Remove ads
Jamie Faye Fenton (born in 1954[1] as Jay Fenton) is a video game programmer best known for the 1981 arcade video game Gorf [2][3] and for being one of the creators of MacroMind's VideoWorks software (since renamed Macromedia Director). Jamie has been active in the transgender community and transitioned from male to female around 1998.[2]
Fenton was drawn to computer technology while in school because its highly predictable nature appealed to her and it provided a haven from being picked on by other students.[2]
In 1975, while studying computer science in the University of Wisconsin, Jamie and fellow student Tom McHugh volunteered to work at Dave Nutting Associates, who enlisted their help to redesign pinball machines and the Japanese arcade game Western Gun using Intel's 8080 microprocessor, [4] she also later worked on the Bally Astrocade,[5] and wrote the programming language Bally BASIC, based on tiny basic.[6]
In 1978, Jamie Fenton created an early example of glitch art entitled Digital TV Dinner, a 3 minutes film, with Raul Zaritsky.[7][8] For this project, Jamie Fenton was ejecting the cartridge inserted in the Bally Astrocade in wrong moment, to create the glitches.[9] They also punched the game consol.[6] Digital TV Dinner is first presented in 1978, at the Chicago event Electronic Visualization Event 3, In Chicago.[10] A second version will be presented in 1979.
in 1981, while working at Midway Manufacturing, Jamie Fenton designed the game Gorf.
Four years later, she co-created the logicil VideoWorks, which, will then become Macromedia Director, then, after being bought by Adobe, Adobe Director. This software was a precursor of the software Flash.[6]
In 1995, with Cindy Martin and JoAnn Roberts, they created and launched tgforum.com, an online forum for transgender people. It still exists in 2024.[11]
In 2018, Digital TV Dinner was exhibited in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 exhibition, curated by Jon Cates.[12] During the exhibition, she played Digital TV Breakfast, a video game by Whitney (Whit) Pow, inspired by Digital TV Dinner.[1] The same year, she created a new piece, Primordial Glitch Art, where she filmed herself creating glitches by ejecting Cartridge from a Bally Astrocade, while explaining how to obtain those glitches.[6]
Remove ads
- Datsun 280 ZZZAP (1976)[13]
- Checkmate (1977)
- Digital TV Dinner (1978)
- Bally Astrocade BASIC re-write (1980)
- Gorf (1981)
- Robby Roto (1981)
- Primordial Glitch Art (2018)[6]
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
Remove ads