Endnotes¹


Chia Amisola
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    Artwork

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    Engine.lol
    Interactive Gamemaker

    Statement Engine.lol is a gamemaker that is a game in itself. An ode to the early, handmade web and to toolmaking, it’s creation that inspires creation—as only the human invents tools to make other tools and has always used its own artifacts to reinvent itself. ‘Games’ are spatial and non-linear, navigated using a grid system assembled out of images, text, and original tracks. Every story made with the tool can be remixed, played, and published. The system itself is offline, built without reliance on depreciable software and is reproduced on analog media: flash drives, CD, & floppy discs; its soundtrack on cassette. A ‘tutorial’ system guides the user, providing a controlling or comforting narrative voice depending on the user’s actions. As the user tells its stories, the tool tells you some of its own, as well. The internet is rife with contradictions: how do we have the most advanced technology we’ve ever had, yet struggle with authorship and distribution? We ignore the physicality of the internet and its reliance on massive networks of physical infrastructure, yet lean into how it renders spatial difference irrelevant whenever we type in a URL. We digitize our memories and treat the internet as a permanent archive, though the loss of massive tools and software like Myspace and Macromedia Flash have lost uncountable stories, audio, and games. In display with a replica of the artist’s bedroom with parodies of retro tech ads, it’s also an exercise in worldbuilding and the culture that surrounds craft.

    Student

    website, web, game, people, world, interactive fiction, teenage girls, engine, neopets, ode, teenage girls, internet, tool, feel, coding, thinking, club penguin, voice, potential
    "I think a lot about how those kinds of websites in that age were shaped by teenage girls, essentially. Yeah. Similar to how like women were the forefront of computing. Early on when it was like still seen as menial work."
    "When I was making websites it was like in these groups of like young teenage girls from all over the world, just like critiquing each other's Narato or Pokemon fan sites or something. Young women shape culture, essentially, like these kind of tech communities do."
    "And I think just like my genuine like, interest, or like passion in this world is to make creation as ubiquitous as possible, or like, create art or some kind of piece that influences me as much as the art that influenced me when I was a teenage girl that drove me to create and explore like these, like different intersectional modes of creation. I want to make something like that for someone else, right?"
    "How do you treat the internet as a gathering space?"
    "I love making like, single purpose, poetic websites. I just want to make websites that make people feel things. I think that's the core of my work because you don't really think about a website and emotions it brings to you."
    Endnotes¹

    Chia Amisola
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    •

    Artwork

  • 1
    •
  • 2
    •
  • 3
    •
  • 4
    •
  • 5
    •
  • 6
    •
    Engine.lol
    Interactive Gamemaker

    Statement Engine.lol is a gamemaker that is a game in itself. An ode to the early, handmade web and to toolmaking, it’s creation that inspires creation—as only the human invents tools to make other tools and has always used its own artifacts to reinvent itself. ‘Games’ are spatial and non-linear, navigated using a grid system assembled out of images, text, and original tracks. Every story made with the tool can be remixed, played, and published. The system itself is offline, built without reliance on depreciable software and is reproduced on analog media: flash drives, CD, & floppy discs; its soundtrack on cassette. A ‘tutorial’ system guides the user, providing a controlling or comforting narrative voice depending on the user’s actions. As the user tells its stories, the tool tells you some of its own, as well. The internet is rife with contradictions: how do we have the most advanced technology we’ve ever had, yet struggle with authorship and distribution? We ignore the physicality of the internet and its reliance on massive networks of physical infrastructure, yet lean into how it renders spatial difference irrelevant whenever we type in a URL. We digitize our memories and treat the internet as a permanent archive, though the loss of massive tools and software like Myspace and Macromedia Flash have lost uncountable stories, audio, and games. In display with a replica of the artist’s bedroom with parodies of retro tech ads, it’s also an exercise in worldbuilding and the culture that surrounds craft.

    Student