Leading artists, writers and video-game developers joined us on Thursday 12 November for a special free online discussion about games and other playable experiences that aim to blur the real with the digital. Through a series of short talks and presentations, we discovered how artists and designers create digital characters – and how they’re trying to develop more inclusive and community-driven online spaces. You can watch again via our Twitch stream. 

Show and Tell: Imagined Realities is the final special event inspired by LaTurbo Avedon’s Your Progress Will Be Saved: an adventure within the labyrinthine universe of Fortnite Creative, it’s the first project in Virtual Factory, a new series of online artworks inspired by the possibilities of MIF’s future year-round home. For more, visit the Virtual Factory website. 

Leigh Alexander Leigh Alexander is a writer and narrative designer working in interactive entertainment, games and technology. Her journalism and short fiction focus on identity and the self in a digital society, and she designs for the narrative moments that can emerge from well-considered systems. She won the 2019 Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for Best Writing in a Video Game for Reigns: Her Majesty, which uses a Tinder swiping interface to present a Renaissance-themed feminist dark comedy. 

leighalexander.net 

LaTurbo Avedon  

LaTurbo Avedon is an avatar and artist that exists solely online, creating work that emphasises the practice of non-physical identity and authorship. Avedon has spent the past decade developing a body of work that illuminates the ever-growing intensity between users and virtual experiences, pursuing creative environments that deepen the meaning of memories found in cyberspace. Avedon is the creator of Your Progress Will Be Saved, the first project in MIF’s Virtual Factory series. 

turboavedon.com 

Pete Billington  

Pete Billington explores the convergence of art and technology. His career began at Silicon Graphics at the dawn of the web era. As a visual effects software consultant, he contributed to films like Star Wars and The Matrix, and helped to pioneer a motion-capture pipeline and rapid prototyping design process now adopted by every major studio. The Co-Founder & Director of Fable, he is the director of Wolves in the Walls, which strives to balance narrative structure with natural, intuitive interaction.  

fable-studio.com 

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley  

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist working predominantly in animation, sound, performance and video games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the ‘History of Trans people both living and past’, their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future. 

daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com 

Kareem Ettouney  

Kareem Ettouney is Art Director at Media Molecule. The breadth and scope of his work reflects his diverse background in interior, graphic, theatre and film set design. At Lionhead Studios, he quickly established himself as the lead Concept Artist – and when Mark Healey and Alex Evans left Lionhead in 2006 to form Media Molecule, Ettouney joined them as Co-Founder, along with David Smith. He has been instrumental in the iconic look of Media Molecule’s Little Big Planet franchise, as well as the striking painterly aesthetic of Dreams. 

kareemettouney.com 

Paolo Pedercini  

Paolo Pedercini is a Pittsburgh-based artist who teaches experimental game design and media production courses at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, and is the creator of radical video-gaming project Molleindustria and LIKELIKE arcade. 

molleindustria.org