Salon Ludique 2: Frequencies.
December 4th. 7pm. $5. @Espace Fibre 

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Feminist voices and gender critiques come in a variety forms. While work like Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency video series provides us with pointed and topical critiques of narrative tropes featuring representations of women in digital games, an array of feminist practitioners directly address similar themes and issues through the creation of new works; engaging in practices along a spectrum of 'feminist frequencies'.

In light of the rise of reactionary, anti-feminist movements in gaming and other cultural milieus, this edition of Salon Ludique offered a response to such troubling trends by exploring gender-critical practices in digital and analog games, performance, and new media. These works serve as a critical commentary on gendered stereotypes, as well as questions of consent, sexuality, and identity.

Featuring the work of :

Allison Cole, Jessica Marcotte, and Zachary Miller, Montreal

“In Tune",  explores the navigation of consent, comfort, and shared intimacy through verbal and physical exchanges between two players of unspecified gender.

Nina Freeman, NYC

"How Do You Do It". From the perspective of a young girl the player engages in a secret and shameful doll play; an exciting imitation of "adult play". The games displays a tension between a young girls curiosity and the ways girls are expected to relate to the imaginary of erotic relationships.

Rachel Simone Weil (aka Partytime! Hexcellent!) Austin, TX.

"Electronic Sweet & Fun Fortune Teller" is an original love-compatibility and horoscope game for play on the NES. The game is inspired by teenage girls' magazines and Japanese electronic fortune games of the 1980s and 1990s such as the line of Herpit toys by Bandai. In Electronic Sweet-N-Fun Fortune Teller, romance-centered horoscopes, which are often read as feminine and which present love as a requisite end gained through passivity and wishful thinking, are combined with video games, which are often read as masculine and which generally center on the achievement of power and specific gameplay goals. This combination offers diverse opportunities to whimsically explore and redesign feminine/masculine and normative/queer binaries within gamespaces, especially those occupied by nostalgic, 8-bit culture.

“Hello Kitty Land” is an NES ROM hack based on the 1985 game Super Mario Bros. with elements from various Sanrio games for Famicom such as the 1992 game Hello Kitty World.

Do It Yourself VideoGame History Zine (a limited number will be available for free to Salon Ludique attendees).  By the year 2016, all video-game retrospectives and archives will be called into question. Why not get a head start on Unraveling the Narrative by writing your own video game history? You call the shots in this reproducible leaflet. Just make black-and-white, double-sided prints of this file, cut the pages in half, and fill in the blanks to tell us how it really went down!

Tamara Yadao, aka Corset Lore, NYC (Musical Performance)

Corset Lore’s fantastical song constructions lie at the intersection of baroque style, asian folklore, science fiction and underground music of the late 20th century. She writes 8 bit compositions on a Game Boy DMG-01 and sometimes transmits these frequencies to multiple radios in installation for spatialized performance. While playing guitar, she fancies electric toothbrushes and ebow to guitar plectra most of the time. She has performed at Hackers on Planet Earth Number Nine 2012, I/O chip music showcase, Splice NYC, Vector Game Art Festival, the WARPER 7 year anniversary party, Ladies’ Night at Pulsewave NYC, 8static Festival – 5 Year Anniversary celebration and in collaboration with glomag at PAX East and Public Assembly. Compilations include Starscream’s “Future, And It Doesn’t Work + Remixes” record, “Reformat: A Tribute to Bit Shifter’s Information Chase” on 8bitpeoples and ‘Pxl-Win’, a collaboration between Chiptunes=WIN and Pxl-Bot. With absolute delight, her debut EP, Corset Lore was released by 8static in October 2013.  

***** As a special finale to this edition of Salon Ludique, Tamara Yadao (Corset Lore)gave a live chipmusic performance, collaborating with Rachel Weil (PartyTime!Hexcellent!) who will be providing a live visual set coded for the NES.