Antoinette LaFarge

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.

LaFarge received her M.F.A. degree in Computer Art from the School of Visual Art, New York, in 1995, and her A.B. degree from Harvard University. She also briefly attended the San Francisco Arts Institute from 1980–1981 where she studied with Jim Pomeroy, Jack Fulton, and Robert Colescott. At Harvard University, her thesis was Proust and the Function of Metaphor.

She is the great-great-granddaughter of American artist John La Farge.

She has been a member of the College Arts Association since 1996 and was a member of SITE Gallery, Los Angeles from 1989 to 1991. She is currently Professor of Digital Media at the University of California, Irvine, and she previously taught at the School of Visual Arts, New York, in the Computer Art M.F.A. program and in the Photography and Related Media M.F.A. program (1995–1999).

In 1994, LaFarge founded the Plaintext Players, an internet performance group that began creating original pieces early in the Web era. Initially, the Plaintext Players performed solely in text-based virtual environments such as MOOs, creating directed cyberformances or "netprovs" viewable by both online audiences and visitors in real spaces, where the performances were viewed as projections. 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. LaFarge served as the "Digital.Director" of many of these performances, directing them in real time. 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.

Starting in the late 1990s, LaFarge and the Plaintext Players worked with theater director Robert Allen on several telematic mixed-reality performance works, including The Roman Forum (2000), The Roman Forum Project (2003), and Demotic (2004/2006). A recurrent theme in these works is the struggle of individuals to come to terms with the nexus of history, politics, mythmaking, and media. For instance, the two "Roman Forum" projects took a close look at contemporary presidential politics through the eyes of 2000-year-old citizens of the Roman empire, while Demotic examined the many voices that vie to be heard within the American polity. LaFarge and Allen coined the term "media commedia" to describe their melding of political comedy with media-rich performance work.

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