[Nettime-bold] metabolics#3

[florian schneider <fls@kein.org>]

>> METABOLICS // STOFFWECHSEL#3

THU 8 MAR 2001 20:00 +0100 (MET)
MUFFATHALLE/MUNICH

Re: Play 

An slightly different gaming night at metabolics

Guests: Claus Pias (Media Scientist/Weimar) and JODI (Net
Artists/Barcelona)

"Under the conditions of SDI, computer game players are the better
soldiers" (Ronald Reagan)

With the introduction of Atari's Video Game Console "PONG" 1972, a
broader audience got access to the computer as entertainement device.
Since then, the genre of computer games has developed remarkably,
commercially as well as culturally. Today, already more money is earned
in the computer game industry than in the movie business. Despite that,
critical reflection on the computer game is reduced, apart from its
service orientated version in game magazines, basically on
problematisations of their contents, mainly under educational, at most
under popcultural aspects. Beyond a mere analysis of their plots, and
beyond concerned lamentations about their violence glorifying
aesthetics, METABOLICS/STOFFWECHSEL#3 tries to seek out the methods and
mechanisms of those games, which human beings play with the computer, or
the computer plays with human beings. In what way differ computer games
from traditional forms of games on the one side, in what way from other
programs on the other?

In his media historical analysis of computer games, Claus Pias attempts
to explain the relationship between computers, games and worlds. For
him, the computer, as a machine programming human beings, can be placed
in a series of historical operating systems, from the greek alphabet to
the standards of labour science. Pias examines the effects of those
codes, whose hiding behind user friendly interfaces actually enables to
use computers as a device for playing. Accoring to this, the figure of
the player appears only in the gaps that hard- and software allow, and
thus itself becomes a function of the program demanding its outputs. In
this sense, computers bear little likeness to traditional forms of games
and can no longer be described in terms of play. On the contrary, they
correspond to a "economy of optimization" of human movements that can be
seen at work on an assembly line as well as in surfing the internet.

http://www.uni-weimar.de/~pias

The artist group JODI may well be considered being the most famous and
exiting internet artists. Anyway, nobody should expect that the
duch-belgian duo consisting of Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans is
giving you an easy game. When the renowned Webby Award was given to JODI
1999 in San Francisco, the two threw a "Ugly commercial, son of the
bitches" into the stunning audience and left. So better be prepared for
everything, as in their work JODI look behind the user interfaces and
deconstruct their modes of presentation. JODI cultivate program errors,
bring HTML-Code on the surface, thus iritating usual habits of
perceiving computers. "OSS", one of their legendary projects, is
simulating a defective operating system in such a irritating way that
their US-based provider deleted JODI's account, thinking their Website
would cause his browser to crash. When the source code of the
3D-shooters "Quake 1" and "Castle Wolfenstein" was published, JODI build
their own version out of it. Freed from its martial aesthetics and
content, the game thereafter consists only of gray, black and white
planes and the source code. In such a reconstruction of the code, the
way of interacting with the game which is also at work in the individual
enhancement of commercial games in the culture of creating patches and
even in cheating, a more creative approach towards software can be seen,
the only one maybe that is worth being called "playing".

http://sod.jodi.org

METABOLICS / STOFFWECHSEL is presenting innovative projects and debates
in net.art, .culture and .politics on a monthly basis, since january
2001, in the Muffathalle in Munich (http://www.muffathalle.de).
METABOLICS / STOFFWECHSEL is curated by Florian Schneider, Harald Staun
and Dietmar Lupfer. METABOLICS / STOFFWECHSEL will be streamed live and
stored in a database. More information:
<http:www.linksverkehr.net/metabolics> If you want to be informed
regurarily about the program, receive additional information and take
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