Elegy : GTA USA gun homicides
- Submitting institution
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Abertay University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 17692211
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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2
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- DeLappe’s work develops new ways of utilizing video game technologies for critiquing current societal issues in creative works that are designed to provoke debate.
Here, the popular, online open world of Grand Theft Auto V is transformed into a 24/7, live-streamed data visualization of USA gun homicides. 'Elegy' modifies GTAV for automated play to reenact daily the yearly total for gun homicides in the USA. Gun homicide data is "scraped" from the Gun Violence Archive, (updated daily), and fed directly into the project.
Funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts, DeLappe led a team from The Biome Collective, (Albert Elwin and James Woods) to explore, through aesthetic, functional and interactive adaptation for the project.
The originality of this approach is two-fold. In producing a poignant reimagining of a popular game title to address a real-world issue, the work engages multiple audiences, including gamers, the art world and the general public. Secondly, the work utilizes programmatic modification to create a system of real-time data visualization in a computer game, so far as we are aware, this approach has not been taken before.
'Elegy' was live streamed 24/7 for one year on Twitch.tv (the popular game streaming platform) and has featured in exhibitions internationally, including: 'Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art', Akron Art Museum, Ohio 2019-20; 'Playmode', MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal 2019; 'Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art', Coventry, UK 2019; and 'In a Gamescape Landscape, Reality, Storytelling and Identity in Video Games', NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo, Japan 2018.
We were pleased that 'Elegy' was recognized as a "NetArt Honoree", Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences 2019. It was also featured on BBC Radio 1, Newsbeat; ITV News; and The Face, UK, among others.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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