Peripheral Amnesia by Aaron Oldenburg, video-game, 2009
The player of this videogame assumes the role of a hoarder trying to keep memories of friends alive through the junk that surrounds them. The eventual fading of a friend's photograph is temporarily prevented by touching an item associated with them. These memories come out in Microsoft Anna's text-to-speech reading of status updates from Facebook users. The photographs of friends are appropriated from Facebook profile pictures, and as they are stopped from fading through an object-mediated peripheral awareness, they also become more distorted.
Aaron Oldenburg is a game designer and new media artist whose primary interest is in game rules as an expressive medium. His interactive work exhibited at art.tech in San Francisco, SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, and VIDEOKILLS in Berlin. He received his MFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is an Assistant Professor at University of Baltimore's Simulation and Digital Entertainment program.
