VDM Pentes, T: Black Box

BLACK BOX documents the creation of a interactive digital media artwork/game, a search for the protagonist Nina's hybrid cultural identity. The player navigates audio-visual fragments of Rembetika Greek blues, Russian jazz, Chinese cabaret and devotional Hindustani music and dance forms, revealing her cultural & spiritual origins. Dance is a driving metaphor, analogous to the players movement in and through these passages of image/ sound/ text ensembles and as a movement between theories and ideas explored in the electronic artwork. The central concern is to playfully reverse, obscure, and distort the look of the colonialist gaze, and allow the girl to picture herself. The study reveals that the participation and intervention of the player with the digital artefact, produces a unique experience and responsiveness with the open-ended text. BLACK BOX documents research by production in media studies.