Games as transformative works | Carlson. 1. A deceptively simple question [1.1] With the U.S. release of the Nintendo Wii in 2007, a series of commercials were launched that depicted two Japanese salarymen—clad in suits and driving a tiny car—knocking on the doors of Americans. "Wii would like to play," they said offering up the Wii Remote as they bowed. In one version, the two men ring the door of a white suburban family and proceed to play virtual tennis with them, pausing only to sample the family's lemonade. [1.2] The light-hearted tone of these commercials—and the seeming techno virginity of the people approached by the salarymen (most don't conform to the prevalent image of a gamer; instead, they are grandparents, mothers, families)—reflects Nintendo's intentions to target a new gaming audience with the Wii.
Shigeru Miyamoto explains: [1.5] The massive success of the Nintendo DS (and so-far seemingly similar success of the Wii) has given rise to a new debate: What constitutes a "videogame? " 2. 3. 4. You Played That? Game Studies Meets Game Criticism. At the 2009 Digital Games Research Association conference, I participated in a panel organized by David Thomas, "You Played That? Game Studies Meets Game Criticism. " The other panelists were William Huber, Margaret Robertson, and José Zagal.
The panel posed the following question: What is game criticism? How should the academy claim its place alongside game journalism as a productive voice in game criticism? What follows is my position paper on the topic, as it appeared in the conference proceedings. Even though Marshall McLuhan devotes a few pages to games in Understanding Media (covering the way games extend man the social animal), he doesn't account for either the computer or the videogame, neither of which had gained popular adoption when he was writing in the early 1960s. Might we conclude: videogames are the first creative medium to fully emerge after Marshall McLuhan.
By the time videogame studies became a going concern, McLuhan was gospel. imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf. This Man Has a Train, an Army of Artists, and an Entire Nation for a Gallery | Underwire. Human Rights Videos | witness.org. The Grey Ones, a live performance by the illusory trio WIFE. INSTALL:WeHo and Phyllis Navidad in conjunction with We Open Art Houses (WOAH), MKL Gallery, and FruitFlyLife proudly present The Grey Ones, a performance by illusory LA artist trio WIFE.
Combining surrealist animations with original choreography, costumes, and music, WIFE is an all sensory theatrical experience. Utilizing dance as a vehicle for storytelling, The Grey Ones juxtaposes live projection mapping with ephemeral, fluid movements and statuesque, saintly silhouettes to create a narrative on the evolution of time. Premiering at the 2011 TEDxSoCal event and later airing on The Creator’s Project, The Grey Ones features an original score from electronic music artist Amon Tobin. WIFE has been featured at The Getty's Pacific Standard Time, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Honor Fraser, Human Resources, Pieter Performance Space, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and more.
Link: Address: Downtown Independent 251 S. Opinion: Let's Play crackdown is an attack on game culture. Gamasutra news editor Kris Ligman believes more will be lost than a few silly videos if game studios like Nintendo continue to crack down on Let's Play videos of their work. Let's Plays: They're videos of captured game footage, usually with voice commentary. Occasionally interesting, often terrible. What more needs to be said? A lot, actually. Recently, Nintendo claimed the rights to an untold number of Let's Play videos on YouTube, taking over ad revenue which previously went to uploaders. So what's the problem? Turnabout is fair play, isn't it? What I most worry about is the precedent it sets. A bit of a history lesson.
"I wanted to show people outside the game community how lovingly detailed the world of GTA was, considering it could have been (for the purposes of the game) a caricaturish sketch of urban blight," Munroe told me. The Let's Play Archive was founded in 2007 by Something Awful forumer From Earth, who passed the site onto Karlsson in 2008. I don't want to end on a sour note. Prosthetic Knowledge Picks: Net Artist Music Videos. The latest in an ongoing series of themed collections of creative projects assembled by Prosthetic Knowledge.
This edition brings together music videos by artists for whom the internet is a primary medium. Rosa Menkman, 03: Karate aka ☵ ☲ // 010 101 // kǎn lí. GIF extract from music video for Little Scale. The terms "net art" and "music video" are, while useful, close to becoming retronyms.
Music videos (or at least, how music is promoted and delivered) are also changing—we are seeing more and more examples which are not necessarily traditional viewing experiences. Despite these shifts, though, both are still enjoyable cultural forms with plenty of creative possibilities still to be explored. Rosa Menkman, 03: Karate aka ☵ ☲ // 010 101 // kǎn lí Rosa Menkman is very much a familiar name within the circles of Glitch Art, a key voice and contemporary practitioner (plus a regretful omission from my last post).
Lorna Mills, Money 2 More about Plink Flojd at their Vimeo. Artists Re:Thinking Games. Editors Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana. Digital games are important not only because of their cultural ubiquity or their sales figures but for what they can offer as a space for creative practice. Games are significant for what they embody; human computer interface, notions of agency, sociality, visualisation, cybernetics, representation, embodiment, activism, narrative and play. These and a whole host of other issues are significant not only to the game designer but also present in the work of the artist that thinks and rethinks games. Re-appropriated for activism, activation, commentary and critique within games and culture, artists have responded vigorously.
Over the last decade artists have taken the engines and culture of digital games as their tools and materials. This publication looks at how a selection of leading artists, designers and commentators have challenged the norms and expectations of both game and art worlds with both criticality and popular appeal. Code to Joy: The School for Poetic Computation Opens. Taeyoon Choi, one of the school’s instructors, will teach “The Poetics of Circuitry.” These notes are from a similar course he teaches on how to control a physical pixel using electronics.
New computer science graduates jumped by nearly 30 percent last year, and a bevy of professionally oriented programming courses have erupted to teach start-up ready skills like, “How to Build a Mobile App.” So it makes sense that programming is widely considered to be this generation’s “Plastics” — a surefire professional skill that can bring success, security and maybe even stock options. But fewer people talk about how programming and engineering can be used for pleasure, beauty or surprise. Now, four people with a variety of backgrounds — in computer science, art, math and design — have banded together in Brooklyn to rethink how programming is taught. In contrast, the School for Poetic Computation is taking a different approach. The school’s motto? Their first class begins on Sept. 16th. War. The Body by Shelley Jackson. Inventing Interactive » Myron Krueger. Videoplace, Myron Krueger Golan Levin’s Prequels to Everyday Life has a great discussion of how new media artists’ influence is often broader than we would originally imagine.
…some of today’s most commonplace and widely-appreciated technologies were initially conceived and prototyped, years ago, by new-media artists. In some instances, we can pick out the unmistakable signature of a single person’s original artistic idea, released into the world decades ahead of its time — perhaps even dismissed, in its day, as useless or impractical — which after complex chains of influence and reinterpretation has become absorbed, generations of computers later, into the culture as an everyday product. …the artists posed novel questions which wouldn’t have arisen otherwise. To get a jump on the future, in other words, bring in some artists who have made theirs the problem of exploring the social implications and experiential possibilities of technology.
Take a look at the videos. DESKTOP IS * DESKTOPS. Remedy For Information Disease. EASYLIFE.ORG. "Interactive Cinema" Is an Oxymoron, but May Not Always Be. By Kevin Veale Abstract "Interactive Cinema" is a term that has been associated with videogames within historical media discourse, particularly since the early nineties due to the proliferation of CD-ROM technology. It is also a fundamental misnomer, since the processes of experiential engagement presented by the textual structures of videogames and cinema are mutually exclusive. The experience of cinematic texts is defined, in part, by the audience's lack of ability to alter events unfolding within the film's diegesis.
In comparison, the experience of videogames is tied inextricably to the player's investment and involvement within the game's textual diegesis, and within a Heideggerian world-of-concern. Key Words: Affect, alterbiography, ergodicity, interactive cinema, phenomenology, responsibility, tmesis, textual structure, world-of-concern Introduction The Problem with "Interactive Cinema" In comparison, the experience of the same text at home on DVD is very different. dm.ncl.ac.uk/courseblog/files/2010/02/softwarestudies.pdf. sro.sussex.ac.uk/1402/1/01266302.pdf. And now the history of the scroll bar ...) www.alessandroimperato.com/AlessandroImperato.com/Theory_files/New%20Media%20Caucus_%20Live%20Cinema%20Summit_%20%20Review_Imperato.pdf.
Golan Levin: Art that looks back at you. Aspen Movie Map. Richard A. Bolt : Put-That-There Demo. New “Brainpainting” system is proof-of-concept for interacting with our computers by thought alone - Quartz. Amplifiers for the human brain, designed to allow people with paralysis to interact with the world, aren’t the most easily understood technology. So g.tec, the company that makes them, has come up with the following creative marketing strategy: Convince us that we’ll soon be interacting with computers through thought alone.
This is what an amplifier for your brain looks like. G.tech Here, for example, is a university project in which a student uses his brain to control a Rube-Goldbergian sort of etch-a-sketch, allowing him to write—albeit very crudely and slowly—without picking up a pen. And today at tech fair CeBIT, the company unveiled a new application that allows people, able-bodied and not, to paint pictures without lifting a finger. The trackpad you can wear. G.tech The interface requires that you wear a skull cap studded with electrodes, but that won’t seem so awkward once we’ve all accepted that wearing cameras on our faces—aka Google Glass—is completely normal. Jeff Han on TEDTalks. Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences . Here, he demonstrates, for the first time publicly, his intuitive, “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure.
(Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:32) Get TED delivered:Subscribe to the TEDTalks video podcast via RSS >>Subscribe to the iTunes video podcastSubscribe to the iTunes audio podcastGet updates via Twitter >>Join our Facebook fan page >> Subscribe to the TED Blog >> Jeff Han: Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design (standing in front of flat table level screen showing a grid) Now this is a rear-projected drafting table, it’s about 36 inches wide, and it’s equipped with a multi-touch sensor. (traces single wavy line on grid screen with finger) This thing allows you to have multiple points at the same time. (fiddles around with blobs some more) Augmented Surfaces: A Spatially Continuous Workspace. Real-world game interface - Twinkle : DigInfo. PC Magazine. Douglas Engelbart’s Unfinished Revolution. Doug Engelbart knew that his obituaries would laud him as “Inventor of the Mouse.”
I can see him smiling wistfully, ironically, at the thought. The mouse was such a small part of what Engelbart invented. We now live in a world where people edit text on screens, command computers by pointing and clicking, communicate via audio-video and screen-sharing, and use hyperlinks to navigate through knowledge—all ideas that Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) invented in the 1960s. But Engelbart never got support for the larger part of what he wanted to build, even decades later when he finally got recognition for his achievements.
When Stanford honored Engelbart with a two-day symposium in 2008, they called it “The Unfinished Revolution.” To Engelbart, computers, interfaces, and networks were means to a more important end—amplifying human intelligence to help us survive in the world we’ve created. Douglas Engelbart : The Mother of All Demos (1/9) TGarden Summary (2001) Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau: A-Volve, 1994-97. Paul Virilio. Two attitudes are possible with respect to these new technologies: one declares them a miracle; the other—mine—recognizes that they are interesting while maintaining a critical attitude.
The imminent home installation of domestic simulators and virtual space rooms for game-playing, poses many questions, and in particular this one: "What is a game once the virtual invades reality? " There are two ways of understanding the notion of play: playing cards, dominos, checkers; or the play of a mechanical part when it is loose in its housing. I think, in fact, that the second is the angle from which we should envision play today. Play is not something that brings pleasure; on the contrary, it expresses a shift in reality, an unaccustomed mobility with respect to reality. To play today, in a certain sense, means to choose between two realities.
A concrete factual reality: meet someone, love that person, make love to that person. I am not a big player. PAUL VIRILIO: This is crucial. Expecting. Click the bear to play with Charlotte. Expecting A stop-motion interactive installation Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine with Liam Fennessey. Music by Finn Robertson. September 2003 Black Box, Melbourne Part of the Experimenta House of Tomorrow exhibition. An Experimenta New Visions Commission. In the future, children don't make friends, they give birth to them.
So, what happens when a child's fantasy of a living, breathing doll becomes a reality? Meet Charlotte, an 8 year old girl. Expecting blends the real, the virtual and the not too distant future to examine the very contemporary notions of isolation and detachment. Also exhibited: Biennale of New Media Art, Korea, 2004 Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), Liverpool, 2006 The Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2006 Accross Australia during 2005 as part of the House of Tomorrow National tour. David Rokeby - Very Nervous System, Interactive Environment 1986-