games

Universe, 2024

The video game Universe takes the visitor into a dancing virtual landscape. Each of the moving objects in the terrain have been AI-generated from the name or medical term for a gender-affirming care process (e.g. mastectomy, testosterone, blockers, etc.), the list of which has also been used to build the surrounding sky and horizon line. Sculpted into the spatiality of the game, the soundtrack features a chorus of  voices recorded at different milestones of my own vocal transition with testosterone-HRT. Each of the generated objects emits one of the vocal tracks and moves in response to the pitch of the vocals. This movement causes a further pitch-shift and distortion, producing a wide-ranged chorus of robotic part-human voices. 

 Built with digital attempts to understand the transitioning body, Universe presents a disoriented, algorithmic imagination of what a trans world is. The game’s frenetic behavior also emphasizes the uncertainty of navigating the medical system as a transgender individual. As no anatomy books (nor future health projections) exist for trans people, idealized bodies and linear lifespans take on an unquantifiable, abstract form. Prosthetic, pseudo-human figures and a scattered chorus of time fragments express queer occupancy of space and time in a virtual imagination.