I would really love to listen to one of those TRS-80 cassette tapes

From an early interest in reading, to work in the theatre, to films, graphic novels, video games and the internet I have spent a great deal of time in virtual worlds. I love the notion of climbing into a world, whether it is one prompted by the rich and complex language of a novel or one generated by the ones and zeros of digital culture. I am among the first generation exposed to a digital environment and the sweeping changes in technology that I have seen in my lifetime astound me. I can recall a time in which video games did not exist and still sense that rush of wonder and excitement when they did. Hardwired into my DNA are Pong, Tank Battle, Asteroids, Robotron, Galaga, Tempest, Tetris and dozens of other spaces I inhabited for countless quarter-fueled hours. While I never quite got the hang of the programming language the way my brother did, I grew up in a house with a TRS-80 – one of the first home computers (data was recorded as clicks and pops on an analogue cassette recorder). I, along with a number of my friends in college, met periodically to slay Orcs by rolling a 12-sided die to play Dungeons and Dragons. I still have an original NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) that is now used for little more than the occasional nostalgia trip or to make some glitch art. I got on the MAC train in the late 80s and immediately understood the superiority of images over mere text. I watched as the internet moved from a useful tool to access library databases to an environment in which you could order books from a place called “Amazon.” I became, along with thousands of others, obsessed with Myst when it was released in the early 1990s and have since devoured every incarnation of the Myst franchise – including the three novels and a woefully misguided graphic one (I now play Rehm mainly because it is sort of like Myst and they are still making new games). In many ways turning attention to the subject of virtual worlds is like shining a light on decades of my life. What all of these spaces share is an intensity of vision – a mindset that suggests that they are somehow different from “reality” and yet share with it an investment in body and mind. Something happens when I climb into a virtual world, something changes, something shifts, and each time I seem to bring a little bit of that back into this world. Over the course of the next ten weeks I want to explore that sense of wonder that exploring worlds I could have barely imagined when the thrill of hitting a tiny white digital ball with two digital paddles was overwhelming.