Tape Invader

Tape Invader invites participants to think about the Future of Conflict and Pacifism. Science fiction, with its violent tropes, shapes many of our aspirations for technology and exploration. By placing a “space invader” under foot, we’re inverting the typical power/spatial relations and reifying the hegemonic othering embedded in popular experiences of play. The use of the “floor as platform” interrogates the historical concept of the platform, bringing it into conversation with modern platform contexts.

In the display context of the MIT Media Lab, Tape Invader engages in the active dialogue about the role of war, violence, industry, capitalism and the downward trend of antagonistic illuminate rudimentary space imagery in the context of creative technological expression. As a performative experience, Tape Invader allows the viewer to pass beyond the Invader, moving from the victimized position below the Invader to a relative position of power above the Invader. This engages the viewer in a continuum of Foucaultian structural power among notions of battle ground video game as platform for Next Wave Colonialism.

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• Invader. Street art in Paris, London, Los Angeles. 1998

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• Pratchett, Terry. “Only You Can Save Mankind.” 1992