Event #2

 April 19, 2023

This week I attended the UCLA Design and Media Arts MFA Exhibition! While I was there I had the opportunity to see a variety of incredible works, it was very hard to select only one to write about in this blog post!

I met the artist Wiley Wiggins. Wiley is an artist and curator that focuses on video games and their history. The work he showed at the exhibition, Grotto, was unlike anything that I'd ever seen before. 

[Image 1] Meeting with the artist at the event! My new DESMA 9 friend Phoebe on the left, Wiley Wiggins in the middle, and me on the right! Photo taken by Professor Vesna!

Grotto is an experimental, web-based framework, available for multiple players. Grotto tells the stories of 16 families that left Bohemia to travel to Texas in the 1800s (Wiggins and Stiverson). Players can approach different doors, and behind the doors they can find out information about the people that were a part of that movement. There are over 100 rooms in the game put together with family tree data. Grotto has three interlocking art pieces: Mud Room (The Dungeon), Archon (The Arcology), and Phantom Homeland (The Frontier). Players can explore each of these spaces in the game and uncover more about the historical events that took place.

[Image 2] Image taken at the event. Projection of Grotto while a student opened a door.

Wiggins is originally from Texas, which is part of what inspired his work on the piece (Wiggins). I really enjoyed the design of the game because I've never seen history be taught or presented in such an interactive and fun way. Wiggins' work made me excited about how creativity like his could change the way we learn history!

[Image 3] Photo taken at the exhibition of the Grotto codebook. 

Wiggins blended the two cultures we discuss so frequently in DESMA 9, he used design and media to make historical concepts tangible (Vesna). With Wiggins' work, the learner is also the player! Overall, I would recommend more people explore the work being created by students on campus. I loved my experience at the MFA Exhibition. 

References

The Berlin School Of Creative Leadership. “An Argument That Video Games Are, Indeed, High Art.” Forbes, 12 Oct. 2022, www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2015/10/13/an-argument-that-video-games-are-indeed-high-art/?sh=aeb460a7b3c7.

“People | Wiley Wiggins.” UCLA Design Media Arts, 2023, dma.ucla.edu/people/wiley-wiggins.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 121–125., https://doi.org/10.1162/002409401750184672.

Wiggins, Wiley. Personal Communication. 18 April 2023.

Wiggins, Wiley, and Paul Stiverson. “Grotto.” RSS, 2023, wileywiggins.com//grotto.html.