No Bad Memories
About → Design manifesto
I reimagine nostalgia for 20th-century computers and video games by authoring an alternate history in which early electronic objects had been designed for and marketed to girls. The values below, in the form of a design manifesto, inform this work.
1. Fuck history
Video game history is written by enthusiasts and riddled with errors and omissions.
Computing history offers no sensible technological narrative.
Where I do not see my experiences reflected in these histories, I am compelled to subvert their authority by creating alternative retrogaming artifacts, fakes, and forgeries.
2. Make it cute
The aesthetics of technology-centric subcultures engender an ambient sense of belonging.
Blending retrocomputing and girly aesthetics expands and questions the borders of who "belongs" in these subcultures.
I privilege whimsy over realism to nurture a cute playground of electronic artifacts saturated with commercial un-viability.
3. Break it, remake it
Video game history favors a monoculture.
Diverse futures can be made possible by diverse recollections and reconstitutions of the past.
The retrogaming canon should be viewed with skeptism and, where necessary, broken apart and reimagined.
I strive to build cute tools, tutorials, and projects that invite diverse participation in the co-creation of new pasts and new futures.
