Antoinette LaFarge is a new media artist and writer known for her work with mixed-reality performance and projects exploring the conjunction of visual art and fiction.
[1] In 1994, LaFarge founded the Plaintext Players,[2] an internet performance group that began creating original pieces early in the Web era.
These improvisatory works were a kind of "virtual vaudeville" in which boundaries between performers and viewers were fluid and unstable, allowing for highly kinetic and absurdist interactions.
[7] The first series, "Christmas" (1994–95), was followed by several others, including "LittleHamlet" (1995), "Gutter City" (1995), "The Candide Campaign" (1996), forming one of the most extensive oeuvres of early cyberspace performance.
In her show catalog essay "WinSide Out", LaFarge traces how the historical links between art and games have become strengthened in the computer era by various forces that promoted "a culture of involvement on the part of players.
Since 1990, LaFarge has been an Associate of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, a Los-Angeles-based nonprofit, for which she has designed several books, including Benjamin's Blind Spot (2001) and Bataille's Eye (1997).