Video Games — New Media Art?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Paul: Chap. 13, Themes in Digital Art–Gaming, pp. 196-203.
Wardrip Fruin: Reading #34: Sherry Turkle, “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” pp. 499-514.
This particular set of readings was all about video games and their influence on the digital art revolution.
The Paul reading considered games such as Myst, Everquest, Doom, and even The Sims as examples of digital art in the gaming form. Such games were sources of inspiration to artists and served as precursors for the programs used as mediums in today’s digital art.
An artist named Natalie Bookchin addressed the gaming topic with her online project, Metapet (2002). The simulation created in her “game” follows a virtual genetically engineered office worker in an office environment of the future. Her piece humorously touches the issues of corporate productivity being improved by the use of biotechnology and robots of the future to replace the human worker.
The simulation has indefinitely been taken offline, but here is a link to her project’s site with screenshots and more information:
http://metapet.net/
Cory Archangel took a different approach to the incorporation of video games with digital art. He scavenged old cartridges of the Nintendo game, Super Mario Brothers, and reverse-engineered them to produce his landscape photography in the game’s 8-bit format. To do this, he would melt chips off of a cartridge and replace them with his own self-manufactured ones with data of his photography. The final products were landscape studies rendered in the game’s aesthetics.
Here is another work of art created by Cory Archangel and his modification of Nintendo game cartridges, titled “cloudscroll“:
Among others who also modified the mechanics of video games to create works of art, was Chinese artist, Feng Mengbo. Feng modified the software of Quake III Arena (a.ka. Q3A) to create his own piece aptly named Q4U (or Quake For You; 2002). He inserted a visual representation of himself equipped with a weapon and camcorder into the game and in a sense, made himself part of the game. Populating the game’s environment with hundreds of his “clones,” he created an interactive work of art that addressed concepts of online identity and immersive commercial environments.
Sherry Turkle compared television to video games as something you watch from afar, versus something you can participate in. She attributed certain psychological bonds that players can develop with the use of video games and those included the illusion of achievement, the allure of perfection, and having more control over certain–normally uncontrollable–aspects of your life.
One could say if a psychological attachment to a game can produce such values, would this not be a negative influence on the human psyche and morale? When you really look at it, it can be compared to the vices: sloth (creating an illusion of achievement over a real one, while you sit around doing nothing in the real world), greed & lust (amassing power and money, while you chase the virtual princess), and vanity (encouraging heightened expectations for physical appearance, while making your virtual “you” more attractive than you are in reality).
To further add to such ideas that there is a negativity to the addiction of games, it would seem that many commercial video games have a dependence on violence to entice a gamer to actually buy a game and play it. Feng Mengbo, among many others, mocked this commercial element in his piece, Q4U (Quake For You, 2002).
As for Turkle’s article, which was written in 1984 – she touched the topic of addicted gamers and their attempted escape to simulated worlds, which can still be attributed to the gamers of today. One could say it’s even worse with today’s highly detailed, even more immersive, interactive games which allow you to converse and compete with other gamers across the world.
At this very moment, if a person were to ask me whether I thought video games had a positive or negative influence on new media art, digital artists, the art community, and humanity in general, I would have to say that it’s had a positive influence on artists. Video games’ innovational elements, technologies, programs, softwares, etc. have inspired artists to create their own works and make their own statements. In a sense, gaming has essentially put a weapon in the artist’s hand so the art community can fight back against commercialism and other issues.
As for humanity in general, although many games are violent, addictive, and influenced by certain vices like vanity and greed; one should look further and consider the good things that games have inspired. Like video games, many books, movies, and television shows have featured violence, sex, and other negative elements and encouraged vices like sloth.
However, like those other forms of media, many video games also feature the epic hero fighting some form of evil, triumphing over that evil, and putting the needs of oneself aside for the greater good. Would this not be the encouragement of the virtuous way of life, rather than the pursuit of vices?
The Cyborg — Science Fiction or Reality?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
On Stelarc: CTheory articles by Stelarc and Julie Clarke at: http://www.ctheory.net/home.aspx
This particular set of readings was all about the marriage of organic and technological, the fusion of creature and machine, the cyborg.
The selection from the Paul text, presented some very interesting in-depth explorations of the theme of “cyborg”. Of the artists covered in the reading, Stelarc is the one who really stands out. His works are extremely extensive toward the modification of the human body with prosthetic extensions. His Exoskeleton (1999) performance was one to really stir up the mixed emotions from the viewer. The coupled horrific spider-like legs below the platform on which he stood, paired with the intriguing arm extensions (all controlled by Internet activity) were very disturbing and inspiring at the same time. This really was the primal makings of a cyborg in the science-fiction-turned-reality sense!
Here’s a link to an image of Stelarc’s Exoskeleton (1999): http://www.sztuka-fabryka.be/amaze/stelarc-01.jpg
I’ll be perfectly frank about Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”. I understood very little of this reading. She seemed to be caught up in the use of extremely long words to try and show her extensive vocabulary and baffle the reader into believing that she had great knowledge of the topic. I do understand that she was pairing feminist themes with the cyborg’s uni-sexual (or even non-sexual) capabilities. She seemed to be glorifying the fact that in a dystopian future, a cyborg-ruled community will be unbiased in regards to sexual influence over society’s many working elements. She talks about with the increase of time, the boundaries between animal and man, man and machine, and physical and non-physical have become thinner, blurred, and constantly breached. She foreshadows that essentially the boundaries of such things will eventually lead to the fused reality of the cyborg and the social dynamic of such a society to go along with it.
The third reading further explored the studies of Stelarc. One of his more current projects investigated the possibilities of a prosthetic head rather than his earlier prosthetic bodies. Granted, it was only a virtual prosthetic head, not a concrete one – it showed that without a consciousness behind the face, there could still be all the functions, however it lacked the inner pathos of imagination, creativity, and emotion.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Stelarc’s work, I’ve provided a link to a video presention on some of his artistic endeavors regarding the “posthuman”, the existence beyond that of a normal human, something that greatly resembles the science fiction cyborg:
These readings make me wonder, how far off are we from an actual society where cyborgs (like the ones formerly dreamed up in science fiction) are a part of every day life… It’s quite disturbing, to say the least…
Are we bringing about a golden utopian age of enlightenment or a dark dystopian age of the apocalypse? 
Telecommunication Art
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Ed Shanken, “Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning” at http://neme.org/main/620/tele-agency or look for title in http://artexetra.com/
This past set of readings was all about telecommunication art. I find the fact that artists have found ways to marry the Internet with an installation in a gallery so viewers can experience art from afar very interesting.
What really piqued my interest was Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden (1995-present). The fact that this installation can be manipulated from thousands of miles away is mind-boggling. People who visit the project’s website help the tiny ecosystem survive just by moving an industrial robot arm to water it and plant new seeds. It’s amazing that this ecosystem is thriving on Internet activity alone.
Nina Sobell and Emily Hartzell’s VirtuAlice (1995) is amazing. People don’t even need to visit the gallery with their invention. This wireless mobile wheelchair-like vehicle is mounted with a telerobotic camera and controlled by visitors to the gallery’s website on the Internet. They drive around the gallery with complete freedom to examine the entire space! This is pretty awesome stuff!
I started looking for examples to post here about telerobotics such as the works I have listed above. You’d be astounded by how many videos and pictures there are out there. This is apparently a widely experimented with concept. Here’s a short video someone posted when they were testing the connectivity of their robotic system to its corresponding Internet controls:
Telecommunication art is bringing down the obstructions that prevent the interaction of far-off artists (and art appreciators) that normally would never have met. Just think of all the possibilities such technology can be used for. It’s truly an innovative concept! 
The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence? Conspiracy or Not?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Paul: Chap. 13, Themes in Digital Art–Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Agents (IAs), pp. 139 – 153.
Wardrip-Fruin: Reading #4: Norbert Weiner, “Men, Machines, and the World About,” pp. 65 – 72.
In regards to the Paul reading, I found the works on links between aesthetics and evolution extremely intriguing. Since I’m especially into biology and the science of the natural world, I found the choice of implementing the themes of biology into new media art to be inspiring.
I liked Karl Sims’s Genetic Images (1993) and Galapagos (1997) and how you could simulate the mutation and reproduction of computer-generated organisms on a twelve-screen arc. It becomes an analogy for how real creatures evolved to overcome the obstacles they experienced and how we can change by facing our own personal obstacles.
Here’s a video of interactive computer-generated evolving organisms like Karl Sim’s later to be presented in Galapagos:
Christa Sommerer’s A-Volve was even more interesting because it allowed you to directly interact with a virtual creature and you could be a factor in how their “lives” played out. You could have a hand in their survival or their demise and like Galapagos, you could influence the reproduction of the species. It’s a work of art that’s pretty much a virtual game as well!
Here’s a video to give you a better explanation of Sommerer’s A-Volve:
The reading then addressed a subject we’ve already previously discussed: Alan Turing’s famous Turing Test and his theories of AI. It related the test’s questions to determine the difference between the intelligence of a human and of a machine to the pre-prepared responses of AI characters: the Eliza and ALICE bots. People actually have implemented his theoretical work into actual robots solely for the experimentation in the complexity of their responses. It’s an intriguing concept, but the question comes to mind that if we create too complex of an AI like the Deep Blue Supercomputer created to beat a world chess champion, is it possible for that intelligence to “evolve” and eventually become self-aware to calculate and scheme for its own machinations? A spooky thought…
This is among some of the concepts touched as well in the Wardrip-Fruin reading. Wiener was concerned by the war-like intentions we were putting machines to after the experiences he witnessed during World War II. In my opinion, I agree. We really do need to be careful what direction we take the AI of our machines in and how far we should let them develop and evolve…
You can’t help but think of movies like The Terminator; The Matrix; and I, Robot when the discussion of AI is brought up these days. I wonder if the situation will ever get to the state reached in those movies… Is AI really that scary? Please share your thoughts! 
