TrishStone

RECENT WORKS

THE SARAHS, 2025

The Sarahs (2025)

School of Art and Humanites at UC San Diego Night of Research and Creative Activities Showcase

Does the algorithmically generated video game of Starfield (Bethesda Studios) simply reflect our society’s values as a mirror would? Or does it ask players to struggle with moral, if fictional, choices?

While playing Starfield, I followed the narrative to a turning point in the game, when the player is asked to make a choice between two NPCs, one who will die and one who will live. I chose to save Sarah, and became obsesed with trying to keep her alive and happy with me as a companion.

The text based messages in this project are created within the game, as assets within a colony-building mechanism. I think of them as public art constructions on fictional worlds.

The slide show documenting the messages, reflecting my thoughts while playing the game, is intended to mimic the desktop photo album collectibles within the game world.

NETWORK ERROR, 2018

For the NETWORK ERROR exhibition, I created a squad of 3D-printed 'selfies' and used them to stage tiny protests in public spaces, presenting the documentation as research in the field. Works include a series of photographs, an interactive video game, and a live stream of the figurines installed in the gallery’s interior. Visitors are asked to question the scale of their political fear in contrast to their physical space. How big is your fear? How big are you? The artwork deals with issues of identity and collaboration, how the body is represented and replicated, and explores the relationship between performance and protest. Security and insecurity become the personal and political poles of the landscape, concerned with state patrols while planning for revolution.