Summer 2025
We're presenting at PAX WEST on August 31st! Our talk is called "Creating Social Justice Videogames as a Platform for Community Dialogue." More info soon...
One Night only in Pittsburgh!
DISCHARGED was featured in Burn in the USA on July 4th at LIKELIKE gallery.
2024
War Games: Tactical Media Exhibition at Case Western Reserve University in Spring 2024. More info here.
The Plug-In Studio's warGames Tactical Media project was featured in the National Art Education Association's Radical and Transformative Collaboration (and Fun!) Through Social Impact Video Game Design webinar.
2023
Our amazing collaborator Eric J. Garcia had a solo show at Ogden Arts Contemporary which included a beta version of Discharged.
The Plug-In Studio's warGames Tactical Media project and the Street Arcade were featured at the 2023 Connected Learning Summit. Watch the videos of the presentation:
SUMMER 2022
The Plug-In Studio has been on hiatus for the past two years due to the pandemic, family illnesses and moving to a new city. Stay tuned for updates....
SUMMER 2020
We are pleased to announce that the Plug-In Studio received a 2020 Fellowship Award in Interdisciplinary / Computer-Based Arts from the Illinois Arts Council. We are so excited to be included in this cohort of artists from across Illinois. The Art Council's generous support will enable us to develop a new project.
FALL 2019
Play a beta version of our new game DISCHARGED at the Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
August through October 2019.
33 S. State Street, 7th Floor in Chicago.
Join the Plug-In Studio Saturday 9/28 at the University of Chicago Weston Game Lab for
We Got Game.
Panels include: Inclusive Games, Design Thinking and the Intersection of Gaming, For the Culture, The Power of Games. Steve and Kerry will discuss their work with the Street Arcade and the warGames Tactical Media Collective @ 10:45 am for The Power of Games panel. The GAME SUMMIT also includes workshops, demos, discussion, vending, and lots of game play.
John Crerar Library, 1st Floor, 5730 S Ellis Ave in Chicago.
Steve and Kerry are at DePaul Art Museum Thursday 8/1 @ 5pm for a panel called
At War: Alternative Games and Critical Play
Presented alongside Eric J. Garcia: The Bald Eagle's Toupee, DPAM will host a panel to discuss issues surrounding the "military entertainment complex," socially engaged art games, and critical play in the history of games. Panel features The Plug-In Studio and Chaz Evans, Co-Founder, Video Game Art Gallery and is moderated by Patrick Jagoda, Associate Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
DePaul Art Museum, 935 W Fullerton in Chicago.
SPRING 2019
Join us Friday May 24 6-8pm: the warGames Tactical Media Collective Pop-Up Arcade + Conversation
At Chicago Art Department 1932 S Halsted. This event features original videogames and conversation about military recruiting from warGames Tactical Media Collective teen artists Jonathan Mora, Gabriel Moreno, Isabella Orihuela, Luis Sala, Genaro Salgado & Ivan Salinas.
This project was funded through the CAD CORE Residency.
The warGames Tactical Media Collective's CAD CORE Residency begins on March 1. Ten teen artists from area high schools (Juarez Community Academy and Curie High School) will join us each SATURDAY from 1-4 pm at CAD, 1932 S Halsted #100 as collaborators on the warGames project.
This community phase of the project begins with conversations on combat-themed commercial videogames and military recruiting, with visits from veteran artists sharing their own experiences of serving. Together we will develop ideas, create original artwork and program series of minigames. The warGames project concludes with a big public arcade event at CAD where the games become a platform for community discussion in which the teen artists take the lead. More info on the warGames project here.
And some exciting new updates from our amazing collaborator Eric J. Garcia: Eric launches his book tour for his new book DRAWING ON ANGER this month at U of I Champaign-Urbana before heading out west to sunny California. Stay tuned for THE BALD EAGLE'S TOUPEE, a new show of Eric's work at DePaul Art Museum opening April 25. Look for a preview of DISCHARGED, our original videogame from the warGames Tactical Media Collective.
The warGames Tactical Media Collective was named Core Residents at Chicago Art Department. We were selected under the theme of CONTEMPORARY CONVERSATIONS. CAD's Core Residency is a pilot program that represents an ambitious intervention in the field, one that will challenge its community of artists, organizers, cultural producers, and makers to lead studio work, exhibitions, and public programs to tackle topics that matter. CAD is supporting our community engagement phase of the warGames project.
JULY 2018
The Plug-In Studio at the Scratch: The Next Generation Conference @ MIT July 26-28
We're presenting at the 2018 Scratch@MIT Conference at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge MA. Scratch is an amazing programming language and online community from the Lifelong Kindergarten Group.
- Steve and Luca will lead the "ArtMakerSpace: Meaningful Making in a Studio Art Context"
workshop on Thu 7/28 at 11 am. - We'll present a poster called "Pixel Protest: 8-Bit Videogames as Activist Art" on Thu 7/28 @ 4 pm.
- Sat 7/30 @ 11 am, Kerry and Steve will join"The 'Fifth P' of Creative Learning: Purpose," a panel on using Scratch in socially engaged projects.
MAY 2018
Join the Plug-In Studio for an artist talk in Milwaukee at ARTISTS NOW! on May 2 at the Peck School of the Arts, UW Milwaukee.
The Department of Art & Design proudly presents the 11th season of Artists Now!, a Wednesday evening lecture series designed for a broad audience with an interest in contemporary visual art. It presents a diverse group of artists working across traditional, hybrid and emergent disciplines. Join these nationally and inter- nationally recognized practitioners as they explore and expand the boundaries of creative visual practice today. All lectures take place on Wednesdays at 7:30 pm in the Arts Center Lecture Hall on the UWM campus.
The Plug-In Studio is one of several featured Blade of Grass Felllows in a FIELDWORKS screening on May 11 at OPEN ENGAGEMENT: Inhale, Exhale: the Arts of Healing and Learning an open house and screening on May 11, @ 10 am-1 pm at 81 Prospect Street, Brooklyn NY 11201, Room 7A.
FALL 2017
The Plug-In Studio is excited to be part of the FabLearn Stanford 2016 Conference, "Diversity in Making: People, Projects, & Powerful Ideas."
Kerry will give a panel presentation on the Street Arcade on Saturday October 15 @ 10 am on the Stanford campus. Co-panelists include: Colin Dixon of UC Davis who is presenting a scientific research and environmental justice project with teens in a program of the East Bay Academy for Young Scientists, and Tarrey Banks from The Project School in Bloomington, IN who will discuss their year-long, multidisciplinary design project on aquaponics.
FabLearn disseminates ideas, best practices and resources to support an international community of educators, researchers and policy makers committed to integrating the principles of educational makerspaces and constructionist learning into formal and informal K-12 education.
JUL - AUG 2016
Join the Plug-In Studio at the MIT Media Lab for the 2016 Scratch@MIT Conference. Steve and Luca will lead a >Retro Videogame Lab workshop on Thursday Aug 4 and then we'll install a small version of the Street Arcade on Friday Aug 5. Read about how we used Scratch in the Street Arcade project from our essay on the Scratch Foundation Blog.
See the Street Arcade at BitBash 2016 on Sat Aug 13. BitBash is Chicago's alternative games festival and popup arcade, @ 1215 W Fulton in West Loop. Play 8 of the games on one of our custom arcade cabinets.
MAY 2016
Join us for the Revelations Opening Reception on Fri May 13, 6-10pm at Chicago Art Department, 1932 S Halsted....
MAR 2016
The Plug-In Studio presented at SXSWedu.
Kerry gave a Playground Talk called The Street Arcade: Socially Engaged Video Games on Monday, Mar 7 @ 4 pm in the Austin Convention Center Ballroom EFG.