A joystick is a navigation device. A selection device. An orientation device. A pleasure device. Madison Bycroft’s “Joystick” game environment is an invitation to unlearn everything we know about finding our way. With patience and curiosity and no goals, wander through a fantastic flooded world made of collages. In Joystick, orientation and intentions are not static, they change depending on our location, the weather, sea level and other environmental factors in the game.
In this work, the player/viewer uses a custom game-controller that has two joysticks and one button.
Joystick is a participatory multi-channel project, created during 2021 – 2024, initially in collaboration with Ubisoft, and Carreau Du Temple.
Madison Bycroft (they/them), born in 1987 in Tarntanya (Adelaide, Australia), lives and works in Marseille, France and is the tutor of the group FKA Critical Practices at Artez, in Arnhem. Bycroft is a graduate of the University of South Australia (2013), the MFA program at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2016), and is currently a fellow at the Villa Medici in Rome.