Samantha Gorman

Samantha Gorman is the co-director/founder of Tender Claws, a game, art and tech studio that walks the line between art/innovation and entertainment. She specializes in writing for interactive media and performance/theater across genres including expanded cinema, games and virtual reality. Through her research and experience, Samantha has developed a methodology for hybrid long-form VR and remote immersive theater games with live performers inhabiting the world, as seen in The Under Presents (VR and Immersive Theater hybrid with live, remote cast) and Tempest (live ticketed remote adaption in VR). She is known for projects that make critical, creative interventions in form while also functioning as entertainment and providing R&D for emerging platforms and partnerships, including PRY (hybrid ios game/film/novella), Virtual Virtual Reality and Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VR narrative satire games) and Tendar (AR virtual pet with computer vision and machine learning). Her narratives often center on speculative design futures; to this end, the close marriage of critical narrative and interaction mechanics is meant to foster a reflective/informed viewership of the technology being consumed.