In This World, by Ben Robbins

Nations have borders. Police have badges. Dragons breathe fire. You work for money. That's the world we've come to expect. But in this world—the world we create together—we can question those assumptions and imagine alternatives. And instead of just making one world, we'll make a whole string, each exploring a different slice of what could be… all in a few hours.

In This World is a fast game of big creativity, by Ben Robbins, the creator of Microscope and Kingdom. It is designed from the ground up so that anyone can play it, even someone who has never played any kind of story game before, and have no problem just jumping right in.

It overcomes the usual challenge of inventing ideas out of the blue by starting with a framework of real world facts, things we already know, and then inviting players to stand those ideas on their head and imagine how the world could be different.

In This World is designed for making more than one world at once, using a series of speculative questions - a number of what-if’s. What if vacations were much more common? What if everyone in this world travelled by train? What if this world had libraries for more than just books?

In This World is also designed to be no-prep and GM-less, which gives everyone equal control over the creativity of the world, and doesn’t require a lot of work or set-up beforehand.

Gathering Storm: Origins, by David Blandy

This is the time of feeding, A steady glut, Of fruit and labour That has made them drowsy and complacent. The store grows, Of their alien fruit While the others, Hear whispers Of a reckoning. A different time is coming. But how will the Authority fall?

By placing your characters on a faraway planet, Gathering Storm: Origins hopes to tell a story that has parallels to a real series of events that happened in Geneva, Switzerland in ours. It uses a deck of cards and an oracle to create characters as well as events that these characters will have to navigate to determine how the people of your planet will react to the actions of an Authority that demands the production of their Alien fruit, even though that production is to the planet’s detriment. If you want a futuristic metaphor for political actions that have had a very real effect on our world, you might want to check out Gathering Storm.

Planetes, by Cambilla Zamboni

Welcome to Planétes, a language-learning tabletop role-playing game in which you will create cities and communities, and you will become Dwellers and Wanderers. While shaping and exploring your communities, you will discuss and compare your values, and decide whether to stay in your city or explore new ones. Throughout this process, you will use the target language to interact with other communities, enriching your perspective and reflecting on your experience without relying on familiar structures. 

This is not just a roleplaying game - it’s also a language learning exercise meant to be used in a room of language learners, and it’s designed to work with very large groups. Multiple tables create their cities and their characters, and then each city sends one Wanderer to another city to visit and learn about the culture. Wanderers will ask the new cities questions, and the city members will do their best to answer. The Wanderers return to their home cities with the new information, coloured by their character’s worldview and values. At the end of the game, each character will have to decide to either stay in their city of origin, or move to another city - and the migration that happens will change core elements of the city.

Planétes exists on a single brochure, making it easy to print and hand out to a large group of people. If you want a game that works for large groups and can double as a learning exercise, I recommend this game.

The First Epoch, by Tib Winterfield.

Work with your players to build out the pantheons of your world, give them the gift of creation and allow them to put their own mark on the world. 

Completely system agnostic, a light-weight and simple game to help you build a co-operatively build your campaign world. 

The First Epoch is a world-creation game from the perspective of the gods, creating a mythology alongside a series of truths that will exist in the world that you create. Each player embodies a god and chooses specific domains. Every turn, one player will establish truths about how their domains work, and then roll Fate dice (dice with + and - on them instead of numbers) to determine the impact these truths have on the world. At the end of the game, there is a twist that will challenge all of the gods, and leave you with an end-state that you cannot predict.

If you really like mythology and want to re-write physics, magic, or how death works in your game, this is probably the game for you.

City Upon A Hill, by Hunter J Allen

City Upon A Hill is a table top collaborative city building game for any number of players. It requires a full deck of playing cards and note taking tools.

This is a game about building up a city and watching it fall. Work with your friends to populate a city full of life, commerce, legends, traditions, and secrets, and then bring the city to its knees through death, conflict, deficit, and crumbling infrastructure. Bring the city to a peak during its Boom era, and guide the city down to ruin in its Bust era, creating a setting rich in history and tragedy. Draw cards to decide the city's fate, working together to weave a tapestry that tells the story of your City Upon A Hill.

City Upon A Hill is divided into two phases: Boom & Bust. Boom follows events and details that define the city’s success, and reflects a heyday of some kind. Bust marks the decline of the city, through a series of unfortunate events and changes that affect the citizens’ well being. The game is played using a deck of cards, with the first Joker draw sparking the transition to the Bust, and the second Joker draw ending the game. I think this game is a really interesting way to create the history of a once-great city, baking in information about industry, tourism, infrastructure, and economic changes that affect the city and likely also the world around it. If you want a game that has somewhat of a melancholy ending, I recommend City Upon A Hill.

Our New Neighbours, by Whimsy Machine

In this small village, at least a few hours’ drive from any city of note, a small community has grown a bizarre polyp. As spring turns to summer, the roiling heat hatches the eggs of a startling development. New neighbours scuttle and squirm and gallop from the bushes and dirt and into unlocked sheds, messy mudrooms, and stinky attics of the village. Mutants are here, they’re weird, and they’re not sure what to bring to the potluck.

This is a collaborative storytelling, community-building, and map-making game, telling the unraveling tale of a village beset by oddities. The players take on non-specific roles, occasionally dipping into the voice of individuals, to weave something larger together.

Our New Neighours uses both a deck of cards and polyhedral dice to flesh out your map. The dice are first rolled onto a piece of paper to determine where on the map specific locations can be found, and the numbers rolled will determine how various places feel about the new arrival of Mutants. The cards are used to both generate mutations for your characters, as well as their needs. Once you have these defined, the cards will be used to generate events that may help or hinder the mutants - and prompt you as the players to respond.

Other Recommendation Posts To Check Out…

Two-Player Worldbuilders

World-Building & Roleplaying

Town-Builders

Map-Making Games

[zedecksiew]

TO PUT AWAY A SWORD

David Blandy + Daniel Locke's post-apocalyptic hopepunk TTRPG ECO MOFOS is back from the printers. Meaning it will soon be in our hands.

Am fairly hyped for it, because I wrote an adventure!

To Put Away A Sword is about the woes of building a home on poisoned earth. The terrible powers that hurtled us to the end of the world continue to bear bitter fruit in your garden.

You are villagers living under the shadow of a fallen giant mecha. Its reactors and warheads leak into your groundwater, poison your goats. What will you do about it? What can you do?

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Mechanically it is a pointcrawl around your local valley. Not super complex, design-wise; but I was pleased with my gimmick solution for mapping both the adventure's dungeons:

Grab a mecha figure, pose it, place it on the game table; each part of the figure corresponds to a location in the dungeon key. Solves for stuff like relative orientation.

Easy!

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To Put Away A Sword is me making a mecha adventure.

Disclaimer: I am not a mecha nerd. I am unfamiliar with most of the genre. Anything I know about Gundam I've absorbed by osmosis.

I was mainly into giant robots in childhood. Receiving a Macross figure for my birthday. Pouring over the manual for The Crescent Hawks' Revenge, which my brother left behind:

While I was not much a fan of mecha, I was very much a fan of Evangelion. I spent my middle teens obsessed with it. The biomechanical, pseudo-mystical stuff; the teen angst. I wanted to be Shinji. I thought trauma was so cool.

So cringe. Anyway:

One of the inspirations for To Put Away A Sword is the survivors-rebuilding-a-town-and-planting-rice sequence in Thrice Upon A Time; probably my favourite part of the whole franchise, now.

The joy and difficulties of trying to build your paradise in the weird ruins of the old world:

Yeah, the adventure has a lot of Evangelion in it. There's a Nerv HQ analogue to explore. There's a content warning for child soldiers.

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The other inspiration for To Put Away A Sword is this piece of box art, an accessory set for Macross's iconic Stonewell Bellcom VF-1 Variable Fighter:

I don't know what this kind of arrange-your-missiles-in-front-of-your-fighter-jet photo is technically called. Hardware porn parade?

You see it often enough. Here's a real-life photo of the Lockheed Martin F35 Joint Strike Fighter:

Fairly or not, in my head I associate mecha with seeing copies of Jane's Defence in airport magazine racks. The genre feels like such a natural way to riff on the hyper-charged corpo-military-industrial complex.

After the brush war ends, and the natural resources extracted, and the ethnic cleansing concluded, and the profits announced, who gets to clean up after a Raytheon missile?

In To Put Away A Sword---you do.

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Ultimately, as always, I am writing and designing from my lived experiences.

See that? The gas flare from the Hengyuan Refining Company? It is about 200 metres from my living room.

That gas flare surfaces constantly in the stuff I make. As I write this post I am breathing its acrid chemical smell. My nose itches. I was asthmatic as a child; I seriously worry about cancer, nowadays.

At night it lights up the sky like Barad-dur.

The plant obviously and continuously flaunts regulations. We've tried lodging complaints: with its corporate management; with the Department of Environment. Nothing has worked so far.

"A home on poisoned earth" is a visceral fact of my life.

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To Put Away A Sword is wish-fulfilment, I guess? In the world of the adventure, at least, the forces that are poisoning your home are post-peak oil.

It is nice to imagine a reality where a kind of survival and flourishing is still possible. My partner Sharon and I talk a lot about imagining hope.

Last month she bought this small mecha-looking thing. A wireless camera! She built a little hut for it on our garden wall. It is trained, 24-7, at the gas flare.

Environmental activists we've met say video evidence of emissions is important. We'll see. We imagine it helping.

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Anyway. David just sent me this photo of my adventure, in print:

Looking good. I hope folks play it and enjoy it.

Preorder ECO MOFOS and its adventure bundle >>>HERE<<<

[thelostbaystudio]

Hey folks,

the pre-launch KS page of OUTER RIM: UPRISING is live! ORU is a bundle for the sci-fi survival horror RPG Mothership. The bundle is packed with 15+ 100% original entries from seasoned indie Mothership designers. All items are 1 Edition (which means the new one!) compatible. Below is some info on the bundle and pics of some entries.

OrU builds a huge setting, at the fringes of the galaxy, where corrupt corps fight rebel factions. Each item of the bundle can be used independently, but the items are also tied together by a common implied setting, sharing NPCs, story lines etc. A Campaign Handbook acts as the connective tissue of the bundle: adding factions, procedures, locations etc.

Half of the bundle items are written in a system neutral way, and can be used with any RPG.

We've just ignited the pre-launch page here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelostbay/outer-rim-uprising, if you dig the project give it a follow, as indie publishers it means a hell of lot to receive the community support.

About this, if you are a blogger, streamer, podcaster and want to talk about this, see drafts or organize an actual play please reach out we'd be happy to help.

Below are some details on a couple of entries, they are sick!

The Hunger in Achernar, zine by D. Kenny (designer of Nirvana on fire)

Survive the void-haunted halls of a cursed derelict; solve the mystery of a missing ship, an experimental hyperdrive test, and a cultist plot; or save the galaxy from a taint leaking through a crack in the universe. Choose one in “The Hunger in Achernar”, a MOTHERSHIP RPG adventure.

BLINK, zine by David Blandy (designer of Eco MOFOS!)

In this short guide to faster-than-light travel, we’ll show you how to bring the mind-bending possibilities of instantaneous jumping between two distant points in space to your game.

Rusted to the Core, zine by Chris Airiau

The androids on Poe-V Station are on strike. Descend through the gas giant’s toxic clouds to uncover how the source of this disruption goes deeper than worker mistreatment. A faction-based adventure.

Surviving Machine parts, zine by Zach Hazard Vaupen

Out in the fringes of the system, a type of cybernetic implants called Machine Parts are popular with those who are savvy enough to find and afford them. Commonly made with recalled corpo tech and stolen military/alien technology, these implants are highly illegal and especially dangerous. This document covers 12 different Machine Parts and their consequences. Can you survive Machine Parts?

Sentience Assessment Procedure, player facing accessory, by Nyhur (Alien Armory) and IKO

SAP cutting-edge, neuro-semantic analysis technology allows management, officials, and security personnel to perform human/android triage effectively. SAP toolkit is portable, works in any-G environment, and can also be performed remotely.

Outer Rim: Uprising Campaign Handbook, zine by all the designers of the bundle

The connective tissue of the bundle

I'll stop here :) that's roughly one third of the items included in the bundle, I'll share more info in the next few weeks

Give it a follow here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelostbay/outer-rim-uprising

[mortphilippa]

I’m working on a new dungeon/ adventure site for the Eco Mofos jam! Eco Mofos is a futuristic weird punk nsr style game by David Blandy (who stresses it is NOT depressingly grimdark despite being mildly post apocalyptic!)

I’m working on an idea for an abandoned android factory. I used Molomoot’s crossword dungeon generator tool to create a first pass at the layout and get some inspiration for the different areas of the factory.

Then, I used DungeonScrawl to create a simple map with some general ideas, which I will translate into my own isometric map once I finalise my room descriptions.

I think it’s looking pretty good so far!

[nemman-u-l]

larry achiampong & david blandy

[radicalbotanicals]

Videogames as Simulation for Genetic Trauma

I have been a gamer my entire life, which is common for people of my generation, the medium growing and aging with us over the decades.   I remembered being 7 years old and my cousin thrusting a controller in my hand to play a game far too graphic and complicated for my underdeveloped mind to understand. The game in question was Resident Evil 4, an entry in several games following different heroes as they fight to survive against the failed experiments of a faceless corporation hell-bent on creating bioweapons without regard for how much damage they wreak on the world. Resident Evil is developed by Capcom, a Japanese company which would be intimately familiar with the themes of mass-destruction and body horror as is ever-present in Japanese culture for obvious reasons post-World War II. The ramifications of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have inspired Japanese media from Akira to Godzilla, and continues to influence creative works till this day as it shapes so much of modern Japanese identity.

It came as a surprise to me to come face to face with one of these games while experiencing Genetic Automata by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy at the Wellcome Collection this past week, particularly the 5th entry in the series which took place in a fictional state of Africa and featured zombie characters that unfortunately invoked a problematic racialised image that was immediately apparent to American audiences. Capcom tried to rectify the situation by adding zombies of different races to the hordes of NPCs, but the damage was done, and game was deemed “controversial” by news sources and players alike.  What we have in the second video series “A Lament for Power” is the tale of Henrietta Lacks a story that I was familiar with prior to viewing the video but was recontextualised by the visuals and thought-provoking statements of the video. Henrietta is speaking to us, sounding calm, but disappointed, as her very cells were used again and again and again for various scientific experiments that have borne much fruit and have saved countless lives. Her cells are perhaps the most unique in the world, as they can replicate infinitely. This is represented by a digitised blank city, slowly being enveloped by this massive black dome, her cells multiplying with no stop in sight. These sequences are intercut with the African zombies of Resident Evil 5 – diseased and malicious looking but being re-purposed to emphasise how black bodies are treated as fodder for our world’s betterment.  In Resident Evil 5, you shoot these NPCs, no questions asked, and their state is once again a sacrifice for the villain’s (a white man) “higher plan” which is to become a god. Both the hero and the villain alike both treat the NPCs the same, as insignificant, as a by-product, as a means to an end….which is eerily similar to how our real-life medical community has always treated black bodies, despite the reason being cited as “for the greater good”.

The other exhibition, Third World: The Bottom Dimension, was an interactive experience that spoke to the gamer in me, though it did not play by rules I was used to. A reality created with afro-indigenous experiences in mind, I found myself wading through a cold world where my character, an amorphous humanoid figure, was forced to repeat the same tasks repeatedly, harvesting crystals in a finite amount. I likened it to the destruction of Brazil’s beautiful lands and the colonisation of their culture into one streamlined and deemed “acceptable” by the hegemonic masses.  The fact that you are doomed to repeat the cycle, being asked “Have you seen everything?” made me believe the trauma was becoming ingrained, and recording it was like creating a digital memory of the very damage being done, uploaded to a shared neural network.

It was reminiscent of a project I had encountered back in Toronto for the ImagineNATIVE festival in 2018. I played several games featuring imagined realities based on indigenous myths, some stories retelling the trauma experienced by various peoples, one was an attempt to teach a new generation the Ojibwe language through interactive VR, a response again to the alteration and erasure of an entire people’s way of life, again inflicting a sort of lasting brand upon the very DNA of those shared peoples.

Genetic trauma is something we should continue to investigate, and I believe videogames are perhaps one of the best mediums to impart these experiences upon people. The interactive nature automatically puts the player in the position of both being in control and unable to fight against the outcomes programmed into the game. It creates a deep link between the characters and players that is hard to forget once the game ends. I can think of several games that already explore this topic, one being the Metal Gear Solid series, which was also part of Genetic Automata’s assemblage. It asks the question of what if one’s existence did not belong to them, instead as a tool to be used for the purpose of shadow organizations beyond their understanding in wars they have no choice but to fight in. What if you were the weapon, and your DNA was carefully cultivated as the clone of the perfect soldier? Not only that, but what if your max life was artificially meant to end before 40 years old? Again, coming from a Japanese game studio, you can see why so many creatives are asking these questions.

A meme describing the different soldiers pertinent to the series (Unknown source). The game is steeped in political conspiracy and meta-physical philosophy.

I think we will see more and more games of this type being developed, and the ability to remix existing content to recontextualize it such as seen in Genetic Automata, is a powerful tool indeed. The digital world acts as a simulation we can enter at anytime, a sandbox we can shape into empires and dystopias of our choosing.  I believe experiencing both ends of the spectrum is important, and I am perhaps a testament to how videogames have shaped my identity and made me question my own genetic trauma passed down by my indigenous ancestors.

[aspiringactresss]

still from Dust to DNA by Larry Achiatpong and David Blandy

[rubbernecked]

David Blandy, The World After original cutouts, 2020

[simichiamano]

Larry Achiampong & David Blandy Finding Fanon 2, 2015

[fancypantsrecords]

Various Artists - ManiFesto: Hip-Hop For Ambience Synesthesia | Monster Siren Records | 2021 | Black

[theresattrpgforthat]

hi there! do you have any recommendations for what to check out in the TTRPGS for trans rights Florida bundle? there's so many of them I don't know where to start

THEME: Mint’s Faves from the Florida Trans Rights Bundle

Damn, you beat me to the punch! I’m very excited to talk about these recommendations, hold onto your hats!

Disclaimer: Yes, I am aware that both Wanderhome and Thirsty Sword Lesbians are good games. I agree with you, they are good games and you should play them. I figured I’d shed a light on some games that are not the two games that are consistently brought up every single time someone mentions this bundle. If you haven't yet bought the Florida Trans Rights bundle, you can buy it here!

Eco-Mofos, by David Blandy.

ECO-MOFOS!! is a mid-future ecopunk ruin-delving survival game, as player characters (PCs or Punks) seek a safe homestead to start a new community, Weirdhope not Grimdark.

Around two hundred years ago, everything went to shit. The wealthy, who created this mess, fucked off to Mars while the lucky ones hid in vast underground bunkers. We were left to fend for ourselves on the surface, eeking out an existence in the broken world they left behind, searching for remnants of a past world to help us survive, searching for a place to call home.

Play a group of misfits who have found each other in the wastes and ruins of the fallen world. The past is just a hazy legend, the story scattered over thousands of usb sticks and servers, but the future is there to be written.

Blandy has niche ideas that slap, including Lost Eons, Lunar Echos and this game. Eco Mofos is designed to run off of the same rules as games like Into the Odd and Cairn, two rules-light OSR systems that get you to the table fast and force players to think creatively. There’s an Adventure Template also available for folks who want to make their own adventures, and a game jam that’s going on right now as well, so you’re really primed for a maelstrom of content if you get into this game!

18XX Dreams, by Deep Light Games.

THE DREAM REALM WELCOMES YOU: This land has always been here, visited by some, forgotten by many. Something changed. An increasing number of people have been waking with fantastical ideas and feelings. Now, dreams are becoming more solid: books, paintings, scores… 

The barrier is thinner. Some are trapped here, some search for what they can’t reach elsewhere, some just roam, exploring and helping others. What meaning is hidden in your dreams?

DREAMS is a 24XX microgame. See more at jasontocci.itch.io/2400 or make your own using the SRD. 

This is a quick game, only 4 pages long, and is deeply surreal. Each 24XX game uses the same basic rules - roll a d6 for most things, with bigger and smaller dice for skills and hindrances - but the creators of these games usually find one or two special rules to make the game unique. This one includes Emotions that can feed into player Traumas, changing the worlds the characters travel through and affecting a character’s arc. There’s also steps for creating maps, which are common in OSR games, although less common in 24XX (which is odd, considering it was birthed from OSR). 

My favourite thing about these 24XX games is the roll tables provided for the GMs, giving quick ideas for plots and encounters, making this game runnable with little to no prep.

A Diner at the End, by Bammax Games.

You find yourself seated at a table among a group of people you have never met before, in a place that feels…familiar. You have never been here, and yet the atmosphere is comforting, disarming. It feels a bit like home.

A Diner at the End is a collaborative, improvisational storytelling game that invites at least two players to share the experiences, dreams, and regrets of characters whose time has been spent. Players take on the personas of people across space and time, using a standard deck of playing cards as a means to guide their characters' conversations and reflections.

This game celebrates the lives we lead—in all of their joys and sorrows—and challenges players to find contentment in the limited time afforded to us all.

Getting this game as part of the bundle doesn’t just get you the game, it also gets you the Menu Print version, which can be really handy as it provides you with character ideas. The game itself uses a deck of cards to prompt players to recall their memories prior to their death, holding onto a card that may be the last memory they carry with them onwards. This game has the potential to be deeply emotional, and yet the entire game fits on one page. 

To Care is to Cairn, by Kai Medina.

Our town is changing. 

We are left with artifacts that hold us to the past. They seem to betray history by breaking, altering, and growing beyond a generation. This is not a betrayal. We do not expect the past to hold such power over the present, and we forget that the present accounts for history just the same. Rubbish will always forge itself into a monument, and we will always be a part of that.

To Care is to Cairn is a world-building tabletop roleplaying game that carries players through a civilization of their making, from a bird's eye view of once everyday objects. Artifacts will become part of a tapestry to a community's developing history, using real world archaeological influence. This 40 page game can be played as its own one-off session, or as a tool to add complexity to approaching established campaigns.

This game is inspired by The Quiet Year, which I also adore. It is perfect for combining with a longer campaign - if you want to create your own world for Thirsty Sword Lesbians, this would be an excellent way to do it! You’ll track a number of events and brainstorm how they affect artifacts over the course of time using a deck of cards.

Also… you can play this game as a precursor to my game Mischief by Moonlight, a game about artifacts trapped in museums, and the small gods that inhabit them. 

Bump in the Dark, by jexjthomas.

It's 1994 in the region of the fictional Ontonagon Peninsula known as "Iron Country," a belt of mining towns barely clinging to life. These towns are surrounded on all sides by the Sylvan Wilds, a forest known for old-growth pines and strange happenings. All of Iron Country seems to be teeming with the supernatural, a fact those in power would like to conceal.

You are a hunter, and you’ve promised to keep regular people safe from the horrors in the darkness. Will you stand strong with your found family and community or will you sacrifice yourself to spare the ones you love? Will you be lost trying to find solace wherever you can?

Thrilling, gritty, and utterly human, Bump in the Dark is a tabletop roleplaying game about a group of people who’ve dedicated their lives to hunting and dealing with monsters. There are gruesome attacks, tense investigations, nasty cryptids, nefarious factions, powerful demons, action-packed showdowns, and regular folk caught in the middle.

I’m a little bit feral about Forged in the Dark games, I love how focused they are and how they can cycle between moments of intense action and downtime periods where characters can explore more personal storylines. What makes this even better is the inspiration it takes from the Redacted Materials system of External Containment Bureau, in that the players will use clues to help figure out what exactly they’re up against.

I also fucking love monster games. 

Games in this bundle that I’ve recommended in the past

Visigoths vs. Mall Goths, by Lucian Khan.

Europa Base, by a grumpy little critter.

No Sacrifice Without Blood, by hyphenartist.

Gubat Banwa by makapatag.

[thelostbaystudio]

OUTER RIM UPRISING launches in one week, and today we're super proud to share the reveal video!

ORU is a massive bundle for the Sci-Fi horror RPG Mothership, it's an extensive setting, and a toolkit to build and run campaigns.

ORU is filled with adventures, modules, tools, player facing accessories, packaged in a beautiful boxed set.

It's brought to you by a gang of indie designers: Christian Sorrell, Nyhur, Zach Hazard Vaupen, Marco Serrano, Josh Domanski, David Edward Kenny, Tim Obermueller, Chris Airiau, Alfred Valley, David Blandy Victor J. Merino, AND IKO.

We've been putting a lot of love and work in this box/bundle, we wanted to create something special for gamers and Sci-Fi enthusiasts, and we hope you'll like it.

If you dig the project you can give it a follow here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelostbay/outer-rim-uprising

The amazing video is by Holly Jencka!

[nemman-u-l]

david blandy

[connectza]

#LitWednesday - Larry Achiampong

We recently had a chat with British-Ghanaian artist, Larry Achiampong about his artwork and performance style.

Could you please give us a brief introduction to yourself and your work?

My artistic practice involves both solo and collaborative projects that are represented in the form of installations, objects, visual or audio-based archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas that connect class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity.

I feel that the way I work is very much like a Dj or a crate-digger in that I search for histories and stories, and as a result of these findings I interweave new possibilities or versions into these moments. For example, the project ‘Meh Mogya’ (2011) is a confluence of audio samples from my parent’s record collection of Highlife Music, a sort of self-portrait that traces my Ghanaian heritage through an art form that was once used as a political tool of the nation’s pride.

When and how did you begin the journey into live art performance?

I like to view aspects of my upbringing as having a large influence on the way I view and conceive performance works. I come from a working-class background and my mother and father used to take my siblings and I to church every Sunday. We mostly went to Ghanaian, Ashanti-Pentecostal style churches that involved infectious, bold, energy-driven testimonials from the lead pastor/s. Of course, this is hugely connected to my latest video work ‘Sunday’s Best’, but in a retrospective essence it was here that I first saw the body used as a communicative tool; hand/bodily gestures, to dance, to spoken word and so on. My uncle used to live with the family when I was a child, and he was one of the first DJs to mix Highlife music with Hip-hop into his sets. I never went to many performances, however I would be fixated on his actions when he practiced his (vinyl-only at the time) DJ sets and crafted mixtapes at home. I think that is something that people manage to really miss when it comes to DJ’s and performances…those nuances of focus between the DJ, the sounds they choose and the marriage of collaged sounds. And in my teenage years there were always friends who were building rhymes or making beats using FL Studio (Fruity Loops) or reason. This was at the height of the Garage sound, moving into Grime. People would refer to their bedrooms as the ‘studio’, and the bedroom would be turned into this space where we would pour our energy and flex that hype – that in itself had a spirit of performance to it.

Could you please take us through Ph03nix Rising: The Mogya Project? What inspired it, and how did it come about?

Ph03nix Rising is a project that I conceived during my 2015-16 Sound & Music Embedded residency at the British Library. Following ‘Meh Mogya’ and ‘More Mogya’ and my focus on investigating sound within a Ghanaian context, I became interested in opening the framework by researching audio samples from communities across nations throughout West Africa. And so with access to the British Library’s World and Traditional Music Archive I spent time listening to a range of material - early Edwardian-era audios through to contemporary field recordings. And so similarly with the Mogya projects, I sampled and created new sounds from the archival material. Around that same time I just so happened to be playing a videogame called Xenoblade Chronicles X – a futuristic science-fictional game that involves humans setting up shop and colonising an alien planet through war and pillaging. I found parts of the story both troubling and intriguing in the same breath, but I also found that there was a relationship with the colonial context of the audios that I had sampled, and so I came up with this idea that I would use some of the visuals in this virtual landscape and couple them with the effected sounds that I had generated. This was coupled with a wordplay (that features in the video component of the performance) creates a manuscript of intergenerational colonial legacies.

The choice to document history and identity using science fiction created an interesting contrast to the narrative of the performance. Could you please tell us more about that?

I think where my practice is situated there’s a strong marriage with research that working with performance (and the body) became a natural platform to see how the archive could be activated, especially from the point of view of identity. For example, I also wear this garb during the Ph03nix Rising performance in the form of a spit sock hood, and a disposable boiler suit. I invited this into the performance as I felt there was an opportunity for me to deal with a psychological trauma that many black people (myself included) go through. Over the years I have experienced various acts of violence inflicted by the police due to having a black body, and at the young age of 16 I was arrested because I was black. I can vividly remember a lot of the distress and even hysteria that I went through - being placed within that jail cell, alone, I tried to calm myself and I just couldn’t. Its probably the most scared I have been in my life. My clothes were taken for forensics and I was made to put on the exact type of boiler suit that I am wearing in the performance. So I am on the one hand dealing with a history that is traumatic, personal, and interpersonal, whilst at the same time contemporary, since this kind of thing (and worse) is still happening in 2017. The use of the spit sock, a primitive degrading tool of oppression in this context then becomes a no brainer – it is frequently used by law enforcement throughout the west and due to black people being disproportionately represented at all stages of the criminal justice process, situations like that which happened to Ik Aihie are going to continue.

You make numerous references to Frantz Fanon in a lot of your work. Where did the interest come from, and can you tell us more about his influence in your work, and the importance thereof?

I came across Fanon’s work during my formative years, I was doing a BA in fine art (2002-05) and you could say I was finding it really hard to fit into that environment - I was studying in a place where there were fewer working class or black people and so I didn’t feel understood on a range of levels. I had a couple of great tutors whom I would talk to about how I was feeling and Peter Owen (who co-ran City Racing gallery) recommended looking into the work of Fanon. I read ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ and immediately found a space where I could begin to locate what was happening with regards to my black body being in the crosshairs of the white gaze. So although the ‘Finding Fanon’ collaboration with David Blandy in its title is dealing with a unique perspective on Fanon’s ideas and lost writings, I would certainly say that some of my past projects and works have also been influenced by his writings. You can find such connotations in the ‘Cloudface’ motif I employ from ‘Lemme School You’ through ‘Cloud’, ‘Glyth’ and even ‘Underdog’.

Where can people access you, and your work?

You can check out my website: larryachiampong.co.uk, I’m showing work in the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale from May 13th through November 26th. I’ll soon be releasing a new audio project on vinyl, its untitled, but you can stream it here. ‘Sunday’s Best’ will be screening at the BFI this month on the 31st of March. David Blandy and myself will also be screening the entire Finding Fanon Trilogy at Tate Modern on the 24th of May.  

Images: courtesy of Larry Achiampong and ICA

Larry was part of the ICA Live Art Festival in February 2017.

[kattjarvisnotebook]

larry achiampong. david blandy. [artists]

Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, UK)  Achiampong’s practice uses sound, live performance, and imagery to explore representations of identity in the digital age and the dichotomies found within a world dominated by facebook/tumblr/youtube-based cultures.

David Blandy (b. 1976, U.K.) Blandy produces video, performances and comics that deal with his problematic relationship with popular culture, highlighting the slippage and tension between fantasy and reality in everyday life.  

[performingonline]

Performance for Multi-User Online Environments (Before COVID-19)

I’m Angela Washko and I am currently teaching a course called Performance Art (In The Expanded Field) at Carnegie Mellon University and have recently had to switch to teaching remotely - a switch that comes maybe more naturally to me than others because of my experience participating in the net art community and operating as a performance artist specifically within online environments. Before everyone was forced to work remotely because of an international pandemic, many artists were already thinking about the internet as a context for performance art.  I wanted to put together a resource focused on artists who have been doing the work of thinking about the specificity of virtual spaces as sites for performance and making work mindful of the unique qualities of the contexts they operate in. I hope that this list of works could be a resource for educators and artists who are interested in looking at artworks by individuals who have been thinking very intentionally about performance in networked contexts.

This list includes artists performing for webcam, artists performing in virtual environments, and artists performing for social media. It specifically focuses on performance, and excludes works of net art that do not contain performance-for-the-internet.  The list also primarily focuses on performance works that are made without the use of expensive equipment or access to institutional spaces (although I know there are some exceptions on this list). Also - it is in no way complete or comprehensive! 

*This list does not include the many artists who perform for video and upload their performances online - UNLESS the artist is specifically thinking about engaging with the digital audience and not prioritizing the gallery as a context. 

**Sexually explicit or violent content that may be uncomfortable for some viewers and situations

Annie Abrahams and Emmanuel Guez, Reading Club (video conferencing)

Annie Abrahams, Daniel Pinheiro and Lisa Parra, DistantFeeling(s) (Zoom)

Annie Abrahams, Ruth Catlow, Paolo Cirio, Ursula Endlicher, Nicolas Frespech and Igor Stromajer, Huis Clos / No Exit (video conferencing)

Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Finding Fanon 2 (Grand Theft Auto V)

Robert Adrian, The World in 24 Hours (networked happening)

LaTurbo Avedon, Visiting Artist Talk (multi platform)

Jeremy Bailey, various performances by Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey (YouTube)

Jeremy Bailey, The You Museum (online advertising banners)

Man Bartlett, 24hr non-Best Buy (Twitter)

Genevieve Belleveau, Gorgeoustaps and The Reality Show (Facebook)

Wafaa Bilal, Domestic Tension (livestream website)

Wafaa Bilal, Virtual Jihadi (Quest for Saddam game)

Mary Bond, autodissociate me (4chan)**

Marco Cadioli, Remap Berlin (Second Life, Google Maps, Twinity)

micha cárdenas, Becoming Dragon (Second Life)

Ruth Catlow and Helen Kaplinsky, Sociality-machine (video conferencing, custom software)

Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett and Neil Jenkins, VisitorStudio (custom software for online performance)

Jennifer Chan, factum/mirage (Chat Roulette)**

Jennifer Chan, factum/mirage III (Chat Roulette)**

Channel TWo [CH2], barelyLegal (Google Maps)

Corpos Informaticos, Telepresence 2 (telepresence project)

Petra Cortright, VVEBCAM (YouTube)

Jeff Crouse and Aaron Meyes, World Series of ‘Tubing (Competitive YouTube-ing)

James Coupe, General Intellect (Amazon Mechanical Turk)

Joseph DeLappe, dead-in-iraq (America’s Army)

Joseph DeLappe, The Salt Satyagraha Online: Gandhi's March to Dandi in Second Life (Second Life)

Joseph DeLappe, Howl: Elite Force Voyager Online (Elite Force Voyager Online)

Joseph DeLappe, Quake Friends (Quake III Arena)

Kate Durbin, Unfriend Me Now! (Facebook Live)

Kate Durbin, Cloud Nine (Cam4)**

Electronic Disturbance Theater, FloodNet (Java applet)

Entropy8Zuper! (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn), WIREFIRE (Flash 5)

Entropy8Zuper! (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn), skinonskinonskin (multi platform)

Jason Eppink, Kickback Starter (website, Kickstarter)

Cao Fei, RMB City (Second Life)

Mary Flanagan, [borders] (Second Life)

Foci + Loci, many projects (Little Big Planet 2)

Ed Fornieles, Dorm Daze (Facebook)

Carla Gannis, C.A.R.L.A G.A.N. (virtual environments and social media platforms)

Riley Harmon, Poser (Andy Warhol’s Grave Livecam)

Amber Hawk Swanson, Sidore (Mark) / Heather > LOLITA (livestream)**

Josh Harris, We Live In Public / Quiet (livestream)

Auriea Harvey, Webcam Movies (webcam)

Ann Hirsch, Scandalishious (YouTube)

Ann Hirsch, horny lil feminist (website)**

Faith Holland, Porn Interventions (RedTube)**

Shawné Michaelain Holloway, a personal project (XTube)**

Shawné Michaelain Holloway, b4bedwithurlbae (Periscope)**

Brian House, Joyride (Google Maps)

Brian House, Tanglr (Google Chrome extension)

E. Jane, E. The Avatar (YouTube, online store)

E. Jane, That time I sold my dreads online (ebay)

JODI, SK8MONKEYS ON TWITTER (Twitter)

Miranda July, Learning to Love You More (website)

Devin Kenny, Untitled/Celfa (webcam performance)

Laura Hyunjhee Kim, The Living Lab (social media, website)

Gelare Khoshgozaran and Nooshin Rostami, Just Like A Disco (webcam)

Gelare Khoshgozaran, Misscommunication (webcam)

Gelare Khoshgozaran, Realms of Observation (Chat Roulette)

Lynn Hershman Leeson, The Dollie Clone Series (webcam livestream)

Olia Lialina, Animated GIF Model (multiple webpages)

Olia Lialina, Self-Portrait (browser)

Olia Lialina, Summer (multiple webpages)

Jordan Wayne Long, Box Shipment #2 (Lord of the Rings Online)

Gretta Louw, Controlling Connectivity (Skype and others)

Low Lives, Virtual Performance Series (livestream)

Michael Mandiberg, Shop Mandiberg (ecommerce site)

Eva and Franco Mattes, Freedom (Counter-Strike Source)

Eva and Franco Mattes, Life Sharing (website)

Eva and Franco Mattes, No Fun (Chat Roulette)**

Eva and Franco Mattes, Re-Enactments (Second Life)

Eva and Franco Mattes, Synthetic Performances (Second Life)

Lauren McCarthy, Follower (artist-made app)

Lauren McCarthy, LAUREN (livestream surveillance)

Lauren McCarthy, Social Turkers (Amazon Mechanical Turk)

Lauren McCarthy, SOMEONE (webcam)

MTAA, 1 year performance video (aka SamHsiehUpdate) (livestream)

Jayson Musson / Hennessy Youngman, Art Thoughtz (YouTube)

Martine Neddam, Mouchette (website)

Mendi and Keith Obadike, Blackness for Sale (ebay)

Marisa Olson, Marisa’s American Idol Training Blog (blog)

Randall Packer & Systaime, #NeWWWorlDisorder (Facebook Live and website)

Sunita Prasad, Sunny & Benny Together Forever (My Free Implants website)

Jon Rafman, Kool Aid Man in Second Life (Second Life)

Bunny Rogers, 9 Years (Second Life)

Stephanie Rothenberg, Invisible Threads (Second Life)

Stephanie Rothenberg, Best Practices In Banana Time (Second Life)

Annina Ruest, A Piece of the Pie Chart (Twitter, webcam)

Annina Ruest, Rock N Scroll (Skype)

Nicole Ruggerio, AR Filters (Instagram)

RaFia Santana, #PAYBLACKTiME (Facebook and Paypal)

Anne-Marie Schleiner, Joan Leandre, Brody Condon, Velvet Strike (Counter-Strike)

Leah Schrager, Sarah White - Naked Therapy (video chat)**

Skawennati, TimeTraveller ™ (Second Life)

Molly Soda, various projects (multi platform)

Georgie Roxby Smith, Fair Game (Grand Theft Auto V)

Georgie Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [Wasted] (Grand Theft Auto V)**

Eddo Stern, Fort Paladin (America’s Army)

Eddo Stern, Runners (Everquest)

Tale of Tales, ABIOGENESIS (Endless Forest)

Third Faction, Demand Player Sovereignty (World of Warcraft)

Toca Loca, Halo Ballet (Halo)

Amalia Ulman, Excellences and Perfections (Instagram, Facebook)

VNS Matrix, Corpusfantastica MOO (MOO - multi-object oriented multi user dungeon)

Addie Wagenknecht & Pablo Garcia, Webcam Venus (sexcam sites)**

Angela Washko, BANGED: A Feminist Artist Interviews the Web’s Most Infamous Misogynist (Skype)

Angela Washko, The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft (World of Warcraft)

Angela Washko, The World of Warcraft Psychogeographical Association (World of Warcraft)

Brett Watanabe, San Andreas Deer Cam (Twitch, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas)