< Back
CATEGORY : Game
ROLE : Game design, Research, Game development
Strangers is a text-based net artwork that investigates online gender-based violence through the logic of the internet itself. Rather than representing harm visually, the project operates at the level of circulation, fragmentation, and repetition—mechanisms central to both net art and online abuse.
Grounded in cyberfeminist theory and research into image-based sexual violence, the work reframes anonymous online encounters as a site of critical intervention. The game borrows the aesthetics of early net art—glitches, viruses, and hyperlink narratives, not as nostalgia, but as structural tools to expose how violence propagates invisibly through networks.
Here, the virus is not destructive but generative. The act of sharing—links, stories, and choices—becomes a counter viral gesture that interrupts dominant patterns of exploitation. By refusing spectacle and image reproduction, the work deliberately avoids repeating the visual economies of harm it critiques.
By transforming viral systems of harm into participatory storytelling, Strangers proposes net art as an active feminist strategy rather than a representational one.
The choice of an interactive game format is central to the project’s theoretical grounding. A game is not simply consumed; it is performed, allowing for a direct, embodied experience of ambiguity and agency.
By navigating branching narratives and moral dilemmas, players directly engage with the complex psychological dimensions of OGBV—the hesitation, the choices, and the feeling of getting lost—that linear storytelling cannot capture. This application of net art format (interaction, hyperlinking, and participatory media) effectively translates complex theoretical understandings into a practical, accessible intervention within mainstream internet culture.
(The project was featured in an exhibition at the Schloss Fechenbach Museum.)
Strangers delivers an immersive experience using the Twine Engine, allowed research findings on warning signs and boundary setting to be directly applied within dynamic, choice-driven scenarios.
Social Extension: The Collective Voice Beyond the game, a key component was the @yourstories2023 Instagram campaign. This extension functions as a patchwork reconstruction of collective testimony. The campaign utilized the hyperlinking and fragmented structure of early net art, designing each post to mimic opening a digital file. This structure strategically gathered and rearranged fragmented personal stories, transforming the act of 'witnessing' online into a continuous, participatory act of communal healing and activism.
