A.M. Darke

A.M. Darke is an artist and game maker designing radical tools for social intervention. Still in the class war. Now in the pandemic. He’s in the combination class war and pandemic. Assistant Professor of Digital Arts and New Media, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and Art & Design: Games & Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz, Darke also directs The Other Lab, an interdisciplinary, intersectional feminist research space for experimental games, XR, and new media. She’s recently released ‘Ye or Nay?, a Kanye West-themed game about Black culture, and is currently developing the Open Source Afro Hair Library, a 3D model database for Black hair textures and styles.

Darke holds a B.A. in Design (’13) and an M.F.A. in Media Arts (’15), both from UCLA. Her work has been shown internationally and featured in a variety of publications, including Kill Screen, Vice, and NPR.

Black digital futures, algorithmic bias, representation and respectability politics, polemic gaming, and ethical trolling.

ARI Supported Project:  The Center for Black Virtuality at UC Santa Cruz that would produce interdisciplinary research, events, cultural production, and archives dedicated to Blackness as it is constructed, performed, subjugated, erased, and liberated in virtual space.