queering

THE STRUGGLE (TO HEAL) IS REAL

Carson Lynn’s earliest machinima, Oddball (2019), introduced the foundational themes and stylistic elements that echo throughout his subsequent works, including A bronze anvil falls to the earth., Reversal Ring, and Storm and Stress. In these projects, Lynn explores the complex interplay between digital spaces and queer identity, employing video games as medium, message, and messenger. A set of recurring themes – the representation of bodies, the exploration of virtual spaces as sites of friction and refuge, the use of mechanics as analogies for non binary experiences, glitching as queering – permeate his creations. In this final installment about Lynn’s machinima production, we’ll focus on his inaugural work, Oddball.

Oddball is a poignant meditation on virtual embodiment and queer resilience within the battlegrounds of Halo 2. Thanks to the modification Project Cartographer, Lynn captures the raw intensity of in-game interactions and the futuristic landscapes of Microsoft Studios’s popular first-person shooter. By weaving together footage from the game with real conversations appropriated from player exchanges on YouTube between 2006 and 2010, Lynn crafts a context that moves beyond hyper-masculine competition – the expected/prescribed gaming experience – exploring themes of vulnerability, violence, and the search for safe spaces within fictional domains.

As the artist explains in the artwork’s accompaying text, Oddball draws inspiration from Aevee Bee’s 2015 personal essay, “I love my untouchable virtual body,” which tackled the concept of invulnerability within Bloodborne as a coveted but unattainable shield against real-world pain and trauma. Unlike Bloodborne’s fleeting moments of invincibility, Halo 2’s gameplay mechanics, where characters are unavoidably subjected to damage, decline and degradation, serve as a metaphor for the exposure and assault of the queer self in spaces rife with homophobia and aggression…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Carson Lynn

A bronze anvil falls to the earth., digital video, color, sound, 6’ 35”, 2023

Reversal Ring, digital video, b&w, sound, 3’, 2022

Storm and Stress, digital video, color, sound, 3’ 45”, 2020

Oddball, digital video, color, 3’ 27”, 2019

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CARSON LYNN: GLITCHING IS QUEERING

Central to Carson Lynn’s oeuvre is the exploration of queerness, not just as an identity but as a lens through which to challenge and reinterpret the world. This theme is evident in the way he employs digital media to question and disrupt normative narratives and binary understandings of identity, suggesting a fluidity and multiplicity that is intrinsic to the queer experience. This theme is manifest in Storm and Stress (2020).

In the summer of 2020, Lynn unveiled Storm and Stress, a distinctive project commissioned for Silicon Valet’s Lot Residency #07. This innovative exhibition, hosted on the digital platform's Instagram page over the course of August 1st and 2nd, marked a creative exploration into the digital and virtual realms. Lynn’s work, segmented into nine distinct parts, cleverly utilized the Instagram grid to present a cohesive yet multifaceted visual narrative. Each of the nine sections not only stood alone as a piece of art but also housed a unique short machinima clip, further enriching the viewer’s experience with dynamic, moving images that delved deep into the concept of queerness in digital spaces.

Central to Storm and Stress was the exploration of the concept of “queering as glitching” and “glitching as queering.” This innovative approach posits the act of glitching, often seen as errors or flaws within digital systems, as a form of queering, challenging normative structures and expectations within digital environments. Lynn’s project provocatively suggests that, much like the queer experience disrupts societal norms and expectations, glitches disrupt the smooth, expected functioning of digital systems. This parallel draws attention to…

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Matteo Bittanti


Works cited

Carson Lynn, Storm and Stress, video, color, sound, 3’ 45”, 2020

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MMF MMXXIV: CARSON LYNN’S QUEER RAGE

Carson Lynn, A bronze anvil falls to the earth., digital video, color, sound, 6’ 35”, 2023.

Debuting in the Slot Machinima program at MMF MMXXIV, A bronze anvil falls to the earth. marks a seminal moment in Carson Lynn’s oeuvre. This work masterfully synthesizes digital artistry, game-based performance, and socio-political discourse into a singular, compelling narrative. Crafted in 2023, with a duration just shy of seven minutes, it epitomizes the transformative potential of machinima as a platform for both artistic innovation and poignant political dialogue.

In A bronze anvil falls to the earth., Lynn employs gameplay as a performative act, leveraging the dark, violent, feral world of Bloodborne to weave a narrative rich in Greek mythology and fueled by a palpable queer rage. This machinima blends the grim aesthetics and challenging gameplay of a video game renowned for its gothic environments, eldritch horrors, and brutally unforgiving combat with themes of resistance, suffering, and defiance against oppressive forces. Bloodborne’s setting, Yharnam, a cursed city plagued by a mysterious blood-borne disease transforming its inhabitants into beasts, serves as the perfect backdrop for Lynn’s counter narrative and relentless slaughter. The game’s emphasis on solitary exploration and the constant threat of death mirror the solitary struggle against the “blood-drunk beasts”, a metaphor for the violence and hatred faced by queer and trans individuals in the current environment. That is, the intense battles serve as a metaphor for the LGBTQ+ community’s real-world struggles against oppression, emphasizing the significance of perseverance and the quest for acceptance…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Carson Lynn, A bronze anvil falls to the earth., digital video, color, sound, 6’ 35”, 2023.

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ARTICLE & VIDEO ESSAY: Albert Mason or, in game-photography as "Manifest Destiny"...

Request for RDR2 mod, https://foundynnel.tumblr.com

…OR, the queering of in-game photography

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Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in 1899, when photography was still considered a “new medium” or, as the cliché goes, a “medium in its infancy”. In fact, the device that turned photography into a mass medium in the United States, the Kodak Brownie, was introduced a year later, in 1900. Photography nonetheless plays an important role within the context of the game. On a narrative level, it is embodied by the character of Albert Mason, a real-life nature photographer that the player first encounters in a quest entitled “Arcadia for Amateurs”. French artiste-astronaute Elisa Sanchez (2021) describes her encounter with Mason in her autobiographical essay:

“Arcadia for Amateurs” is a side mission where I met Albert Mason. Arcadia, a country of villages in the mountainous part of the Peloponnese in ancient Greece, has become a symbol of a primitive and idyllic place where people lived happily and in love. It is also the name of one of the first homosexual associations in France, which made me hope for a romance between Arthur and Albert. But, of course, there was no way to make Arthur Morgan anything other than a strict heterosexual.  

Albert Mason is an amateur photographer who wants to take pictures of the wildlife of the United States. Clumsy, knowing neither the fauna nor the flora, he solicits my help to protect him from the wild animals he wants to photograph. The romantic visions of the Wild West conveyed by the press and popular literature - which describe the splendid sunsets and the rough comradeship of the men of the frontier and yet ignore the massacre of the native population and the hardness of life - inspired man living in the Eastern cities like Albert Mason to try their luck in the West, in search of a more fulfilling life. 

Mason’s character was inspired by George Shiras III, who was the first to use flash photography, thanks to the explosion of magnesium powder, to photograph the night life of animals. Albert Mason dreams of the Wild West as Arcadia: a wild country, which has not yet known the throes of civilization, filled with magnificent animals that are waiting for him to be revealed. Albert displays a sense of wonder that is quite similar to the one I felt when I entered the game. As fascinated as he is, I observe with binoculars dozens of animals, listed in an encyclopedia that grows richer as I discover them. I pick flowers, track raccoons and get mauled by grizzly bears, and I can’t help but feel the beauty of the moonlight or the reflection of the sun in the streams with each step. Red Dead Redemption 2 is fully aware of its aesthetics and incorporates a photo mode which allows the player to capture images of the great wilderness.”

As Sanchez writes, the fictional Mason is indeed based on a historical figure, George Shiras III, like several other characters featured in the game. The “real” Shiras was born into a wealthy family in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, later becoming part of Pittsburgh, in 1859. His father, George Jr., was an attorney who served on the United States Supreme Court for eleven years. Shiras III attended the most exclusive schools in the country: he was an undergraduate at Cornell and — following in his father’s footsteps — received his law degree from Yale. He eventually became the U.S. Representative from the state of Pennsylvania. He was also an amateur wildlife photographer and his photos were featured in the National Geographic. In 1906, the influential magazine published 74 of his photographs and in 1928, Shiras donated 2,400 of his glass plate negatives, which are now part of the National Geographic Society archive. In turn, Shiras III’s award-winning Midnight — a suite of ten photographs of deer taken at night, all of which were taken from a boat using a jack light and illuminated by flashlight — were instrumental in the somehow controversial transformation of the National Geographic from a technical magazine into a mainstream publication (Brower, 2008, pp. 173-174)…

Matteo Bittanti

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