With La Migra I wanted to broaden the critique presented in Crosser. This was a solo effort and it took a year to create all of the visual art and to encode. After it was completed in Cocoa, I re-encoded it from the ground up in Stagecast Creator, the cross-platform successor to Cocoa, which took another nine months.
La Migra
2001
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
545 pixels x 630 pixels x 8-bit color silent
click on the Go To Work button to start the game
use the left and right arrow-keys to patrol the border
use the up arrow-key to fling handcuffs at the alien invaders
catch as many as you can to be named agent of the month
Project Director: Rafael Fajardo
Contributions by: Francisco Ortega-Grimaldo, Ryan Benjamin Molloy, Tomas Marquez-Carmona (I repurposed and reinterpreted the drawings they originally created for Crosser).
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 La Migra 18 pages, 125 images