Sims like the real thing

Why do people become obsessed with Buffy and get drawn into Dungeons and Dragons chat rooms? School of the Art Institute grad student Stacia Yeapanis has focused much of her work on investigating why people form communities around—and how different people find meaning in—these kinds of cultural artifacts.

“I agree with [existentialist psychiatrist] Viktor Frankl, who says that it’s not the will to pleasure, it’s the will to meaning that drives us,” Yeapanis says. “How we find meaning is relative.”

For her M.F.A. project, Yeapanis immersed herself in the world of the computer game The Sims 2, in which players choose the physical traits and life goals of their characters, and are then responsible for feeding and making decisions for them.

Early on, Yeapanis found meaning in certain parts of the game, like when her character got pregnant. But later on, her artistic side took over and she became entranced by the visual displays that occurred when she encountered a glitch in the code. For example, when two Sims are having sex in the game, the viewpoint is normally from above. But when Yeapanis used the game’s camera option to zoom in underneath the covers, “the bodies got all mangled and body parts disappeared—I guess code hadn’t been written to do that.”

For the art student, the resulting image (top right) was a metaphor for intimacy. “How you get entangled with another person can be viewed fearfully or happily,” she says. “It can be beautiful or horrible.”

To raise money for her project, Yeapanis is selling buttons, mugs, T-shirts, notebooks and tote bags with a logo that reads ART FAN. “I see the art world as one of these fan communities,” she says. “We all come together around art, but no one can agree on the definition of what art is—we all engage in art for different reasons.” Yeapanis will use the money raised to print four to six screen captures of similar metaphorical “code glitches” ($110–$140 to print and mount each 27 x 36 image) for the SAIC show on May 5, 5-8pm, at Gallery 2 (837 W Jackson) in the West Loop.—Leah Pietrusiak

Art Fan items are available at www.staciayeapanis.com/artfan.html.