Heather Kelley is a media artist and video game designer. She is co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. She is regular jury member for different computer gaming festivals and public speaker at technology events. Her career in the games industry has included AAA next-gen console games, interactive smart toys, handheld games and web communities for girls. She has created interactive projections using game engines such as Quake and Unreal. Heather Kelley was Creative Director on the UNFPA Electronic Game to End Gender Violence, at the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. For seven years, Heather served as co-chair of the IGDA's Women in Game Development Special Interest Group. In May 2014 she joined the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University as an Assistant Teaching Professor.
Project examples
Lapis Lapis is an interactive art work designed to help teach women how to reach orgasm by simulating the effect of pleasurable sensation on a cartoon bunny.
Fabulous/Fabuleux – An experimental art game collaboration with Lynn Hughes. Fabulous/Fabuleux was created at Concordia University's Hexagram Institute and integrates gameplay into a full-body interactive installation using custom "squishy" interface hardware.
Body Heat – Body Heat is a vibrator interface for the iPhone and iPad which allows touchscreens to be used for adjusting vibration speed, intensity, and patterns. The project was first presented at the sex tech conference Arse Elektronika in September 2010 in San Francisco. The company OhMiBod, which specializes in music-driven vibrators, bought the application and renamed it into "OhMiBod app" in early 2011.
Joue Le Jeu – An exhibition at La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, France. It showcased new forms of games and creative game design. The event was a hands-on exhibition of interactive play.
Awards
Kelley's game concept Lapis, based on female masturbation, won the 2006 MIGS Game Design Challenge. In Spring 2008, she was Kraus Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, and Adjunct Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center, at Carnegie Mellon University, where she organized The Art of Play symposium and art game arcade. In September 2009, she was Artist in Residence for Subotron at Quartier21, MuseumsquartierVienna. Her biographical sex game concept with Erin Robinson, Our First Times, won the 2009 GDC Game Design Challenge, She was part of Fast Company's 2011 list of 'most influential women in technology'. In March 2013 she was awarded the "GDC 2013 Women in Gaming Award" as "Innovator", granted for breakthrough innovation in her work.
