alafarge@uci.edu
writing
Writing makes up a large part of my practice. Collected here are a selection of essays, scripts, and other kinds of texts, often experimental. My essays focus especially on performance and role-play aspects of Internet culture. Many of the scripts listed here are derived in part from collaborative textual improvisations in online role-playing environments. From this work I have also developed a number of related projects, such as the graphic novel Cake of the Desert and I Object, a web-based word-art project.
I have a blog about art that also doubles as my online store: artisallwehave.com, and I also blog as 'zelda' over at the techno-feminist blog Difference Engines.
I have also worked as a book and journal editor, most recently as Associate Editor for the 2007 anthology Searching for Sebald: Photography After W.G. Sebald. Earlier, I served for four years (1995-98) as guest editor for Leonardo's annual issue on the New York Digital Salon.
"Galileo in America"
2012. Author of unpublished script for multimedia performance work that premiered at the Contemporary Arts Center, UC Irvine.
"Interview with Antoinette LaFarge and Robert Nideffer"
2009. By Nate Harrison, done in conjunction with the the Scalable Relations exhibition. The interview is published in the exhibition catalog (available through lulu.com), and is also published on the gallery website.
"Commentary on Demotic"
2009. For Judy Malloy's Authoring Software blog, I've written a commentary on how my mixed-reality and multimedia performance works get authored. (Scroll down for my contribution.)
"All That Is Beyond Hearing: A Life of Arturo Ott"
2007. In Searching for Sebald (Los Angeles: ICI Press).
"A Meditation on Virtual Kinesthesia"
2007. Dialogue with Robert Allen in Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodiment and Techology
"Media Commedia"
2005. Essay on The Roman Forum Project 2003 in Leonardo 38:3. Co-authored with Robert Allen. Downloadable PDF.
"25 Thesen über die Kunst der Netzwelten"
2004. Translation of "25 Propositions on the Art of Networlds" (2002), in Die Anthologie der Kunst, DuMont Verlag, Cologne, Germany. English-language version (pdf).
"Lament of the Repubocracy"
January 2004. Performance video with accompanying introduction in web publication Horizon Zero, Issue 13: Perform, published by Banff New Media Institute.
"The Roman Forum Project"
2003. Script for mixed-reality performance work that premiered at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, CA. Complete script (pdf).
"Reading Frankenstein"
2003. Co-author (with Annie Loui) of script for multimedia performance work that premiered at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, CA. Script synopsis with production photos (pdf).
"An Internet Performance for the Third Millennium: The Birth of the Christ Child"
2003. Transcript of a 1999 Plaintext Players performance in which I improvised/wrote the characters 'Smoking Angel' and 'Digital-Director'. In Performance Art Journal 73. With introduction by Marlena Corcoran.
"The Blurring Between Reality and Fiction"
2003. By Stephanie Sides. Interview originally published on the website of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Internet Technology. Now archived here.
"SHIFT-CTRL"
May 2002. Essay on the 2000 exhibition "SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games, and Art" at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, CA. Co-authored with Robert Nideffer. Leonardo 35:1.
"25 Propositions on the Art of Networlds"
March 2002. Response to the question "What is your vision of a yet unknown art?" Included by invitation in The Anthology of Art, ed. Jochen Gerz, publ. on the web by Braunschweig School of Art. "Networlds resist ownership but require stewardship.". Download (pdf).
"Marcel Duchamp and the Museum of Forgery"
January 2002. Essay published in Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, Vol. 2, Issue 4. "The Museum of Forgery is a child of Marcel Duchamp: it nominated itself as a museum despite the fact that by many definitions it does not belong in that category at all..."
"Interview"
2003. By Bruce Wands, published in Digital Creativity: Techniques for Digital Media and the Internet (New York: Wiley, 2002).
"Stay and Play: Game Not Over"
December 2000. Paper presented at U.F.R. d'Arts Plastiques et Sciences de l'Art, Université de Paris, for the ISEA Conference, Paris, France; and at the Medienforum München's "Digital Happy Hour" at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.
"WinSide Out: An Introduction to the Convergence of Computers, Games, and Art"
November 2000. Web catalog essay for the 2000 exhibition "SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games, and Art" at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, CA. "We think of games in terms of play, but in fact they generally embody notions of efficiency that have nothing to do with the sloppiness of real play...." Download (pdf, 1.8 mb)
"The Roman Forum"
2000. Script for multimedia performance work that premiered at the Side Street Live, Los Angeles. Complete script (html).
"The Memetic Museum"
1999. Paper presented at the College Art Association Conference as part of the panel "The World Wide Web and the New Art Marketplace". A version of this paper was subsquently published in Tout-Fait in 2002 under the title "Marcel Duchamp and the Museum of Forgery".
"Still Lies Quiet Truth"
1998. Script for a performance work that premiered at Collective Unconscious, New York, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival and was included a month later in the New York Digital Salon. Poem on which script was based (html).
"A Lost Encyclical on Anti-Semitism"
1996. Book review in Gnosis, Spring 1999.
"Did Anyone Bring a Word or an Ax?: Towards an Id Theater"
1996. Paper presented at the 1997 College Art Association Conference as part of the panel "Cyberspace: Trojan Horse or Roman Holiday?" "Online theater is marked by loose (often episodic) structure, tangled narrative, chaotic rhythm, uncontrolled utterance, superfluous detail, and refusal to end."
"The Bearded Lady & the Shaven Man: Mona Lisa, Meet Mona/Leo"
October 1996. Essay in Leonardo 29:5. "Where L.H.O.O.Q. presented itself openly as a modified Leonardo, L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved reverses these terms and turns the Mona Lisa into a modified Duchamp." Downloadable PDF.
"SLQT"
1996. Epic poem for "blast5drama", published as part of that project's web site. New York: X-Art Foundation.
"A World Exhilarating and Wrong: Theatrical Improvisation on the Internet"
October 1995. Essay in Leonardo 28:5. "The god in the machine points inexorably at the machine in god, the desire for and fear of a mechanistic universe..." Download (pdf)..
"Tidal Wavelengths"
1995. Catalog essay in Erwin Redl, Parallel Doubt on the Distinction Between Truth and Beauty. Published in Germany.
"The Cake of the Desert"
1995. Graphic novel. New York: Haifisch Press. More on this project.
"The Black Box"
1995. New York: Haifisch Press. Boxed set of booklets, including: "Christmas: Ein Schauspiel" (scenario); "The Christmas Scenarios" (selected scenarios); "The DownUnderworld" (performance transcript); "The Parasolitude of Memory" (performance transcript); "The Clam-Shaped Iceberg with the Lettuce-Green Hearts of Palm" (performance transcript); and "Dome's Hitech MOO Recorder" (MOO program).
"Cylex"
May 1994. Lexical fiction, published in Wired 2.04. Download (pdf)
"Big Man, Little Man"
1994. Limited-edition performance text, published in "Blast 4:Bioinformatica". New York: X-Art Foundation.
"The Dadashop Quartet"
1991. Experimental composition for four unaccompanied voices incorporating original material plus text fragments from Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Sol LeWitt's letters.