Game Changers, hosted by the Moore Animation and Game Arts program, is a yearly event that brings Women and nonbinary professionals to speak with the Moore community. This year follows the theme of social change and activism in games. This year's Game Changers speakers include artist and scholar Susana Ruiz, Ph.D., artist and UC Santa Cruz assistant professor A.M. Darke, and artist and Carnegie Mellon University associate professor Angela Washko.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Susana Ruiz, Ph.D. (she and/or they) is an artist and scholar whose creative and scholarly work is broadly concerned with how the intersection of art practice, playful design, and digital storytelling can enable new approaches to social activism, aesthetics, and public pedagogy. Her work is collaborative, interdisciplinary, experimental, and takes the hybrid form of intertwined theory and practice. She is an Assistant Professor of film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ruiz holds a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, an M.F.A. from the Interactive Media and Games program at the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. from USC’s Media Arts + Practice program.
A.M. Darke is an artist designing radical tools for social intervention. Still in the class war. Now in the pandemic. He’s in the combination class war and pandemic. Assistant Professor of Digital Arts and New Media, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, she directs The Other Lab, an interdisciplinary, intersectional feminist research space for experimental games, XR and new media at UC Santa Cruz. Darke's recent work includes ‘Ye or Nay?,' a Kanye West-themed game about Black culture, and she is currently developing the Open Source Afro Hair Library, a 3D model database for Black hair styles and textures.
As a feminist media artist working in a variety of forms, Angela Washko is committed to telling complex and unconventional stories about the media we consume from unusual perspectives. She is the founder of The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, a long-term intervention inside the popular online video game. A recent recipient of the Creative Capital Award, the Impact Award at Indiecade, and the Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Washko's practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times, Rhizome and more. Her projects have been presented internationally at venues including Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan Design Triennale, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennial and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Angela Washko is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
