GVA: Why did you specifically choose a video game to make art? What do you find especially fascinating about this medium? Its interactivity? Agency? Aesthetics? Theatricality?
Angela Washko: I don’t use games for their aesthetics, although their strong aesthetics produce nostalgia in a lot of the viewers that look at the work – which is for me just a byproduct of working often with existing games made from 1993-2005. I am most interested in the cultural impact of games. In most of the works I make I am either looking at what stories games tell and how they coexist with other types of cultural storytelling (cinema, art, fiction etc.) and how those stories impact the development and thinking of those playing through them. In my project The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, I focus on the community aspect of World of Warcraft. The emergence and popularity of massively multiplayer role playing games has created unique digital public gathering spaces, and I am interested in the informal behaviors, languages, social codes and other practices produced by the community participating in this space and how it has evolved over the ten+ years World of Warcraft has existed and thrived.