From Art Journal 79, no. 2 (Summer 2020)
Domain Errors (2018) is an interactive, speculative fiction, text-based game created for and published in Art Journal’s Summer 2020 issue. This version of Domain Errors was created with the open-source platform Twine and is intended to serve as a supplement to the print version. The protagonist of Domain Errors is Aseco, named after the Greek goddess of healing. The experience takes the player through varying levels of cultural, social, and political visibility and invisibility. The player makes choices throughout the game that involve explorations of identities that are subject to varying levels of care and have been studied within the medical and health-care industries. The game is not bound by time, and it is fantastical in its propositions. Domain Errors uses statistical data as a primary worlding device in order to ultimately investigate how race, gender, and class are inextricably linked to science and technology.
Dorothy R. Santos is a writer and artist whose academic interests include digital art, computational media, games, and biotechnology. She is currently a PhD student in film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writing has appeared in art21, Art Practical, Rhizome, Hyperallergic, Ars Technica, Vice Motherboard, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space.