Joseph DeLappe

Joseph DeLappe has been working with electronic and new media since 1983. His work includes online gaming performance, electromechanical installation and real-time web-based video transmission, which have been shown across the United States and abroad. He is an artist and also an educator at the Department of Art at the University of Nevada.

In 1997 DeLappe started his “Mouse Series.” In this series DeLappe started working with Apple mice. The “Heart Mouse” was one of the first pieces made in the “Mouse Series.” During the times in which this piece was made, Apple equipment was made with a surface which was similar to human skin. It had a texture that was similar to pores. “Heart Mouse” as well as “Vagina Mouse” were pieces meant to show the hidden industrial design and show how companies design products to fit the human body.

In 2001 DeLappe began a series of protests through computer games and online communities. One of his projects was “Dead-In-Iraq.” He created this to intervene in a game, “America’s Army”, created by the Defense Department as a recruiting and marketing tool which is taxpayer funded. DeLappe enters the game with the name “dead-in-iraq”. He then drops his weapon as opposed to participating in the “mayhem” and he is eventually killed. He then hovers over his dead avatar and types the name, age, service branch and date of death of each American military casualty from the war in Iraq. In 2009 he was recorded to have inputted 4042 names and he intended to keep doing so until the end of the war.

Another one of Joseph DeLappe’s projects was his reenactment of Mahatma Ghandi’s famous 1930 Salt March. Over the course of twenty-six days, March 12 to April 6, 2008, DeLappe was able to reenact Ghandhi’s march through Second Life. The original walk was 240 miles and was made in protest of the British salt tax. DeLappe’s march took place at Eyebeam in Second Life. He walked the entire 240 miles on a treadmill, which was customized for cyberspace. His steps on the treadmill controlled the forward movement of his avatar, which was MGhandi Chakrabarti.