Queer Indoctrination Fields

I envision this as the beginning of my final project. I finally see visions of myself and my desires in the syntax. Midterms have proved a fertile breaking point of inhibitions and trepidations that have besieged me in creative endeavors for years.

Context + Concept

I am part of a larger group of people in Texas, that celebrate a cultural and diverse swath of individuals that collectively adhere to an identity of otherness, and have been motivated to engage in a project that directly serves it’s next major action in the spring in Marfa, Texas.

The group is called Queerbomb, and is a loose fitted organization that strikes a very specific homage of our own icons, and attempts to subvert the negative associations that have been heaped on the lgbtqia panorama for far too long in society.

The basis of my project is a series of slides that get “swiped” forward, without any explanation, until they pass through an entire array, and then finally display as a mosaic. grid of them in their entirety. This allows a lot of possibilities for it to evolve into different iterations with the same beginning form. One outcome could just be a visual decoder that unveils its meaning over time to the viewer by their personal and subjective relationship with these “icons” of the queer community. Another more dynamic example of its final embodiment is an interactive game structure, that I entitle as “Queer Indoctrination.”

This is a game that actually teaches about the rich and righteous lineage of people that are a tribal part of queer history, that paved the way for boundaries being broken through, and pioneering new identities of beauty and art superceding the prevailing maxims of intolerance and bigotry in the past. The model is a subversion of what has been known as “the homosexual agenda” as it is precisely that, a potential interactive textbook for queer youth or those unexposed to legends to be able to access a central database of multimedia data that serves as a learning tool to a trajectory that is a part of them.

I am really interested in manipulating the images in the array with a kaleidoscoping effect, ideally in programming that can be manipulated by bodies and a range sensor. But residents were like, that’s a very complex problem! So I leave it now as a grid of all that have passed through the curtain. If it proves to difficult to assemble in photoshop, i’d like to have the swipe be range sensor controlled and then once it passes through the entirety of the array, to activate dvd’s of the kaleidoscope images swirling through the dance floor, walls, and ceilings. This would be my first foray into what I am most interested in, making immersive, interactive video environments!