When We Love
When We Love is a dating simulator where you date everything.
2023–
https://whenwe.love ↗
Solo game in development; sub-games released
WHEN WE LOVE is a series of net art interventions that discuss proximity, intimacy, and attention as mediated by the internet (whether offline or online); tethered under a dating simulator where you date everything: other people, clouds, flowers, feelings, the internet itself.
The actual dating simulator itself is a work in progress – put on pause in 23-24 while I improved my development skills (after gauging how ambitious it was in scale, form), but is now back in development.
It is an experience, prompt, and realization about love on screens that extends beyond one screen. Each of the experiences under WHEN WE LOVE can be considered standalone, or part of a collective umbrella of works that explore digital intimacies. My intention is to create a game that is indistinguishable from real-life, in an age of unknown intelligences and complex affective realities clashing with the known world; where fictions and realities are indistinguishable. Love is a speculative act in itself.
It has manifested itself in performances (Screen Walk, Temporary Performance Assembly), community software (cloudwatching and stargazing), printed matter (the sound of love) and beyond. WHEN WE LOVE is supported with a Rhizome microgrant.