VGA FIRESIDE Ep. 7 feat. Kara Stone: Interview Highlights
For episode 7 of VGA Fireside, we sat down with video game artist and scholar, Kara Stone. Stone is interested in the affective and gendered experiences of psychosocial disability, debility and healing as it relates to art production, particularly in video games. Stone's most recent game UnearthU is available now on a variety of platforms and her 2018 game the earth is a better person than me was featured in the Video Game Art Gallery exhibition, Polymorphism: Queer Encounters of Intimacy in Games.
Below are some highlights taken from the conversation between the artist and VGA Director of Exhibitions, Chaz Evans. The full interview can be found on VGA Gallery’s youtube and twitch channels, where you can also see gameplay for UnearthU and Ritual of The Moon.
How Kara got started with creating video games
Chaz Evans: So I'd like to start these conversations off just knowing about, you know, beginnings and origin stories. So if you don't mind, could you share with us how you got involved with video game production in the first place?
Kara Stone: Yeah, definitely. Um, I think unlike a lot of students now, at that time, or back when I was growing up, I didn't really realize that it could be a career path for me, or a artistic endeavor anything. I had always been in the arts, like I went to an art High School. And then I did a BFA in the arts, and then I was starting my masters. And it wasn't until midway through my Masters that I encountered people who made Independent Games, like I hadn't even heard of that. This was maybe 2013. And I was like, Oh my god, I can make video games, like I loved video games growing up, and I was doing film production, and started making interactive video art, which is just only a short step away from video games. And so once I realized it was a thing, I kind of like just completely pivoted my master's thesis, like my art discipline, I was just like, really excited about it. And I liked making games and exploring them and learning about them. So yeah, it was I was probably, like, still relatively young, maybe 25 or 26. When I started making games, yeah.
CE: And you were already sort of a part of a master's program, you said, You came across just the very idea that individuals or small teams could just go ahead and make your own games and you're just like "we're changing everything!"
KS: Yeah, I was in Toronto at the time. And there was like an independent game scene there. And so I started like meeting people and still have like, friends and yeah, community there
On how Kara views academics and video game making in relation to one another
CE: I want to ask about your relationship with with writing and scholarship. And at what point can you identify that your writing practice intersected with working in games? Did one exist before the other? Did they both sort of merge at the same time? What's the relationship between the two?
KS: Yeah. Because I had already been like, both in my undergrad and then my Masters, writing about my own artwork and writing about others artwork, mostly in my film, it- I continued in when making games to write mostly from a position of artist scholarship. So I write a lot about making my own games. I also write about just like design philosophy in general or creation, creative philosophy, more than like, analyzing other people's games or game culture – it's mostly from the position of artist and creator.
I really consider my art practice pretty separate from my academic side. And I always kind of wanted to have the goal of making pieces that weren't just serving the academic interests and they're like available to the public and can be consumed by people without reading my like accompanying essay about it, you know, that like can be sense- made sense of without it. So I like make games and then I can use them for a springboard for writing about later.
About the creation process of recycling media in UnearthU
KS: So, one of the rules that I set for myself when making this is that I would only use found footage found everything. And so that means like you can see here that this clearly has a found footage aesthetic. A lot from like the 60s and 70s nature documentaries and- but that goes beyond just the visuals within the video pieces like KARE's skin is from like a nature documentary, but also the 3D model is a found 3D model that already existed on the internet. All of the voiceover is text-to-speech software. And the icons are taken from a plant medicine book that was made in the 1800s. And I was just, when I started making UnearthU, I was just really stuck being like, wouldn't it be better for the environment, if I just didn't make anything? You know, it would just be- wouldn't it just be so much better? And I know that whatever I make is so small in comparison to like triple A studios or even major studios or technology companies of the destruction that we do to the environment, but I really felt like I'd be participating in this newness, making more stuff, making everything again from scratch. So it was just like an ethos that I tried to follow to be able to come to terms with how to make art right now and how to make digital art right now. So yeah, really trying to do this ethos of recycling or composting previous things, things already on the internet.
The challenges behind advertising UnearthU and audience interpretation from the game
CE: You mentioned that that was sort of a hiccup in how you presented this to the world through advertising. How much do you want the player of this game to know that Further is a premise? And that this game is a game made by an artist named Kara Stone? or How much would you also welcome the interpretation that the company Further is, uh, has offices, you know, in Mountain View, and is alive and well, today?
KS: Yeah, this is a good question. And one that I had never really been able to answer for myself. And, um, yeah, I just didn't know I don't know, still don't know, like the right path for it. I'm not really interested in tricking people. But I'm also interested in, like, having surprises that change kind of what their assumptions are, you know. Similar to many years ago, many years, quite a few years ago, relatively, I made a game called Sext Adventure. Yeah, and you would text this number. And the premise was that you'd be like sexting with a robot, or there's an automated bot responding to your sext. And so that obviously had a lot of assumptions around like, Oh, this is for cisgender straight men, like this is obviously who it's targeted for. And I think that's, like, the audience that most often buys it. But the bot ends up questioning its gender, talking back to you, confusing body parts, and like the images it sends to you, talking about, like, labor, inappropriate labor and, you know, playing with the assumptions that what the audience might come their way with the game.
On the creative process and visual style of Ritual of The Moon
KS: That's kind of the concept of this piece, which is like there's small little kind of soothing or slow paced activities and a mantra to look at. And then you make this emotional decision. And we see it here a chart that has like 20 circles on it. And the first one has a spiral, which is marking that today, we chose to save the earth. And later, and so after a few days of your choices, like based on the majority that you chose, that storyline diverges into different data, it takes a long time, it's like 18 days in the stories I did verges and then you there's like six different endings that you can get. And so a lot of it is about tracking your emotional cycle through time, and being able to reflect back on it, and at 18, you suddenly unlock the possibility to aim the comet at yourself. And so you can either hit the Earth, avoid the earth, or have the comet hit you. And yeah, I think like, four out of six of the endings, like the witch dies, like, kind of a morbid, bittersweet piece. … The visuals are also kind of a non- or a very unique visual to video games, like, here in this piece. Me and the artists Raker Ramachandran and Julia Gingrich, who are based in Ontario, Canada, we did all handmade things, found objects or handmade things. So on my Vimeo, you can see a creation video of like, we started with just some sewing or some, like origami or other things that we scan to then digitally manipulate it. You can even see on this screen that the background is soldering iron stars that I made. And then there's like a scanned motherboard. And then wood burned for the rest of it. Like the circles are woodburned. And yeah, and then like, sowed the text and scanned it and it was a very long process, but I think it was really rewarding and I think it's really beautiful.
Question from the audience: How has today's Kara feelings feel about Kara's past reflections of the games
KS: And so I've, you know, I've been making art for a long time longer than I've been making video games. And I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with my art practice. I feel like this is pretty rare for artists to say. But like, I can look back at these pieces and like, see the good about them. Like when we opened Ritual of The Moon two days ago, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this looks amazing. Like, it's not like I just made it. So it's easy to view other people's work in that way, and, and see, like some of the design flaws that if I were to make now I would say like, Oh, I wouldn't do that again. But that I'm like, Oh, this is a piece that was like a product of its time and my time in my life and usually feel like really positive about them and like, love and treasure them. And usually, while I'm making too, I usually have a good, positive relationship with the practice of making. And so today: feeling good.
On the impact geographical location has had on Kara’s work.
KS: I was in California for five years and in the Bay Area, or just south in Santa Cruz. And you can see that a lot in UnearthU just, you know, it's like inspired by Silicon Valley rhetoric that's really pervasive out there. And you know, about improving your life, micro dosing, mindfulness in the workplace mindfulness so you can go back to work and like be your best self. And, you know, there's this place called Esalen Institute there. And I feel like I was inspired a lot by its website aesthetic, you might be able to see it and some of the, like some of the things they say, and the visual aesthetic of their website. And this is like, this is like an institute that I'm forgetting the details about right now. That are, I don't know, I'm totally forgot higher learning, cognitive learning, that human betterment sort of stuff going on there. While Of course, like displacing indigenous people to set up the center there, and it's also really inspired by, you know, the nature there. And like this duality of like, this extremely beautiful nature and the tech industry, that kind of like, is destroying nature, but kind of pushing it, pushing it to other countries. Like it's not necessarily destroying the nature in California, but I was also working on this piece during the wildfires last summer, where, like my university evacuated, and people I know, whose homes burned down and a friend of activated to our house like, you know, extremely horrible and worrying and just with the worst wildfires on history, and, you know, yeah, so it's very impacted by my time and in the Bay Area.
CE: Do you, now that you've made a regional shift from the Bay Area to Alberta, do you feel any initial change influences already sort of swirling around? too early to tell?
KS: I was just thinking about that last week being like, oh, the next piece I make is going to be set in the mountains like the Rocky Mountains are right here in Banff National Park. And it's just absurdly gorgeous. But also, for those of you who don't know Canada very well, Alberta is thought of as the US of Canada, like the Texas or something. There's like the huge oil industry people are walking around Calgary wearing like I heart Canadian oil and gas, like, there's this kind of backlash to people wanting to, you know, move to renew renewable energy and like, shut down the oil sands or, you know, stop the mining practices, stop fracking. And so yeah, I can already see that being like at the forefront of my mind and experience here.
