Toronto Standard Vector Article
Our piece, Itagaki Interface, was mentioned in the Toronto Standard’s write up of Vector!
“The performance art was really the highlight of Vector; Playing Personae: Engendered + Embodied Performances explored the issue of the representation of gender by having the audience use a human controller while playing Dead or Alive, the game that started the breast physics “revolution.” The controls just so happened to be placed on the wearer’s chest (and one of them was a woman).”
– Megan Patterson
The article also mentions some of the other performances and features an interview with the curators of Vector.
Check out the full Toronto Standard article here.
Some Process Pictures of Our Playstation Controller Bra and Bro
Here are some more detailed shots of the process and components involved in our initial design of the Playstation controller bra and bro/mansierre. They basically show how we connected the Playstation controller buttons on the fronts of the garments to conductive thread, which connects to one side of a set of snaps in the garment. These snaps connect to a removable circuit board of the original Playstation controller, which was modified to make these connections. This all completes the connection to the game system when the buttons are pressed on the garment. We’re looking to continue to modify and perfect this design, trying out new things in the near future! Also, we’ll be posting some documentation of our performance at the Vector Game/Art Festival very soon!
Please click on the pictures for more detailed descriptions:
VECTOR WRAP UP AND THANK YOU
We would like to thank all of those who came out and supported our project. Vector was a blast! There was a lot of spectacular work by amazing artists and we feel privileged to be a part of the festival.
We would also like to send a special thanks to all of the curators, Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, Katie Micak and Christine Kim for the blood and sweat, putting together a wicked festival and giving us this opportunity. Thanks to Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre for providing the space for our performance!
Also, WE WANT YOUR DOCUMENTATION! Send us your photos and videos of the project. We’d like to compile it all! Documentation of the performance will be up soon, so stay tuned!
PS1 Controller Bra/Bro Preview
Daniele and Kyle’s PS1 controller bra/bro performance is coming up soon!:
Friday, February 22, 2013 – 10:00p.m.
Facebook Event Page
Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre,
9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Snail Jam!
Kyle and I have been making Fine Quality Snail Jam since 2007! Though it did take me until now to create an image for it.
Vector: Game+Art Convergence – Working PS1 Controller Bras/Bros!
Friday, February 22, 2013 – Time TBA
Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre,
9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Daniele Hopkins and Kyle Duffield will be performing at Playing Personae: Engendered + Embodied Performances on Friday, February 22, 2013 at 9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto.
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.
In the performance, the artists wear modified game controllers on their chests, essentially acting as human game controllers. The audience is confronted with the challenge of having to play one another in the game, by manipulating the controllers worn by the artists. This piece is a hybridization of 70s body-centric performance art and new media interactive performance, challenging us all to consider the ways in which our bodies are represented in interactive media.
That’s right folks. We’ve made fully functioning PS1 game bras/bros! See you there!
A not-for-profit initiative dedicated to showcasing contemporary game based artworks, Vector: Game + Art Convergence will be running at four venues over five days from Feb 20th-24th, in Queen West and Kensington in Toronto. Over these five days, Vector will feature exhibitions, screenings, workshops, performances and round table discussions, all with the intent of creating a critical dialogue about the medium of games and its expressive potential as a contemporary art practice.With an influence that is spreading across various cultures and sub-cultures through out the world, video games are a pervasive media that are influencing a wide range of social and cultural practices.
Programmed by Team Vector, the festival will address contemporary creative practices that peel back to curtain of gaming and its cultures, positing games as tools and inspiration for contemporary art making. It will feature works by international, national and regional, emerging and established artists.
Works in sculpture, film and video, new media, installation, print, fine craft and performance will all be part of the spectrum exhibited at Vector. These works will incorporate, criticize and address the culture, politics, technology and aesthetics of games, through exhibitions, artist talks, workshops and performances.
Working PS1 Controller Bra/Bro Progress
We’ve been prototyping our original Playstation controller bra and bro. We were originally going to equip the entire garment with soft circuits, but for the purposes of the Vector Game + Arts Festival we’re involved with, we decided it would look/feel far more badass if we used the actual buttons in the construction of our garments. Not only for tactility, but for gamer familiarity.
We also decided that in the future, we’re going to work on not only the jockstrap, but we’re looking into creating such garments with analog joysticks and rumble packs! So exciting!
For now, here’s a shot of some family controller-testing time:
Working PS1 Controller Bra and Bro – Itagaki Interface
We’ve been accepted for a performance with our garments at the Vector Game + Art Convergence!
To fit within a theme and structure for a performance that acknowledges perspectives on gender in games and surrounding gaming culture, we’ve decided to narrow down our garment focus and to place the experience of playing games on human controllers within a specific context. For the purposes of this festival, we came up with Itagaki Interface
Itagaki Interface is both a playful interactive performance piece and a social experiment that aims to complement and contrast the content of “Dead or Alive” (DOA) through the tactile manipulation of the PS1 interface. Itagaki Interface features two performers/artists acting as female and male “controllers,” each wearing a hacked PS1 controller bra/bro. The controllers are connected to the first installment of DOA, the beginning of the Tecmo-saving franchise created by Tomonobu Itagaki, which was renowned for its impossible-looking implementation of the series’ controversial trademark breast physics. The game is projected so that the characters in the game are relatively life-sized, with both artists standing static in front of the screen. Participants are invited to “play” the artists, free to select either a male or female controller (versus or single player), and subsequently, a male or female fighter within the game. Face to face with the artists, participants engage with awkwardly tangible human intimacy while controlling a now archaic 32-bit representation of fantastical and sometimes oddly bouncy bodies.
Both male and female artists are used to reflect the selection behaviour supported by the game’s fighter choices. This piece questions general assumptions about the willingness of the game’s target audience to face the contrast between reality and fantasy in relation to assumed preference and comfort level when confronted with real-life physical interaction through either a male or female “interface.” Itagaki Interface is meant to be an open forum that acknowledges both the controversy and success of DOA’s highly sexualized characters by giving gamers the opportunity to directly address the source of the controversy — how gamers interact with sexuality in both digital and physical forms when presented simultaneously.
Here are some images to further illustrate the piece:
Beginning Stages: Working PS1 Bra and Bro/Jockstrap
So we’ve settled on our controller garment project – We’re making a working original Playstation controller bra and either a bro/mansierre or jockstrap controller! Hopefully both down the road, but we’re only going to focus on one for now.
Here’s a picture of our preliminary button placement for the bra:
Our plan is to use conductive thread and soft circuits to make all the contacts.
Very exciting! Though we do keep asking ourselves if this project is just a little too strange.
More Giant NES Controller Progress!
Finally we’ve cut out all of our button holes, buttons, and frames. We’ve also recessed the Start and Select area and rounded some appropriate corners. Here’s a shot of our progress!:
Daniele Hopkins and Kyle Duffield 