Samantha Gorman
Samantha Gorman is an interdisciplinary academic and scholar, an artist, and an educator. Her focuses and interests lie in writing and narrative design for digital media, directing live digital performance and theatre, as well as the theory and practice of immersive media (AR/VR). Gorman is the co-lead of studio TenderClaws and also a professor of games in the Art + Design Department in CAMD at Northeastern University.[1][2] Gorman's work concerns a focus on the intersection of text, performance, and digital culture. She is particularly interested in issues surrounding contemporary reading and writing practices and particularly what they mean for the future of our culture and its heritage in an increasingly electronic world. [3]
Gorman is known for her projects that produce creative interventions in form and technology – things such as e-readers, mobile VR, AR, machine learning, and biometrics. Gorman also works on commercially released entertainment and providing research and development for emerging platforms and partnerships. Many of Gorman’s projects focus on speculative design futures. The close marriage of critical narratives and user experience design is meant to foster a reflective/informed viewership of the medium being consumed.
As co-lead of TenderClaws, Gorman's work has "launched nearly every major immersive media platform and has been written about in The New York Times, Vice, BBC radio, The Verge, Forbes, Wired, The LA Times and Engadget." [4] Projects by TenderClaws have also been acknowledged by industry honors: starting with PRY (one of Apple’s 25 best apps of 2015). Her work in Virtual, Virtual Reality (VVR) draws on her eighteen years of experience designing for Virtual Reality was a 2017 Google Play Award winner for “Best VR Experience, “ a Unity Awards Finalist, and won “Best VR Game” and “Best Mobile VR” at Raindance.
Education[edit]
Samantha Gorman received an MFA from Brown University Literary Arts. Her PhD in Media Arts and Practice was received from the School of Cinematic Arts at USC.[5]
Career[edit]
Samantha Gorman teaches at Northeastern University in the College of Arts, Media, and Design. In her professorship, she specializes in digital forms of Storytelling/Narratology, Directing for Digital Performance/Live Art, and the history, theory, and practice of immersive media (AR/VR). She has also taught courses in Performance Art and Digital Literature at the Rhode Island School of Design. [6]
She also acts as Co-lead and Narrative of TenderClaws.[7]
Projects[edit]
TenderClaws[edit]
TenderClaws is an art and games studio situated in Los Angeles, California. It is comprised of directors, writers, designers, and coders that bring to the table a variety of perspectives, narratives, and interests with relation to form and content.[8]
Tempest[edit]
As he is sheltering in place in the Hollywood Hills, an actor who is playing that role of Prospero in a postponed production of The Tempest leads an audience through highlights, dreams, and private, personal conceptions of the show. The line between reality, virtual reality, and fiction is blurred as the game's players are seemingly cast as Prospero’s spirits. The players are made to interact with the actor, magic, and the show's set to help bring to life a virtual performance of the play.[9]
The Under Presents[edit]
The Under Presents is the largest game thatTenderClaws has yet produced. It originated from our interest in the intersection of VR and Immersive Theater. The Under is a stage constructed in a vision of vaudeville and exists outside time and space, in a different dimension than this one. It’s populated by lost voyages and souls that wandered off and ended up lost in time. They all gather at the Under to perform for the player. The player's guide is the unknown, mysterious business owner of the Under: The MC.[10]
In a review of The Under Presents, Devon Baur writes, "During the COVID-19 quarantine, audiences were looking for ways to gather and The Under Presents offered an apt but unusual stage: the promise of a venue outside of time and space. Coined as “immersive live theatre meets virtual reality (VR),” The Under Presents was a quirky, playful, and innovative approach to both synchronous and asynchronous performance in virtual space. The production, directed by Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro, was created by Tender Claws in partnership with the performance group Piehole, and premiered at Sun-dance 2019 with a live public run from November 2019 through summer 2020. From home, audiences could enter at any time through their own VR headset and either explore alone or serendipitously meet other people. The space held audience members and actors together in a virtual playground that hosted scheduled stage performances and wandering surprise actors to take advantage of VR as an innovative medium to stage a live performance. Through an animated adventure-scape, this work used VR to interrogate uniquely the pliability of time and space, in both the story’s theme and how it brought audiences together."[11]
Tendar[edit]
The first version of Tendar started as an installation and speculative fiction app at Sundance New Frontier 2018. It came in the form of a social AR installation. The full app for Android is a true long-form generative narrative that unfolds over three weeks of AR-produced content. On a basic level, Tendar is a simple AR game that's had its boundaries pushed. It is composed of a virtual pet fish who eats the players' emotions. The fish, named 'Guppy,' is an artificial neural network. Through feeding it their emotions, the players are thereby training Guppy to put together an ideal model of human emotion. The more Guppy is fed, the more it evolves. Out of all of TenderClaw's projects, Tendar is proclaimed to be the most political and to illustrate the reciprocal relationship of form and content.[12]
Pry[edit]
Pry is an App novella that takes the form of an eBook and reconceptualizes it. It was created specifically in the interest of being used through tablet media. Pry has the reader literally touching the thoughts of the protagonist. The protagonist themself experiences their own inner world which is the book itself. Shifted memory and unreliable text and emotion are among the primary driving forces of this piece.[13]
In a review written by Clara Chetcuti, she delivers an important analysis and assessment of Samantha Gorman's Pry. "It is possible for Pryto vaunt and deliver on the promise of 'a book to watch and a film to touch' because of the affordances of the iPad platform. As a born-digital app for iPad touchscreens, it lends itself to 'extended tactile experience beyond simulation'; because the iPad screen is less a monitor beneath glass than a physical interface, it allows for a literally hands-on approach to the storytelling elements."[14]
Lingua Ignota[edit]
Lingua Ignota, translated, means "Unknown Language." This project is authored by a variety of collaborators that employs the transferring of lexical meaning between and amongst language systems. Lingua Ignota is targeted directly toward questioning and exploring the evolution and slippage of language. The secondary motive was later formed, which entailed the unfolding of an author’s text as it is, to be re-interpreted by a group readership.[15]
Completely Automated[edit]
Completely Automated is half scholarly paper and half semi-fictional exploration of how written history is generated through human and machine. Primarily, this project investigates online archiving programs like the reCAPTCHA project. The reCAPTCHA project mines answers from individual reCAPTCHAs to preserve old manuscripts through a cyclical authorship amongst users and the automated processes that the project employs.Completely Automated provides context to the role of the reCAPTCHA as a guard field that provides a human user access to online content, while rejecting computer programs. A major component of this project is the distinction and manipulation of humanlike and machinelike operation and communication, primarily through language.[16]
Canticle[edit]
Canticle was originally written for Brown University's CAVE virtual reality environment. It was originally created in three movements and arranged for collaborative performance between a soloist and a VR environment. Canticle plays on the spectacle of VR by producing an aesthetic environment that is overly saturated despite its basic level composition. Evocative audio and text were used to help create this experience and operational tactic, including The Song of Solomon and Nico Muhly's MotherTongue.[17]
The Book of Kells[edit]
Deconstruction involves the interconnection of historical study, literary theory, travel narrative, meditative prose, mystical contemplation, and academic inquiry. All of these factors are tied together through research and reflection done on The Book of Kells, an illuminated Latin version of the Bible circa 800 AD, as well as the tools and techniques used to create it. The prose of Deconstruction is informed by the author's travel and a close survey of The Book of Kells that was done at Trinity College Dublin. Deconstruction involves the evolution of how writing is disseminated from manuscript culture to Gutenberg and the Internet, as well as how these media have helped to create a more and more liberated reading practice. Deconstruction is, importantly, an investigation of hypertext itself. Insular Design is used throughout Deconstruction What is particularly significant is the fact that hypertext authors’ careful and intentional mapping out of the webs that compose their projects directly mirrors the monks’ meticulous creation of knots.[18]
Awards & Honors[edit]
Tempest[edit]
Awards[edit]
2020 - Raindance Film Festival "Winner - Best Narrative Experience"
2020 - Raindance Film Festival "Honourable Mention - Outstanding Achievement in Design"
2020 - LA Times "Top 10 Best Games"
2020 - Dice Awards "Nominee - Immersive Reality Technical Achievement"
2020 - Upload Awards "Winner - Most Innovative VR Design"
2020 - Upload Awards "Nominee - Best VR Experience"
2020 - No Proscenium Awards "Outstanding Achievement in Live Virtual Reality Production"
2020 - No Proscenium Awards "Audience Choice"
The Under Presents[edit]
Awards[edit]
2020 - Emmy Awards, "Finalist - Innovation in Interactive Media"
2020 - Unity Award "Finalist - Best VR Game"
2020 - AIXR VR Awards "VR Experience of the Year"
2020 - A MAZE Awards "Nominee - Most Amazing Award"
2019 - IndieCade Official Nominee "Spotlight in Performance"
Virtual Virtual Reality[edit]
Awards[edit]
2019 - Independent Game Festival (IGF), Honorable Mention “Grand Prize”
2018 - International Mobile Gaming Awards Winner “Best VR Game”
2018 - Future of Storytelling Finalist
2018 - Raindance Film Festival winner “Best Mobile Interactive Experience”
2018 - Unity Awards 2017 Finalist “Best VR Game”
2017 - Google Play Awards winner “Best VR Experience”
2017 - IndieCade “Official Nominee”
2017 - Vision VR/AR Awards Nominee “Best Game”
Selected Exhibits[edit]
2018 - Moscow Contemporary Art Center (MARS)
2018 - Chromatic Arts Festival
2017 - New York Film Festival: "Convergence," Lincoln Center
2017 - “UCLA Game Art Festival,” Hammer Museum
2017 - Raindance Film Festival
2017 - Google I/O
2017 - Sonar+D, Barcelona
Tendar[edit]
Awards[edit]
2019 - Game Developers Choice Awards, Honorable Mention, “Best VR/AR”
2019 - Games for Change, winner “Innovation Award”
2019 - IndieCade, winner "Innovation in Interaction"
2019 - Sundance Film Festival, Official Selection in New Frontier
2019 - Selected for exhibition at Google I/O
Selected Exhibits[edit]
2019 - Google I/O
2019 - International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA)
2019 - GDC, Google Booth
2019 - Games for Change
Pry[edit]
Awards[edit]
2016 - The 19th Japan Media Arts Festival, Jury Selection
2015 - Curated by Apple as one of the Best 25 Apps of 2015
2015 - Independent Games Festival (IGF), Finalist for "Excellence in Narrative"
2015 - The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature, Won
2015 - The New Media Writing Prize, Won
2015 - Slamdance Film Festival, “Official Selection”
2014 - Future of Storytelling (FOST) Prize, 2nd Place
2014 - Geneva International Film Festival Tous Ecrans, Official Selection
2014 - Word Play Festival of Writerly Games, Official Selection
Selected Exhibits[edit]
2016 - The 19th Japan Media Arts Festival , The National Art Center Tokyo
2015 - Sensory Stories at Museum of Moving Image
2015 - New York Film Festival: Convergence, Lincoln Center
2015 - Permanent Collection, University of Bergen Library, Norway
2015 - Sensory Stories: New Narrative Experiences, Phi Center, Montreal
2013 - Bibliothèque Nationale de France in “Digital Literature Yesterday to Tomorrow”
Reference List[edit]
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "About". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ "Speaker: Samantha Gorman". beyondconference.org. Beyond Conference. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
- ↑ Rettberg. "Samantha Gorman". Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. ELMCIP. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
- ↑ https://samanthagorman.net/About
- ↑ "Samantha Gorman". NortheasternUniversity.edu. Northeastern University: College of Arts, Media, and Design. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
- ↑ "Samantha Gorman". brownuniversity.edu. Brown University. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "samanthaKgorman". Twitter. Twitter. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Tender Claws Presents". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Tempest". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "The Under Presents: OUT NOW". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Baur, Devon. "The Under Presents by Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro (review)". Theatre Journal. 73 (1).
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Tendar". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Pry". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Chetcuti, Clara. "Samantha Gorman, Danny Cannizzaro: Pry Review". CounterText.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Lingua Ignota". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Completely Automated". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "Canticle". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
- ↑ Gorman, Samantha. "The Book of Kells". Samantha Gorman. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
Samantha Gorman[edit]
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