Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal

Languages of Violence is a gaming/sound performance mediated by the streaming service Twitch. The visual elements represent the active key registrations and inputs being made during a video game, while the sound is of the game as it’s played and mixed through analog pedals and feedback loops. The context of the game and the event that it produces are obscured by this interpretation. What’s left is an impressionistic gesture that mediates a fact of violence. At the outset of this work, I was exploring what I saw left open by realistic digital violence, in that it can be directed beyond its actual origins. Gunfire is made indistinguishable from a real life event, but its context as a video game rescues it or makes it acceptable.