Presentation Schedule
Now or Never: Art as Resistance in the Splatoon Series (108066)
Session Chair: David Smith
Tuesday, 12 May 2026 09:55
Session: Session 1
Room: Room G407 (4F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
When discussing the ramifications of Artificial Intelligence technologies, people often point to its environmental impact or its contribution to the deterioration of critical thinking skills. Lesser discussed is its effects on disadvantaged populations—and even more scarily considered: its augmentation of colonial inequities. From data centers erected in areas populated by minorities to the subaltern workers piloting allegedly autonomous AI-devices (i.e., Waymo’s self-driving cars), it becomes clear that such “innovations” have a hidden human price. With this in mind, I want to use postcolonial theory to interrogate the rhetoric responsible for upholding the power behind AI’s sociopolitical supremacy and argue for physical art as resistance against it. I study and establish this through an analysis of Nintendo’s third-person shooter series: Splatoon—particularly the second (2017) and third (2022) installments. Both games depict two apartheid states: one with the Octarians who, after losing a war with the Inklings, were forced to live in poverty with an AI barring refugees from seeking asylum; the second comes in the form of Salmon Run, wherein the player robs the Salmons of their resources to turn a profit. However, attention to dialogue encourages the player to critically approach “the physical wearing out of a population” they’re perpetuating by revealing “the deterioration… that is very nearly a defining condition of [both populations’] experience and historical existence” (Berlant)—as well as the way in which AI and corporate greed are the driving force behind it, culminating in the presentation of art as the correction for both.
Authors:
Adrienne Stallings, Texas Christian University, United States
About the Presenter(s)
Adrienne Stallings is an independent scholar and research assistant at Texas Christian University.
Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-stallings-374866230/
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