Jim Andrews/Ruth Catlow- net-art-games (1): NetBehaviour

Last night, Furtherfield held a live online interview with Andy Deck in VisitorsStudio, a multiuser arena for live multimedia art events.

We discussed:-
1)the importance of artists cultivating a political awareness and taking a political stance in their work.
2)Visiting Artists, collective authorship and activating audiences.
3)war sim games and the potential to create counter-narratives against the corporate driven war inevitability myth.

Jim Andrews of vispo.com and creator of Arteroids, a shoot-em-up art game which he describes as 'the battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness' participated in the discussion that followed.

This discussion has since migrated to the NetBehaviour list


JA:
the group [those attending the Andy Deck interview] also talked a bit about games, addiction, the psychology of commercial games, and ruth mentioned that it would then be appropriate to tap into that psychology with hacktivist tactics. would be interested in hearing more about that, ruth.

RC:
I guess I was thinking about my own approach with Rethinking Wargames, a participatory net art project in which I worked with others to develop new rules for online, 3 Player Chess.
This chess hack retained an intensely competitive element whilst redrawing the game's hierarchical structure with metaphors of
grass-roots cooperation as a collective peace-promoting strategy. Rather than creating a game that would preach to the converted and appeal tohippies and peaceniks, I wanted to attract and manipulate the minds of alpha-type gamers committed to the virtues of strategic thinking, competition and winning- to change the way their synapses fired.

This project has had limited success so far in its hactivist aims because of a factor that I hadn't reckoned with- the apparently tightly knit, change resistant, status conscious and hierarchical nature of chess-playing communities. The new game has (predictably I suppose)found much more success with less advanced players.

JA:
my experience with chess is from an earlier stage of my life. i browsed a book or two on it over the course of a few years. mainly out of curiosity about the history and the nature of the game. though also to improve as a player. have you played much chess, ruth? i suspect you have. how would you describe your 'position' relative to the 'culture' of chess?

chess seems different from a lot of games that perhaps require similar skills in that it has quite a rich history to it in western art. chess has been used so much metaphorically in works of art, and much of the terminology is part of the language: 'pawn'; 'end game'; 'check mate', for instance. and it is phrased in terms of western national power structures that go back to christian medieval times: 'king', 'queen', 'rook', 'bishop', 'knight'. some people enjoy the historical aura and lore of the game, the'noble and clever warrior' attitude of it.

in other words, it seems like the static nature of the game is part of the appeal to many people. tradition. monarchy. religion.

your project is interesting to me. much of what you say resonates with me in my efforts to create a somewhat related game: arteroids

arteroids, like your 3-player chess, is an attempt to create an actually playable game while also hopefully being an art thang that has something to say about gaming, art, and play. it appeals to some people and not to others. some people like the game-play, some don't. some like the conceptual parts, some don't. some people like the literary aspect, some don't.

i think these sorts of projects take a few years to 'play out'.

arteroids has been published on quite a few art sites. and also a game site. i'd like to get it published on more game sites. i've worked on it off and on for three years. it's at version 2.6 now. recently 2.6 was shown in a gallery in los angeles called machine gallery.
and the texts are by Christina McPhee and Helen Thorington. It had its own machine and a projector. i gather that went well. apparently on opening day, a class of 7 year-olds trouped in and they liked Arteroids. Was glad to hear it. This is the first time any of my stuff has been shown in agallery. Also, I've published a few articles on Arteroids here and there on the Web. A while ago I wrote something for poemsthatgo when they did something on literary games and featured arteroids and some other literary games. And there are a couple of books coming out, one from the usa on computer games and art, that will include a new essay i've written about play games art and arteroids; the other book is from the uk/france on video games and art.

the response from the writers has been mixed, like the response from most other groups that have responded in one way or another. some like the directions it takes poetry in (the battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness); others see it as negatively destructive of good things
in literary realms.

your project seeks to affect thought and attitudes concerning chess and militarism; arteroids seeks to affect thought and attitudes concerning poetry and games and, to a lesser extent, militarism, though that is present also. the realms of poetry are not as inflexible as the realms of chess, but i've certainly experienced resistance. goes with the territory, i guess.

your piece, like arteroids, is, to a certain extent, at odds with itself. you create a competitive game that someone wins. yet you also make that process much more progressive than the normal game of chess. poetry is not a game somebody wins (though lordy look at all the jockeying for attention).
so i built in a 'game mode' and a 'play mode' because some of the features i wanted to create were appropriate to a competitive environment and some weren't. also, arteroids contains a gun. what to do with that aspect of shooting and destroying things?

at least in arteroids, it seems to me that there are some irreconcilables. there is intersection between game and art (in the notion of 'play'), but there is also conflict between them (competitive/non-competitive, for instance). i figured that some of the conflicts are irreconcilable and so arteroids explores such conflicts rather than seeking to resolve them. i'm not sure what your feeling is in that way concerning your project, ruth.