NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art launches 12 Years in Azeroth – The Journey Begins, a digital art project by Robert Nideffer commissioned for artport, the Museum’s online gallery space for Internet art. With 12 Years in Azeroth – The Journey Begins, Nideffer blends autobiography, fiction, and game design to examine a 12-year engagement in the online game World of Warcraft. Serving as the entry point, The Journey Begins is the initial section of the artist’s interactive fiction, which follows with four additional parts Nideffer is launching throughout the coming year.

12 Years in Azeroth – The Journey Begins is an exploration of how identity, memory, and history intertwine and are shaped by long-term immersion in virtual worlds, specifically Nideffer’s experience in the digital space of World of Warcraft. Tracing the artist’s 12-year immersion in the game’s virtual world, the project narrative spans 2006 to 2018 and unfolds across three avatars, three historical periods, and three interlaced worlds: Earth, Azeroth, and Middle-earth. The project is anchored by a browser-based electronic manuscript and a companion game. Through this digital artwork, Nideffer investigates the blurring of boundaries between self and avatar, fact and fiction, and reality and the game.

“Robert Nideffer’s 12 Years in Azeroth is a highly original take on the auto-fiction genre that makes gaming the form and content of the experience,” said Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney. “Using conventions of gameplay and ethnography, the work fuses a personal journey with a long-time experience of playing World of Warcraft.”

Upon entering the experience Nideffer has created, visitors will engage with a retro-style virtual desktop where they can access files, read the manuscript, or enter the game world through a prompt that accepts the player’s typed commands and responses. Players can alternate between three map views in the game—Earth represented by a geographic world map, Azeroth referring to the imagined world where a major portion of the World of Warcraft game is set, and Middle-earth alluding to the fictional continent from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy series. While players advance through The Journey Begins, the real-time 3D simulation is dynamically shaped by their actions and responses within the game. As they progress, players will converse with AI-driven characters whose personalities and memories evolve over time, discover hidden manuscript fragments, and solve narrative puzzles.

Robert Nideffer’s 12 Years in Azeroth – The Journey Begins was organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney and commissioned for artport, the Museum’s portal to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art and new media art.

Robert Nideffer (b. 1964) is a Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he served as Head of the Department of Arts until 2018. From 1998-2013 he was a Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine, where he founded the Game Culture and Technology Lab (1999) and was Co-Director (2005-2007) and Director (2007-2009) of the Art Computation Engineering (ACE) graduate program. His work has been exhibited at a variety of national and international venues including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte in Spain; the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California; the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He has lectured extensively both inside and outside the academy, and his projects have been discussed in major media outlets including books, journal articles, television, the internet, film, and radio.