micha cárdenas + Abraham Avnisan

Sin Sol (No Sun), Walk is an immersive augmented reality game in which players experience a devastating environmental event, and must escape massive wildfires. The work explores the complex intersections of climate change, gender, disability, immigration, and mental health to consider how climate change disproportionately affects marginalized communities. The game centers around Aura, a trans-Latinx artificial intelligence hologram. From her vantage point fifty years in the future, she tells the narrative of the environmental collapses that have occurred in her past, which is our present. Aura is joined by her dog, Roja, who leads players on a journey to escape the wildfires and to find oxygen capsules containing poetry. These poems reveal the story to players as they progress through the game. The environments in the game, which also functions as an environmental archiving project, include actual 3D scans from present-day forests in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

micha cárdenas is an artist and theorist who completed her Ph.D. in Media Arts + Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Her book in progress, Poetic Operations, proposes algorithmic analysis as a means to develop a trans-of-color poetics. cárdenas’s co-authored books The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities (2012) and Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs (2010) were published by Atropos Press. The recipient of several awards including the Creative Award from the Gender Justice League (2016) and the inaugural James Tiptree Jr. fellowship (2014), cárdenas has presented her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, Germany; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Centro Cultural del Bosque, Mexico City. cárdenas is Assistant Professor of Art & Design: Games + Playable Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a first generation Colombian American, born in Miami.

Abraham Avnisan is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text, and code. He creates artist’s books, mobile apps, and mixed reality performances that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language, history, and philosophy. Avnisan teaches creative writing, new media art, and interactive media design as an Artist-in-Residence in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at University of Washington Bothell. He has presented his work at numerous institutions including at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; the Chicago Architecture Biennial; and at Post-Screen: International Festival of Art, New Media, and Cybercultures, Lisbon. Avnisan has been widely published, appearing in INDEX Vol. 6: An Annual Document of Performance Practice; the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3; Stonecutter; and The Poetry Project Newsletter, among others.