[-empyre-] bio

[Joseph Delappe]

Hi,
Not sure that you received this.

Hi all,
I've been a "lurker" and a participant on empyre for some time now. Really enjoy popping in now and again and scanning the various threads.  I've been invited to participate twice, I think both times for game related or activist threads.
My bio:
Joseph DeLappe (http://www.delappe.net<http://www.delappe.net/>) is a Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance, sculpture and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad. In 2006 he began the project dead‐in‐iraq , to type consecutively, all names of America's military casualties from the war in Iraq into the America's Army first person shooter online recruiting game. He also directs the iraqimemorial.org<http://iraqimemorial.org/> project, an ongoing web based exhibition and open call for proposed memorials to the many thousand of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. More recently, in 2013, he rode a specially equipped bicycle to draw a 460 mile long chalk line around the Nellis Air Force Range to surround an area that would be large enough to create a solar farm that could power the entire United States.
He has lectured throughout the world regarding his work, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, CBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and on The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. His works have been featured in the New York Times, The Australian Morning Herald, Artweek, Art in American and in the 2010 book from Routledge entitled Joystick Soldiers The Politics of Play in Military Video Game. He has authored two book chapters, including “The Gandhi Complex: The Mahatma in Second Life.” Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design, (New York, Routledge 2011) and “Playing Politics: Machinima as Live Performance and Document”, Understanding Machinima Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds, (London, UK, Continuum 2012).
In my teaching I've recently been involved with a major redesign of my Digital Media area of emphasis within the Department of Art at UNR to become a proposed new program entitled Art, Technology and Social Practice. I am as well involved with a "Serious Games" minor here at the university shared between Art (Digital Media), Journalism and Computer Science.
In my creative practice, recently I completed "Project 929: Mapping the Solar" http://www.project<http://www.project/> 929.com<http://929.com/>, a durational performance and interventionist action to surround the Nellis Air Force Range in southern Nevada riding a bicycle dragging pieces of white chalk.  This project involved gps mapping, a solar panel equipped long-tail bicycle and 246 pieces of hand made gypsum/chalk and a live activated Blue Mars avatar following me in Google Street View.  I am currently working with Manifest AR to create what will a permanent Augmented Reality documentary accessible via smart phones on site at locations travelled during the project - images will depict me on the bike and a created vista imagining enormous solar farms going off into the distance.

As well I am currently building a half-scale version of a Taliban fighter as extracted from the Medal of Honor FPS game to be realized in bright orange corrugated plastic.  I am interested in exploring the nature of avatar terrorist "play" as evident in the fact of 50% of gamers in contemporary shooters effectively role play as such.  I am looking for a site or institution at which to build the final version of this piece, which would be approximately 25' tall.