Discharged (2024) is a videogame made in collaboration with Chicanx artist and US military veteran Eric J. Garcia. This art game explores the real-life consequences of serving in the military, critiques the glamorized depiction of military combat presented in commercial videogames such as Call of Duty, and criticizes the US military's use of videogames to recruit teens from low-income, Latinx households.
Discharged premiered in the War Games: Tactical Media Exhibition 2024.
Exhibition
This multimedia exhibition surveyed the longstanding and tangled relationship between videogames and the US military. The first videogame, Spacewar!, was created by computer researchers at MIT in 1962 using nascent computer technology funded by the US Department of Defense. Since then, the commercial videogame industry has grown in tandem with - and partly thanks to - the US military's development of computer and digital technologies. The War Games: Tactical Media exhibition invited visitors to explore the longstanding and tangled relationship through an extensive media archive including interviews with game developers and military personnel, footage of soldiers training in cutting-edge VR gaming simulations and documentaries about the military's use of Esports tournaments to insinuate itself into youth culture. The connection between videogames and the military in the popular imagination was chronicled in a collection of vintage and contemporary game commercials, user-generated content from social media and excerpts from Hollywood movies. Visitors were also able to play military-themed videogames, including Call of Duty and Discharged.
ArtMakerSpace Events
Electronics + Cardboard!
The Plug-In Studio hosted a series of free, pop-up, drop-in, art + tech maker events at community partner sites around Chicago. The Plug-In Studio along with artists Lindsey French and Stephen Germana invited young people and their families to make interactive kinetic artworks with electronics and recycled materials.We brought littleBits, Squishy Circuits, and LOTS of cardboard to four community partner organizations: Yollocalli Arts Reach, Evanston Art Center, Hyde Park Art Center, and ElevArte Community Studio. Kids and families dropped in, learned about electronics and circuit-building, and made sculptures that move, make sound and light up.
See photos + videos from all four events here.
Funding for the ArtMakerSpace series is generously provided by The Propeller Fund.
The Street Arcade
A collaborative, community-based videogame art project in which the Plug-In Studio created a series of videogames with teens from Chicago's South Side to explore issues important to them. The game were projected onto the exterior of the Hyde Park Art Center where they facilitated discussion between the teens and community members about the topics explored in the games. The project was funded by A Blade of Grass. Watch a video here:
warGames Pop up Arcade
The Plug-In Studio and Eric J. Garcia were 2018-19 Core Residency Artists at Chicago Art Department (CAD). The CAD residency supported our collaboration with a group of Latinx teen artists. Together we produced a series of mini-videogames, which critically explore the role of the military and the impact of military recruitment in the teen’s community. These games were exhibited at a Pop-Up Arcade + Conversation event at CAD (located in a traditionally Mexican American community in Chicago) on Memorial Day weekend 2019, where the teens engaged peers, family, and gallery visitors in discussion about the issues examined in the games.
REVELATIONS Augmented Graffiti
This augmented reality project, funded by Chicago Art Department, culminated in a gallery show featuring traditional graffiti and virtual graffiti artworks made by Latinx teens. See the video:
REVELATIONS was a collaboration with Miguel Aguilar of the Graffiti Institute.
Free Classes & Workshops
Free classes and workshops in art & technology, offered in partnership with Chicago community centers, arts orgranizations, public libraries and schools. Topics included: videogame design, e-wearables cardboard automata and more.