Jacob Gaboury
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jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Jacob Gaboury
@jacobgaboury.bsky.social
4.1K followers 520 following 45 posts
Associate Professor of Film & Media, UC Berkeley (he/him)
Media History | STS | Queer Theory | Digital Visual Culture
Book: Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (2021)
Now: Screenshot Histories & Queer Computing
https://jacobgaboury.com
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jacobgaboury.bsky.social
TLDR
This is one story of the history of video game screenshots: a transformation from a culture of vernacular documentation into a now-ubiquitous function on all contemporary game platforms, compelling us to capture and share the way we play. Yet this practice, at its origins, is much more significant if taken within the broader context of screenshot histories. Early high-score photography is one of the first moments in which users photographed their screens not simply to document the images that appeared on them, but to document a part of themselves they identified in the images they saw. In a moment that sees the simultaneous growth of personal computing and interactive games, we find a form of computational personhood that is identified with and in the screen image. While this may not be the first moment this form of identification was felt, its growth into a broad subcultural practice through high-score photography suggests a much larger shift that has only expanded in the subsequent decades. Today our screenshots no longer feel like photos of a computer, but rather images of our lives as they are lived through and with computation. Games play an essential role in this transformation, and in doing so they document and archive cultures of use that would otherwise be lost. To hold out these images as significant at once recaptures these cultures of gaming while also attending to the ways they have transformed our sense of self as and with technology.
July 2, 2025 at 6:35 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Screenshots are one of the most ubiquitous visual forms of the twenty-first century. Each day billions of screenshots are created on smart phones and personal computers to document the mundane and spectacular interactions of users with their computational machines. Perhaps the most publicly visible use for screenshots today is as proof of action with or through a computer—that is, as evidence of interaction. We use screenshots to document the microworld of the computer as a space of personal identification and individual expression. In this article I argue that this practice has its origins in the video game cultures of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, game publishers and magazines used screenshots to document the visual appearance of games for advertisements and publications. However, quite quickly users began to document and photograph their own experiences of play through photographs of personal achievements such as high scores and end screens. Game companies like Activision and magazines like Nintendo Power encouraged this practice, offering rewards and publishing scores to foster participation. These vernacular practices marked a shift in how users related to computational systems—not merely as tools but as expressive environments where actions were documented and identified with. Over time, these practices evolved into a broader visual culture of play, encompassing screen selfies, player portraits, and early cultures of competitive play such as speedrunning. Far from trivial ephemera, these images indexed the rise of a new computational personhood, where users saw themselves reflected in their screen interactions. In situating this history within this broader discourse, I suggest that unprofessional, everyday practices of gaming and its visual documentation reveal the social and personal dimensions of digital life. Screenshots become not only technical artifacts but also records of self, community, and computational experience.
July 2, 2025 at 6:04 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
The new issue of @romchip.bsky.social is out, and includes new work by me on the history of video game screenshots and the way we photographed our game screens to capture images of ourselves: romchip.org/index.php/ro...

The rest of the issue is fantastic, check it out!
A screen photograph of the game Paperboy (1985). A photograph of a young girl in front of the end screen for Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988). A photograph of a television and its domestic context, with the TV showing the end screen of Contra (1987). A screenshot showing a raiding guild after defeating Ragnaros in the Molten Core raid dungeon of World of Warcraft (2004).
July 2, 2025 at 5:49 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Excited to be in New York for this Eyebeam event on January 23rd. It isn't open but it's a wonderful group of artists and scholars to be in conversation with, and I'm sticking around to see friends and colleagues for a few days after. Let me know if you'll be around!
Poster for an event on Artificial Intelligence in New York City on January 23rd, sponsored by Eyebeam. Photographs of the workshop participants, including Prem Krishnamurthy, Stephanie Dinkins, Luciana Parisi, Surya Mattu, Jacob Gaboury, McKenzie Wark, and Valencia James.
January 9, 2025 at 11:50 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Teaching a unit on generative AI in my "Cinema After Digitization" class today and we spent a really long time in class watching this video of John Goodman dancing to JoJo's "Too Little Too Late" www.instagram.com/p/DCdOwjquu_e/
November 19, 2024 at 11:02 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Currently in the "hoarding things off of eBay" stage of research.
A transparent slide screenshot of what may be a Contra game. A sepia toned image of a television screen showing a parade or other public event. A black and white screenshot of a 1980s video game.
November 18, 2024 at 6:11 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
For my birthday my husband bought me an ancient polaroid screenshot of an oscilloscope display and "The Best of Creative Computing, Volume 1"
A faded and fingerprint-covered polaroid photo of an oscilliscope display in black and white.
November 15, 2024 at 7:52 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
*withers away*
October 30, 2024 at 11:53 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
There's a video of me lecturing on/screening Skibidi Toilet in my digital cinema class that has gone semi-viral on tiktok and students keep telling me that they saw it.
Video from a student watching Skibidi Toilet in a film class at UC Berkeley.
October 29, 2024 at 12:05 AM