Game Art: Kara Gut's Intimacy Mod (2016-ongoing)

Intimacy's Mod is a series of mods by Kara Gut created with the aid of the “Immersive Lover’s Comfort” by flexcreator for Skyrim. By using this mod, the artist distorts the games' original narrative and replaces it with an in-game performance carried out by the Gut herself (via her avatar) and one NPC (Non Player Character). Through the Intimacy Mod, Gut wanted to highlight the "cynicism and brutality (unintended or otherwise) of modding culture as a metaphor for our post-digital society at large, creating arresting situations of forced intimacy within a hyper-real space. "

As she explains,

My work investigates the new shape of human intimacy formed over time by internet lifestyle, constructed detachment from reality, and the power dynamics of the virtual. Using video, new media, and photography, I explore the necessity of certain arenas from Youtube fetish subculture to the video game modding community. I am specifically interested in how the patriarchal conversation that exists inside of these arenas can be subverted or reinterpreted to create new meaning. (Kara Gut)

These captivating videos show deformed virtual bodies, corporeal glitches, silents twists, slow spasms, and plenty of uncanny, algorithmic copulations.

, 2016