Rafael Fajardo
Director, SWEAT collaborative
Associate Professor,
Emergent Digital Practices
University of Denver

 

Projects: Crosser

Crosser is a product of SWEAT my videogame collaborative. In it I introduce the character of Carlos Moreno.

The arcade classic, Frogger, was taken as source material for simulating cultural realities at the US-Mexico border, specifically at El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. I attempted to create a multi-level critique through the piece, of culture, of games, and of technology.

Crosser
2000
videogame created in Apple abandonware entitled Cocoa,
ported to Stagecast Creator in 2002,
requires Stagecast Player and Java be installed prior to play
playable in a web browser on machines running windows, mac os, and unix
480 pixels x 530 pixels x 8-bit color silent
click on “start” button with mouse/cursor to start the game
manipulate your character, Carlos Moreno, with the arrow keys on your keyboard
try to get the visa without coming into contact with anything or anyone
Project Director: Rafael Fajardo (I initiated the project and sketched out the gameplay, proposed the idea of a game as a critique and enlisted collaborators to realize the vision. I taught the collaborators how to do the tasks necessary and then charged them with realizing specific parts.)
Collaborators: Miguel Angel Tarango, Marco Antonio Ortega, programmers; Francisco Ortega-Grimaldo, background art and narrative checker; Ryan Benjamin Molloy, Tomas Marquez-Carmona, Carmen Escobar, character design and animation.

Exhibitions
State of Play: Games with an agenda, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia, 2005
Discoveries Lecture University of Denver, CO, 2004
Image, Space, Object Lecture Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Denver, CO, 2004
In House University of Denver Faculty Tri-ennial, CO, 2004
Ideas International Digital Media and Art Association annual conference and exhibition, Orlando, FL, 2004
Digital Libre Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, Denver, CO, 2004
Power | Play International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2004
International Symposium of Interactive Media Design, Istanbul, Turkey, 2004
Pixels, Politics & Play ver. 3 Lecture at Museum of Contemporary Art / Denver, CO, 2003
Pixels, Politics & Play ver. 1 Lecture at Popular Culture Association National Conference 2003
Design Along the Edge Lecture invited to give to AIGA Seattle and Space.City, Seattle, WA, 2003
Design Along the Edge Lecture invited to give to AIGA Colorado, Denver, CO, 2002

Publications
Fajardo, Rafael. “Pixels, Politics & Play (ver. 2)”. Intelligent Agent Magazine. Patrick Lichty, ed. Volume 3, number 2. Summer/Fall 2003.

Bibliography
Forni, Alberto. “Evitare I Manager E Attraversare La Frontiera: Piccoli videogiochi politicamente scorretti”. Dispenser Weblog. Listed February 2005.
Hunt, Jamer. “Slow Down and Act Now”. The Knowledge Circuit. University of Minnesota Design Institute. Listed November 2004.
Baigorri, Laura. Transmisor”. Listed January 2005.
Ludovico, Alessandro. “Border Games, videogames sull'immigrazione messicana”. Neural.it Listed October 2004.
Bleecker, Julian. “Getting the reality your deserve”. SimCity: Mapping the virtual cities. Mario Bittanti, ed. Ludologica. Italy. September 2004.
Bleecker, Julian. “Play with Purpose: Cultural Critique + Gaming”. USC Interactive Media Division Weblog. 2004.07.05
Thomas, David. “On The Border”. Buzzcut. 2003.09.18

Process Galleries
Making Crosser