Game Art: Judith Doyle's "Phantom House" (2010)

"Phantom House : an architecture with hand-drawn and streaming media textures, built in the SecondLife virtual world by artist Judith Doyle, with technical assistance from Ian Murray.

Judith Doyle writes, 'Phantom House' is a memory architecture constructed in the nocturnal upper atmosphere of the SecondLife virtual world. After my parents died suddenly in 2003, I built models of our family home in game engines and virtual environments; 'Phantom House' is the final, spectral version, an architecture of forgetting. This unique structure in SecondLife operates as an outpost, a version of home I can return to, shared by avatars of urban foxes that once dwelt on our property.

In 2010, a DVD and digital picture frame version of Phantom House set a Canadian record at auction for new media art. Judith Doyle, an artist and filmmaker, is Associate Professor and Chair of Integrated Media at OCADU in Toronto, and Artist in Residence at Baycrest, a centre for memory research. GestureCloud is the name of her collaborative formation with Beijing-based artist Fei Jun" (Judith Doyle)