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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Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
romchip.bsky.social
Our peer-reviewed article this issue is 📸 SCREENSHOTS OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN by @jacobgaboury.bsky.social 📺about the long history of screenshot photography within game culture 🏆
romchip.org/index.php/ro...
a photograph of a long-haired child, standing next to their TV, which displays the end screen of a video game
July 3, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Jacob Gaboury
bildoperationen.bsky.social
You can find almost the same use of light in AI slop. Unlike CGI renderings, AI images aren't based on a simulation of light being reflected from objects in virtual space but on a statistical distribution of color values on a flat surface, which makes them more akin to painting than photography
3/
An AI image shared by Same Altman in 2023
July 2, 2025 at 7:56 AM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Thanks Ari!
July 3, 2025 at 2:02 PM
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
I've heard good things about Bantam Tools NextDraw but keep waffling. This is a very cool/depressing application, I like it bantamtools.com/collections/...
Bantam Tools NextDraw™
Bantam Tools
bantamtools.com
June 18, 2025 at 8:34 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Ooh what plotter is this? I've been shopping around for a project on computer output
June 18, 2025 at 7:50 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
Congratulations Alan!!
March 20, 2025 at 4:16 PM
jacobgaboury.bsky.social
I wrote a paper on NULL markers in SQL and queer technology years ago in case it is of interest! Incredible idea for a class, as I try and also figure out my own fall PhD seminar 🙃. www.womenandperformance.org/bonus-articl...
Becoming NULL: Queer relations in the excluded middle | Jacob Gaboury (28.2) — Women & Performance
          In February 2014, the popular social media platform Facebook added the ability to select a “custom” gender for user profiles in the United States...
www.womenandperformance.org
March 9, 2025 at 6:24 PM