. media culture . videogame
art . interactive . videogame
Sleep Is Death, video playing with humans
Art games are usually meant to reconsider rules, but often this reduces to just playing with conventions. "Sleep is Death (Geisterfahrer)" by Jason Rohrer, famous for his early controversial "Passage" game, is a little masterpiece of interaction. It allows two players to construct a story, but in a revolutionary way: one of them is the "computer", the other one
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book . hacktivism . videogame
Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig de Peuter - Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games
University of Minnesota Press, ISBN-13: 978-0816666119, USA, 2009, EnglishActivism (or better hacktivism) usually conjugates with video games when a new political or highly controversial art-game (or artistic intervention in a game platform) is announced. Otherwise the most profitable entertainment industry is not very affected by political criticism, and neither are the hordes of ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . book . videogame
Mary Flanagan - Critical Play, Radical Game Design
The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262062688, USA, 2009, EnglishAfter a few years of serious and prolific videogame studies, fed by the industry boom, the research is starting to focus on reconnecting with the history of games through strong links that would help to understand and expand videogame paradigms. In this articulate book Flanagan starts with a major ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . hacktivism . software . videogame
Can't You See I'm Busy, playing at work without feeling guilty
In the spirit of the "net.art" of the late 1990s, the project "Can't You See I'm Busy" (by Maarten Vrouwes, Friso Ludenhoff, Eric Holm and Vincent Ludenhoff) consists of various arcade games masked into generic office tools like word processing and spreadsheet software in order to hide the activities of the procrastinating cubicle worker. Games
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art . mobile . performance . videogame
Amagatana, bringing virtual fights into the physical world
In the multi-faceted genre of augmented reality gaming, many artists have attempted to translate virtual aspects of digital games into the physical world. These projects include everything from creating virtual maps transposed over physical locations, connecting the signage and language of these games
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music . performance . sound . videogame
Heavy Metal Moshpit, Metal Head Orgasmatron
Video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band have certainly altered the way we interact with music by filling a quenchable void once solely occupied by air guitar and karaoke. Now //////////fur//// group is heralding the new 'metallenium' with their advanced musical interaction of user-simulated
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art . floppy disk . media . software . videogame . visual
Florian Cramer - nkdlunch.mp4, tapetrff.mp4
Floppy Films, The Netherlands, 2009Disappeared from our desktops first because of cd-rom burners and then (after regretting losing the floppy's quick data portability) because of USB keys, the floppy disk is still supported by major OSs, but is often found sleeping in quantities in boxes as old relics. The floppy disk (3.5") has been the medium ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . hacktivism . videogame
Oiligarchy, playing with the Oil Peak theory
Oiligarchy is the new online flash game released by Mollenidustria. In this new adventure designed by Paolo Pedercini the player is CEO of a major international oil company. He acts as an "oiligarch" with the only goal to increase his capital and keep the carbon-fossil based economy as profitable as possible. The game starts after Second World
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art . hacking . software . videogame
Un-Dead-Link, physical death of a computer game
Japanese media art unit Exonemo’s latest work focuses on the differences between two worlds - the real, physical and our increasingly information-based, virtual. Citations of doubt in the real world itself among the two artists (Sembo Kensuke and Yae Akaiwa) led to an identification and consideration of a
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art . videogame
Play Cultures, The world of digital games in contemporary art and culture.
Play Cultures photo setThe so called 'game culture' is becoming a vast cultural territory spreading from its pop origins to the growing academic studies. "Play Cultures" was a properly named exhibition, symposium and workshop held in Novi Sad (Serbia) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina. Passionately supported by the ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . book . videogame
Ian Bogost - Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
book - The MIT Press - ISBN-13: 978-0262524872Videogame criticism is still getting its momentum with a prolific production of essays. Meanwhile "Game Studies" departments are sprouting in Universities and Design schools and hosting a course on videogame seems mandatory for any digital media related curriculum. Even if this book is clearly into ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . videogame
Homo Ludens Ludens, exploring videogame essence
Homo Ludens Ludens photo setVideogame "buzz" alone (that has never stopped in the last five years) would have been a good reason to push the monumental Asturian institution "Laboral" (dealing with art, science and technology) to invest some resources in the field. But what they have done, under the inspiring resolute direction by the ex ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . code . literature . videogame
Memetic Simulation no. 2, memetic shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up (or shmup for short) is a computer and video game genre where the player usually controls a vehicle or character and fights large numbers of enemies with shooting attacks, typically of a highly stylized nature. In Japan, where the genre is still a lively one, they are simply known as "shooting games"
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art . software . videogame
Rom Check Fail, ultimate videogame remix
You don't need to be a videogame fan or being a teenager in the seventies / eighties to know videogame classics like Space Invaders, Pacman or Tetris. Their iconic power is still intact in the public imagination, also thanks to many reinterpretations and updates. Their patterns are often used by game artists as
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art . sound . videogame
Sonic Wargame, war of sounds
Club Transmediale (the venue that traditionally hosts musical and audio-visual performances during the Transmediale festival), this year will be transformed, for some days, in an arena where valiant performers will fight using scratches, samples and effects. The battlefield will be Sonic Wargame, a quadriphonic installation made by the
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art . media . software . videogame
Game Culture, digital games in contemporary art and culture in Novi Sad.
The so called 'game culture' is becoming a vast cultural territory that from its pop influences to the academic 'videogame studies' it has spread the attention on the videogame culture all over. Game Culture / The world of digital games in contemporary art and culture is a
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book . hacking . hacktivism . media . videogame
McKenzie Wark - Gamer Theory
Harvard University Press - ISBN 0674025199After remixing 'The Capital' with genuine hacker culture (in the 'A Hacker Manifesto'), McKenzie Wark felt the urge to shift to another hotbed for the current media culture debate: computer games. Instead of ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . hacking . hacktivism . media . mobile . sound . videogame
Social Hacking, temporary hacks in Plymouth
The 'hacking' practice is an overused and misunderstood term in pop culture and contemporary arts. 'Hacking' usually carries negative connotations and it is used referring the activity of breaking into computer systems. Nevertheless, in the computer programming community, the term 'hack' refers to a
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art . net . software . videogame
netPong, playing Pong walking with a laptop
The tilting sensor embedded in some of the latest Apple laptops has induced many projects focused on experimenting new interaction methods. netPong by Oriol Ferrer Mesià, is a software that allows to play Pong physically tilting the computer
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art . book . media . software . videogame
Alexander R. Galloway - Gaming, Essay on Algorithmic Culture
book - Univ Of Minnesota Press - ISBN 0816648514Beyond the narratology / ludology debate, videogames studies are catalyzing theoretical energies everywhere. But investigating the videogame medium in its own essence is quite different than constructing polished speculations based on cinema studies (as it's largely done). Galloway, instead, ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
dvd . hacktivism . video . videogame . visual
Joan Leandre - Archivos Babilonia, The War Room
dvd video - OVNIIs it true that sometimes reality exceeds fantasy and leaves astounded more than any elaborated construction? In this new outcome of the research Joan Leandre is doing with his OVNI (Observatori De Video No Identificat) ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
activism . art . book . hacktivism . videogame
Ed Halter - From Sun Tzu to Xbox, War and Video Games
Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 1560256818In the controversial debate about the videogame role in social acceptance of violence, the military power avid interest in the field is not anymore a secret. Furthermore the mediatic videogame-like aesthetic debuted during the Gulf War in early nineties has become the norm, and pushes in every new conflict the bloodless screen-based interface of a real human mass murdering. Ed Halter wrote this ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . hacking . net . videogame
Troy, alternate reality game
One of the shared characteristics of all the types of game is to be closed systems, limited in time and space, as a sort of 'magic circles' where the player voluntarily decides to enter. Troy
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art . media . video . videogame
This Spartan Life, talk show staged inside Halo 2
If you think about a prototypical set for a talk show, you would probably imagine a static situation where the host and his guests are all comfortably seated and the conversation doesn't face any risks other than those connected to the violation of the turns of speech. However this imaginary is changed
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art . magazine . media . videogame
Ludic Society Magazine #1 + #2
edited by Margarete Jahrmann, Max Moswitzer - GoApe, ISBN 390238901X
The complexity of the contemporary life has increased also because of the continuos necessity of becoming accustomed with new norms and then adapt consequently. This process is very similar to a new game rules' assimilation and to the elaboration of the related strategies. For this reason the
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art . book . media . videogame
Jesper Juul - Half-Real : Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds
The MIT Press - ISBN 0262101106The old Ludology vs. Narratology antithesis in the game studies field hides the fact that they are two different points of reference (represented by the rules and the storytelling) that in the end could be considered to be not opposite at all, but equally important, if interpreted as complementary. This text, ... [ Continue ] email this | + facebook | + twitter | TrackBacks (0) |
art . videogame
Pong.Mythos, pong as paradigm
The marketing of Pong is one of the few true turning points from the industrial to the digital era. The first mass videogame is one of the absolute pop icons, and it has written the first definitive paradigm of playful interactivity with a screen through a few lines and a couple of
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art . hacktivism . software . videogame
McDonald's videogame, management simulation of a fast food giant
McDonald, an icon of the global capital can be opposed in a thousand different ways, as testing the effects of their food on your own intestine or trying to spread the real data on its nutritional policies. Anyway it is still a business giant with the attitude to skillfully move in the
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art . media . videogame
SweetPads, paradoxical videogame interface
Do you remember Quake 3 Arena et similia? The so-called shoot-em-ups, where you fight against anybody else and where the only goal is to score the highest number of frags? That one that cause a cramp in your hand because of the nervous joystick grip and of the
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hacktivism . videogame
The French Democracy in machinima
Machinima is a recent trend of making films using video games engines. It is has been filled with humor and little serious content until the release of 'The French Democracy', a political film about France's riots, created using 'The Movies', a videogame in which players run
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art . videogame
The Endless Forest, alienating mmorpg
The latest Tale of tales's group project is incredibly brave, compared the typical market-driven multiplayer games, stucked on hackneyed schemes or proposed as technological substitute for the lack of social dimension in everyday
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hacktivism . software . videogame
Soviet-Unterzögersdorf, surreal socialism
Reproposing an ironic vision of an out of fashion past is one of the prerogatives of videogames, which have the possibility to recreate historic systems through simulations and keep afloat memories which the fury of information mass media tends to submerge
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art . hacktivism . videogame
Mindbending inc., subliminal videogames
While the Vatican attacks the videogames yet another time, accusing them of pushing the youngsters towards satanism, an apparently american company proposes a system to turn them into educational products. Mindbending inc., Inc. offers a range of programs that integrate with commercial videogames and modify their audio/video output in a biased
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Suoni Futuri Digitali
Wicked Style
nordiC (Dissonanze)
Tecnologie di Liberazione (2001)
Virtual Light (1995)
Internet Underground Guide (1995)
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Vito Campanelli
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Daphne Dragona
Vicente Gutierrez
Matteo Marangoni
Paolo Pedercini
production and promotion:
Chiara Ciociola
infrastructure design
and consulting:
Paolo Cirio
translations:
Roberto Orsini
technical consulting:
Paolo Mangraviti
Alessandro Ludovico
assistant editor:
Aurelio Cianciotta Mendizza
contributors:
Josephine Bosma
Vito Campanelli
Jonah Brucker Cohen
Valentina Culatti
Michael Dieter
Daphne Dragona
Vicente Gutierrez
Matteo Marangoni
Paolo Pedercini
production and promotion:
Chiara Ciociola
infrastructure design
and consulting:
Paolo Cirio
translations:
Roberto Orsini
technical consulting:
Paolo Mangraviti
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