Event writeup:

The Itagaki Interface was performed at Vector: Game+Art Convergence in Toronto, Canada. The Itagaki Interface was featured in the event, “Playing Personae: Embodied and Engendered Performances” along with Angela Washko‘s performance entitled, Chastity and The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft at Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre on February 22, 2013.

In their performance, Itagaki Interface, Daniele Hopkins and Kyle Duffield use their own bodies to challenge exaggerated representations of the human body in the fighting game, Dead or Alive (PS1), by Tomonobu Itakagi. The game features hyper feminized and hyper masculinized bodies in one on one combat, and more notably, a separate physics engine dedicated towards the characters’ breasts.

The audience is confronted with the challenge of having to compete with one another in the game by manipulating the controllers worn on the chests of the artists. This piece is a hybridization of 70’s body-centric performance art and new media interactive performance, challenging audiences to consider ways in which our bodies are both represented and interacted with in videogames, and highlighting individual choices and motives behind avatar selection.

Thank you to Terry Anastasiadas, Heidi Persaud, and Team Vector for shooting the documentation. Also, thanks again to all who came out to the event, Team Vector (Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, Katie Micak, Christine Kim) and the Vector volunteers, Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Feminists in Games, The Ontario Arts Council, OCADU’s Digital Futures Initiative and Lisason of Independent Filmmakers for making everything awesome!