Vector Festival 2024: GAME JAM RESIDENCY
deu(s ex) machina
Curatorial statement
deus ex machina (ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός)
definition
(Latin: “god from the machine” originally from Greek: ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός)
a person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.
You’d be hard-pressed to be able to have an honest conversation about sex and sexuality. Considered dirty or too unpleasant for “civilized” conversation, the thought of talking about sex openly can often be a cause for embarrassment and as a result our sexual ecosystems remain dysfunctional and dystopic. We live with the duplicity of treating sex as a taboo or enigmatic topic all while being sex-obsessed and the many polarizations caused by that fact because shame serves as the precursor for these conversations.
Sex, sexuality, and intimacy are difficult topics also because they are social – we come into our sexual selfhood in relation to one another and each person is their own universe with stars and planets and needs and desires. Social interactions, by their very nature, can be difficult to navigate because of the many variables when interacting with another person. Now, taking all this into consideration, how has technology/the machine/machina enriched and hindered our pursuits for sexual intimacy and understanding in relation to ourselves, one another, and the collective whole?
How has technology created spaces for finding kinship but also allowed for gross misunderstandings?
What human idiosyncrasies and intricacies cannot be turned off or mediated by technology?
How does the internet help queer folks discover themselves sooner, and what happens when the imagery supporting this discovery is primarily pornographic?
What happens when certain marginalized bodies (trans bodies; sapphic bodies; queer bodies; Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies of color; femme bodies; women’s bodies) are made hyper visible as a result of increased access to online pornography but not made visible within public life or only made visible in an attempt to police and punish those bodies?
Possible themes to explore through gaming narratives or mechanics may include (but are not limited to):
- The evolving internet ecosystem as a sexual playground
- Online spaces becoming gathering places for queer people and folks who are othered by the colonial white supremacist cisheteropatriarchal hegemony
- Disabled folks finding sexual agency and joy through technology
- Odes to the technology many of us have but pretend we don’t – vibrators, dildos, straps, plugs, wands, and aids of all kinds
- Technology as a tool and/or hindrance to understanding interpersonal relationships
- Pornography and porno cultures
- Hardware as re-enactments of human longing for connection
- Algorithmic desires – algorithms influences sexual scripting, modes of interacting, and which bodies are deemed acceptable
- AI biases – thwarting them, working against them, working with them, correcting the data pools
- Complications of online dating
- Mapping human flesh onto motherboards
- Mobilization of online hate groups as a result of increased visibility and access through the internet
- Refusal of compulsory sexuality
- AI girlfriends, boyfriends, partners, spouses and considering them alongside Black Mirror-esque and Twilight Zone-esque scenarios
- Parasocial relationships with online content creators
Online and virtual sex work - Overemphasis on the performativity of sexuality (being and loving like machines)
Vector Festival’s 2024 Game Jam Residency is curated by Bracy Appeikumoh.
View the open calls for submissions here, including the application for the game jam residency.