Self Love / Self Help / Send Help is a short video essay I made to explore and negotiate how I feel toward my own body and identity(ies). I collected some "triggers" and put them on a canvas together with my avatars. There are 3 scenes: Home, Identity, and Body. By using these avatars as a malleable proxy and an extension of myself, I attempted to mediate my relationships with these triggers. The movement and texture of the avatars were means to express how I felt and wanted

Questions from Readings (1) I think one of the reasons why there are so many brutal killing simulations and realistic violent mods in GTA V (and by extension, other video games) is that ultimately, the violence still feel unreal. The bodies still are digital bodies viewed on a screen. But is there a point where realism (perhaps beyond visual realism) in simulated violence becomes too much? Is there such thing as the uncanny valley of “violence" and we just have not gone past

Questions from Readings (1) Imagined fembots are problematic because they portray the female as objects of desire without agency. What about “real fembots” who actually make deliberate choices like Kylie Jenner & Poppy? Perhaps behind their content lies an intent to reclaim, subvert, or present new ways of seeing. But then my follow up question is: Does the intent even matter when majority of audience just consume content at face value, without context? (2) Becoming Dragon su

Questions from Readings (1) For characters that have merged so inextricably with their actors (e.g. Daniel Radcliffe & Harry Potter, Marvel heroes and their actors), who “owns” the character's “likeness”? I would argue that these characters are fundamentally different from Princess Leia and Carrie Fisher because they exist before being portrayed in live-action films. Say that the rights of these characters’ likeness belong to the studios, would it still be ethical to produce

Questions from Readings (1) Does the affect of a simulation or game depend on its immersion level (control vs. be, realism vs. fantasy)? Is it actually "better" to have a spectrum of immersion level? I think in a typical scenario, a user would engage with a simulation on different immersion levels. On some instances in the game users feel in control, on another (very engaging instance) the users become the avatar, and on some other instances users do both. But certain medium