Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #1
September 2021
Made with support from the Mondriaan Fund & Stroomversneller
Software development by Ibo Ibelings
Hardware development by Jelle Reith
Early protoypes made possible with support from Wooting
Over the past years the stereotype of the gamer within online culture has become synonymous with shut-in and socially inept young men. Instagram memes, tweets and other pieces of content often reinforce and ridicule the stereotypical gamer as some guy living in his mom's basement. The Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece series uses the (visual) language of gamer subculture to reimagine this stereotype and give it a new political identity.

In Gamer Keyboard Wall Piece #1 the RGB lit keys of four gamer keyboards have become the pixels of a video installation displaying a poem addressing loneliness, anxiety and more downsides of NEET life, amongst other topics. Besides an archive of screenshots and links to content documenting the online perception of the gamer, the videos by the psychiatrist and Twitch streamer Alok Kanojia, or Dr. K, and his online platform Healthy Gamer, became a main point of inspiration for this piece.