BBrodzkiART BLOG

Micro [2]

2011-04-10T06:51:00.001-07:00

More Micro shots ;)

MineButchery

2011-03-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

Cloudy Town

2011-03-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Ras Tafari

2011-03-22T20:10:00.001-07:00

Hail Ras Tafari, King Selassie the Ist! Jah! :)

Retrieved from... ..uhmmm... deep Google ? :P

G.R.L. influence

2011-03-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

retrieved from G.R.L.

It is claimed that bioart is led by a problematic moral perogative to contest a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska 2009), what other ways are there?

2011-03-22T19:58:00.001-07:00

This essay works on the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians such as Zylinska, Thacker and Munster, in relation to the claim that bioart is led by a problematic moral power to challenge a 'pancapitalist' bioeconomy (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). It looks into some of the dominating theories surrounding the field of this specific art movement and presents various points of view on the ethics of such an interdisciplinary entity.

Bioart, as a deliberately new art movement has always been a controversial topic. As said by Thacker, “the term bioart is often used to refer to projects that deal with biology as an artistic medium” (Thacker, 2005: 307), but in many cases the artists’ work is much more complicated. According to Zylinska, “the so called “bioart,” which stands for art utilizing biomaterial such as tissue, blood, or genes as its medium, evokes a lot of controversy, both within and without the art community” (Zylinska 2009: 149). As the author carries on claiming that “typical responses to bioart reflect a wider public anxiety regarding the current transformation of human and nonhuman life and its mediation by technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 149). As the author finds out while analyzing the work of Critical Art Ensemble: “there is an ambivalent relationship between moralist pronouncements and ethical forcework can also be identified in the work of CAE” (Zylinska, 2009: 156). She then carries on to positioning CAE “as both artists and activists, whose task is to “resist (…) authoritarian structures” of the dominant biopolitical regime and envisage a new techno-apparatus which will counter the “obsessively rational” military and corporate drives of “pancapitalism” (Zylinska, 2009: 156-157). As Zylinska finds the artists’ words prophetic, they carry on to explaining the mechanics at work which surround the world of eugenics, bioart, and the financial issues involved in these processes:

If big science can ignore nuclear holocaust and species annihilation, it seems very safe to assume that concerns about eugenics or any of the other possible flesh catastrophes are not going to be very meaningful in its deliberations about flesh machinepolicy and practice. Without question, it is in the interest of pancapitalism to rationalize the flesh, and consequently it is in the financial interest of big science to see that this desire manifests itself in the world. (CAE in Zylinska, 2009: 156-157)

The above quote “highlights the deeply problematic role of the biotechnological industry in shaping the current political and social consensus about the “value” of life” (Zylinska, 2009: 157). According to these words the pancapitalist machine creates two major issues surrounding the debate on power relations within the bio-industry: firstly, attaching different values to flesh and life; and secondly, creating an extremely closed economy - a centered power layout where big science and military are the only ones to explore and benefit from the potential of the genetic code.

A more positive view on bio-economy is presented by Thacker, where she claims that bioart “(…) not only marginalizes (or niche markets) art, effectively separating it from the practices of technoscience, but the notion of a “bioart” also positions art practice as reactionary and, at best, reflective of the technosciences” (Thacker, 2005: 307). This positioning of bioart as opposing the dominant power structure within the industry via creating something new via an exploration of the uncovered and separation from the dominant schemes is followed by an even further reinforcement on the powers surrounding the discussed. According to Thacker, bioart has a unique political power of pointing “(…) real fissures in the social, cultural, and material effects of biotechnologies” (Thacker, 2005: 318) throughout the world around us.

One could say that the view of opening the biotech industry to the amateur might be an illuminating experience for both the arts and humanities, but nonetheless various complications may surely arise. One example can be found while analyzing the work of Adam Zaretsky - a self-declared “vivoartist”, who according to Zylinska “(…) is all for reinserting “fun for fun’s sake into the social” and for “things getting really weird”. He admits he would be keen to see some more “interesting mutations”: “iridescent humans, spotted and striped, with multiple limbs” (Zylinska, 2009: 160). According to the author, Zaretsky takes on a role of a Nietzschean philosopher, attacking the “established values around biotechnology and “life” with a double-edged hammer of serious play, in order to undertake their transvaluation” (Zylinska, 2009: 160).

Other authors such as Der Derian explore the topic further by contemplating future perspectives carried out by the expected release of biotech basic knowledge and cheap and accessible equipment to the public domain. He believes that “bioart project might come to be seen as the material evidence supporting practices of bioterrorism speaks not of ideological but instead of information warfare” (Der Derian, 2001; in Munster 2011: 6). Still, this clear link between bioart and bio-terror is brought down by Munster, where she purposes an example of how to deal with the arising problem while working on thoughts of Thacker:

The linking of life through the nodes of the network materializes information in such a way that it becomes the giant regulating principle of a properly organized, databased and policed info-sociality. Contestational biology must therefore also dispute this application of a generalized network as the fundamental and overriding design principle organizing social, cultural, economic and biological life. In Biomedia, Thacker has suggested that a critical approach to the materialization of information design through the theory and practice of contemporary biologies could begin to operate by deploying a rather different idea of 'metadesign' (Thacker, 2004: 191-193).

Rather than a principle of (linked) design accounting for the interactions and connections that constitute living systems, the living system might be reconceived as one that is structurally open to the variability and contingency of whatever interactions, nodes and links it sustains. (Munster, 2011: 8)

Still, this utopian solution does not seem to be convincing enough: It would create a situation influx of network over this unique biological practice will generate further surveillance issues. Furthermore, linking life-practice via a networked system will not stop nor oppress terrorism, as most likely future bio-rebels will surely find ways around it (keeping in mind the popularization and accessibility of home made eugenics labs.

A far more positive perspective can be found while looking at the words of Stelarc, a world famous new media and bioartist. According to Zylinska “Stelarc repeatedly tells us that he has no ambitions to be a philosopher or a political theorist. He refuses to be prescriptive in his work and so will not instruct us as to how we should treat our bodies or how we should coexist with technology” (Zylinska, 2009: 173). As the author believes, “listening to Stelarc will allow us to envisage a more effective politics and ethics. This will be a technopolitics of distributed agency and suspended command, informed by an ethics of infinite - and at times crazy, shocking, and excessive - hospitality toward the alterity of technology (that is always already part of us)” (Zylinska, 2009: 173).

Looking at the above thoughts devised by both artists and theoreticians, one could say that the best approach to consider the golden middle expressed by Zylinska while talking about Stelarc: sampling openness towards biotech from artists such as Zaretsky, but keeping in mind the politics surrounding this newly emerging art of life manipulation. This would create a situation described by Zylinska, where “it is not to say that “we are machines” or that “we are all Stelarcs now,” as the Krokers put it. If humans and machines are collapsed—as they tend to be in some current accounts of “the network society”—into a fluid epistemology in which difference is overcome for the sake of horizontal affective politics (Zylinska, 2009: 173).

Bibliography and Readings:

Critical Art Ensemble, 'Transgenic Production and Cultural Resistance: A Seven-Point Plan', in Molecular Invasion, New York: Autonomedia, 2002, pp. 58-75.

Rebecca Schneider, 'Nomadmedia: On Critical Art Ensemble', The Drama Review 44.4 (2000): 120-131.

Eugene Thacker, 'A Biotech Hobbyist Manifesto', in Natalie Jeremijenko and Eugene Thacker (eds) Creative Biotechnology: A User’s Manual, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Locus +, 2004, pp. 38-39.

Eugene Thacker, 'Conclusion: Tactical Media and Bioart', in The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 305-320.

Anna Munster, 'Why is Bioart Not Terrorism?: Some Critical Nodes in the Networks of Informatice Life', Culture Machine 7 (2005), http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/31/38

Joanna Zylinska, 'Green Bunnies and Speaking Ears: The Ethics of Bioart', in Bioethics in the Age of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 149-174.

Beatriz da Costa, 'Reaching the Limit: When Art Becomes Science', in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 365-385.

Michael Dieter, 'Issues, Process, AIR: Toward Reticular Politics', Australian Humanities Review 46 (2009), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2009/dieter.htm

It has been suggested that locative media is the “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’”

2011-03-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

This essay focuses on the ideas explored by Tuters and Vernelis (originally devised partially by Broeckmann and Lovink) about the state of locative media technologies, and the true nature of their power in relation to contemporary new media art:

The reluctance of many locative-media practitioners to position their work as political has led some theorists, such as Andreas Broeckmann (director of the Transmediale Festival), to accuse locative media of being the “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’”, referring to Gilles Deleuze’s description of the contemporary regime of power. Broeckmann suggests that, since locative media is fundamentally based on the appropriation of technologies of surveillance and control, its practitioners have a duty to address that fact in their work. Geert Lovink has claimed that the movement instead has turned the media-art conference circuit into a “shopping-driven locative spectacle”. (Broeckmann and Lovink in Tuters and Vernelis, 2006: 360)

According to the above quote, this essay will focus on two presented characteristics embedded in modern mapping and visualization techniques. The firstly mentioned “avant-garde of the ‘society of control’” can be shortly described as all relations of the above to the military and surveillance procedures, and will be critically discussed according to the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians in the field. The second characteristic, as mentioned by Lovink, can be narrowed to all related commercial aspects, and will be judged upon based on a few examples found throughout the Internet.

To begin with, the most important thought about the introduced problem can be found while looking at the work of Bruno Latour. In the beginning of Visualization and Congnition the author mentions both the law enforcement and administration. As he keeps analyzing the “divide between prescientific and scientific culture”, calling it “merely a border”, he states that “It is enforced arbitrarily by police and bureaucrats, but it does not represent any natural boundary” (Latour, 1986: 2).

Other theoreticians such as Russell in his Headmap Manifesto claim even more connections of the recently evolved techniques of mapping to military practice. While discussing it in terms of conquest and control, he claims that “The military has always been actively involved in map making, the Ordinance Survey in the UK is the primary source of civilian mapping data and is the primary governmental mapping organization, until recently it was directly controlled and funded by the military” (Russel, 1999: 10). He also concludes the paragraph with an example from the gulf war: “(…) in former Yugoslavia, the commanders integrated a whole range of spatial mapping technologies, from 3d terrain models to GPS, to enhance their formidable command and control systems” (Russell, 1999:10).

Moreover, Russell while discussing the politics in software, points out two extremely important specifications of mapping: firstly, no guarantee of liberatory use via a direct link to both the military and business corporations, which is followed by the scary idea of social control through information via never-ending ethereal display of ads. As looking at the first aspect, the author claims that “new technology, before it arrives, heralds destruction or liberation depending on whose account you happen to be reading” (Russell, 1999: 15). He follows with explaining that “the internet has been (all at once) an anarchists tool, a military tool, a tool for salesmen and businesses, and in general a communications medium for everyone able to use it for whatever purpose they intend” (Russell, 1999: 15). This sad vision that we have to keep in mind while using mobile aware devices is further explored under the issue of constantly raising corporate domination via social control. His contemplation starts with idea that “LAPD will continiue to win political support for ambitious capital investment programs in new technology” and this will, according to the author, lead to “both criminal and non criminal” being “monitored by both cellular and centralized survaillances” (Russell, 1999: 15). Analogously “If this technology impacts without privacy built-in, all kinds of organisations could not only know your internet browsing habits, but where and when you go (in real time - i.e. where are you now), what you buy and who you see, and from that establish the patterns in your spatial behaviour” (Russell 1999: 16). This domination over technology-mediated experience raises questions of “how do we stop salesmen getting access to our every waking moment irrespective of place and time?” (Russell, 1999: 16).

Brian Holmes presents a very similar perspective on the potential of locative projects while analyzing “swarm cartography” by a Spanish activist group, where in Network Maps, one could state, that he stresses the claims the prime aim of mapping in general. According to the author, this technology’s one side is “(…) a map of power: on a Mercator projection turned upside-down, it shows sea-going migration routes, refugee camps, destination zones, electronic surveillance systems, military installations, internment centers, etc. But the other side traces a complex meshwork of activist groups on both sides of the Straits, showing their interrelations, their meetings, their evolution over time. The aim is not only to represent, but above all to catalyze a future range of possible interventions by autonomous agents (…)” (Holmes, 2007: 5). Even though this example, no matter how noble, the same technology is used by governmental, corporate and law enforcement agencies, filtering even bigger data bases and providing with more accurate outcomes.

Nonetheless, some theoreticians believe that “there are many artists’ projects that map corporate and military power relationships” (A. and M. Kroker, in Diamond, 2010: 224), one should always keep in mind the power carried by mapping technologies, and watch out for hands wielding them. There are some, who try to oppose the dominant corporation, but in many cases they lack resources or get entangles within its concept. Artists’ visualizations in many cases fail to inform, phone applications such as Flook turn out to guide users to expensive shops and restaurants, hardware and software providers gathering intel about the users are all things we should be constantly aware of.

According to the above links of locative media, mapping and visualization technologies in contemporary media art can and should be critically approached as discussed by Tuters and Varnelis, where the unwillingness of most contemporary media practicioneers to strongly bias their work with correct political positioning has led to a situation where the described is driven by both the military and the corporate. This is mainly visible in the analyzed models of contemporary surveillence methods and the ways they are employed, but also by the tracking technology used by the police and military. This breaching of the private sphere may be also found while focusing on the information flow which is directly linked to location aware devices, which one has to keep in mind not to end up in a world covered with mind-molding corporate information.

Bibliography and Readings:

Bruno Latour, 'Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together', in Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar (eds) Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986, pp. 19-68.

Ben Russell, Headmap Manifesto (1999).

Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis. ‘Beyond Locative Media: Giving Shape to the Internet of Things’, Leonardo 39.4 (2006): 357-363.

Brian Holmes, 'Network Maps, Energy Diagrams: Structure and Agency in the Global System', Continental Drift (2007), http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/network-maps-energy-diagrams/

Teodor Mitew, 'Repopulating the Map: Why Subjects and Things are Never Alone', Fibreculture 13 (2008), http://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-089-repopulating-the-map-why-subjects-and-things-are-never-alone/

Lev Manovich, 'Data Visualization as New Abstraction and as Anti-Sublime', in Bryon Hawk et al (eds) Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, pp. 3-9.

Sara Diamond, 'Lenticular Galaxies: The Polyvalent Aesthetics of Data Visualization', in Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker (eds) Code Drift: Essays in Critical Digital Studies, Victoria, CA: New World Perspectives / CTheory Books, 2010, pp. 192-243.

"To study media is often if not always to study the political economy of an open secret"

2011-03-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

This essay focuses on a broad topic of new media archives, archival technologies, the concept of database, its aesthetics, hypertext, as well as media archeology. Via analysis of some of the ideas claimed by the most influencing theoreticians in the field, it explores the idea of an ‘open secret’ (Foucault in Krapp 2006: 369) and it’s relationship to the above branches of new media inquiry.

Christiane Paul, in her piece on digital art believes that the term “database aesthetics” is often used to describe the “aesthetic principles applied in imposing the logic of the database to any type of information, filtering data collections, and visualizing data (Paul, 2007: 95). She believes that database aesthetics often becomes a conceptual potential and cultural form — a way of revealing (visual) patterns of knowledge, beliefs, and social behavior (Paul, 2007: 95). She also believes that the aesthetics of the database are a structure itself, although it certainly implies that meaning and the structure of a database is inherently connected to the results produced by the filtering of the data contained in it and the nature of its visualization. (Paul, 2007: 95).

According to the author “(…) visualization and “dynamic mapping” of real-time data streams has become a broad area of inquiry in digital art” (2007: 99). Following this notion, applying the keyword database to visual arts, gaming, music, and culture in general, produces an enormous field of inquiry for both the arts, humanities and mathematics. Finally, the author claims that “database structure in the broadest sense lies at the root of digital media, it is only natural that database aesthetics play a major role in digital art and culture” (2007: 108).

She also believes that the common theme for “database aesthetics” seems to be more focused on the operations happening on the “front end” — the concept of the algorithms, its visual manifestations, and cultural implications — rather than the “back end” of the data container and its structure (Paul, 2007: 97). This is where one can notice that the way in which the author approaches database aesthetics is strongly linked to the artist, his visual expression and the incredibly vast amounts of information carried by the manifested data visualization.

Soon after, Paul notices one of the main points of Krapp’s claim: the potential of data for being infinite or unbound – open. She claims that: “one of the inherent characteristics of digital art is the tension between the mostly linear and hierarchical structure of databases (or the Internet’s territory as a multitude of servers with hierarchical directories) and instructions, on the one hand, and, on the other, the seemingly infinite possibilities for reproducing and reconfiguring the information contained within these structures” (Paul, 2007: 97).

The author focuses further on the idea of aesthetics of a database as intrinsically relational, either on the level of its potential or the actual relationships established by the software element (2007: 98). Shortly explaining this claim, one should keep in mind that the aesthetics of databases are an even more expansive concept than the database field itself. This leads the author to her next claim about “the possibilities of tracing process individual, cultural, communicative—in its various forms” (2007: 98). Following the words of Paul, “the understanding of a database as the underlying principle and structure of any new media object delineates a broad field that includes anything from a network such as the Internet to a particular data set (2007: 98-99), providing the artist or scientist in charge of the set with constantly expanding material for practice as well as a rapidly growing diverse field of analysis.

Christiane Paul believes that database aesthetics became somewhat of a characteristic of our times of rapid information flow, reaching beyond the digital and transcending the traditional archives of the library and museum. Most importantly, she claims “the notion of relational databases as an organizational model seems increasingly to infiltrate culture” (2007: 108), presenting this phenomenon on a global scale.

Relating the concept of relational database and its aesthetics to the idea of “openness” touched by Krapp, I find most important to cite Paul’s grand statement where she claims the notions of data, collection and network as tied together within a fresh term of relational database aesthetics:

Largely brought about by digital technologies, database aesthetics itself has become an important cultural narrative of our time, constituting a shift toward a relational, networked approach to gathering and creating knowledge about cultural specifics.
(Paul, 2007: 108)

Sven Spieker, the second of the analyzed authors, in his critical analysis of the archive presents a far more grave stance towards a similar topic. While focusing on the archive’s content, the author notices that conventionally “the records stored in archives fulfilled a legal function”. Nonetheless, over time archives changed from being “legal depositories” into “institutions of historical research”. According to Spieker the archive shifted into a hybrid institution based in public administration and historical research (Spieker, 2008: xii).

Following, he presents some obstacles related to the topic, previously left behind by Paul. Spieker believes that when an archive has an objective to collect everything, because any object may become useful in the future, the archive itself will drop into chaos, a state of entropy and irrational change. As he notices, “there are cases when feedback does not produce a higher degree of stability but, on contrary, leads to chaos. In such cases the system begins to swing back and forth so violently that it finally collapses. This (…) is a state of entropy that symbolizes, more generally, the archive’s precarious position between order and chaos, between organization and disorder, between the presence of the voice and the muteness of object (Spieker, 2008: xiii). The above quote may be seen as a relation to the openness aspect analyzed by Paul, but this particular thought also carries the logics or what Krapp referred to as “open secret”. Even though entering a state of chaotic consuming of its subjects or any other kind of absorbing vast amounts of information, the previously described openness is followed by the unpredictable; the mentioned chaos of surrounding data – the overload of positions carrying a thought of secrecy.

Developing the topic further while analyzing the work of Bouvard and Pecuchet , Spieker exposes the idea of chaos – multiple archives within archives – a direct relation to the questioned oxymoron of an “open secret”:

There is, then, no position from which data collected by the two characters could be referred to tht is not that of the archive. Whenever such a position – a position outside of their endeavor, outside of the collection they have established – comes within reach, they quickly discover that it is itelf yet part of another archive, another discipline or field of knowledge that has to be studied, inventoried, and mastered. The maddening conundrum faced by Bouvard and Pecuchet is that everything that can be known is already archival. (Bouvard and Pecuchet in Spieker, 2008: 33)

This grand conclusion is followed by a final definition of an archive as a storehouse for knowledge. So called by the author “the modern archive” (as a mirror image to the previously described relational databases) denotes a place outside of itself. “But this beyond-the-archive is not a transcendent outside or an empty space waiting to be filled; it is yet in fact another archive” (Spieker, 2008: 33).

To sum up the thoughts of the most influencing theoreticians covering the fields of archives, technologies, databases, its aesthetics, hypertext, and media archeology; the discussed oxymoron of an “open secret” can be explained either as a single concept or as two distinct characteristics of aesthetics or functioning of hypertext within modern archives or databases. The idea of openness can be seen in the collective gathering of knowledge, tendency for a universal language, and constantly expanding growth and interconnectivity. This is interrelated with the notion of secrecy, a chaotic trap of archives within archives, and a misleading entropy of data flows. The above ideas tied together create a notion where new media studies and media art aesthetics based on the concept of archive in general, are caught in a dangerous trap of constant growth of information and production of meaning.

Bibliography and Readings:

Lev Manovich, ‘The Database as Symbolic Form’, in The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 218-243.

Christiane Paul, ‘The Database as System and Cultural Form: Anatomies of Cultural Narratives’, in Victoria Vesna (ed.) Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp. 95-109.

Peter Krapp, ‘Hypertext Avant La Lettre’, in Wendy Chun and Thomas Keenan (eds) New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 359-373.

Sven Spieker, The Big Archive: Art From Bureaucracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008, pp. ix-34.

Geert Lovink, 'Archival Rumblings: Interview with German Media Archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst', Nettime (2003), http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0302/msg00132.html

Siegfried Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward a Media Archaeology of Seeing and Hearing by Technical Means, trans. Gloria Custance, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, pp. 1-38.

Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka, 'Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method', Leonardo [forthcoming]

Interacticipation: Ten Artworks Reflecting the Status of Contemporary Participation in New Media Art

2011-03-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

Interactive art is a genre of art in which the viewers participate in a way by providing an input in order to determine the outcome (Wikipedia, 2011a). In other words, it allows a dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. Although the history of interactive art goes back to the fifth century B.C. according to the new media artist and theorist Maurice Benayoun, in the advent of computer based interactivity in the 1990’s interactive art became a large phenomenon. Esspecially human-machine interactivity was subject of experiments. Ever since, It is impossible to imagine an contemporary art scape without interactive art.

However, interactivity is a somewhat confusing term. It is often described as a problematic concept or category for art. As Erkki Huhtamo argues in his article Trouble at the Interface, or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art about classical interactive art like Myron Krueger’s Videoplace: “Of course, the reception of art itself can always be claimed to be ‘active’ (an argument frequently used by traditional art critics in their invectives against interactive art). However, interactive art added to the mental activity a haptic dimension: the visitor was not only allowed, but required to touch the work. The touch – often physical, but sometimes “virtualized”, mediated by a videocamera or a microphone, was essential” (Huhtamo, 2004: 1-2).

Because interactivity as a concept raises questions, we focus in this exhibition on artworks that play with the idea of interactivity and participation and critically reflect on it.

1. Painstation (2001) – Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff

Painstation is a game created in 2001 by Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff. It consists a console for two players. The players each hold a joystick with their right hand and place their left hand on a metallic plate that is called the Pain Execution Unit (PEU). As both players have done this, the electronic circuit is closed and then the game can start. The game itself is a ordinary Pong tennis game. The players play it against each other. When one of the two players misses a ball, pain is inflicted on the player’s hand by the PEU. There are three types of pain: electroshocks, heat and the lash of a metallic whip. When someone takes his hand of the PEU the electric circuit is broken and the game ends. The player that endures the pain the longest wins the game (Waelder Laso, 2007: 239).

The game was a great success at several game conferences. Both males and females were displaying their wounds with pride. According to Pau Waelder Laso in his article Games of Pain: Pain as Haptic Stimulation in Computer-Game–Based Media Art “what many players find in these games of pain is what many people in Western society are looking for in more or less sublimated forms: an engaging experience that involves both body and mind, a way to release aggressiveness in a harmless manner, a social intercourse, a chance to demonstrate one’s self-efficacy before others, a different form of competition” (Waelder Laso, 2007: 242).

2. Augmented fish reality (2004) – Ken Rinaldo

Augmented fish reality is an installation of five rolling robotic fish-bowl sculptures. Each of the five is a consisting a Siamese Fighting fish. The sculptures allow the fish to move their bowls, using intelligent hardware and software. It uses four infrared sensors around the bowl that allow the fish to move forward and backward en turn the bowl. Erkki Huhtamo thinks Augmented fish reality is a problematic case of interactive art:

“There are problematic cases, like Ken Rinaldo’s Augmented Fish Reality that received the jury’s distinction. Two Siamese fighting fishes inhabiting separate fish bowls placed on motorized platforms with wheels. By interrupting laser beams crossing the bowls the fishes can “drive” their bowl-worlds around the room. Amazing, but is it interactive art? One might reason that the fishes are surrogates for human interactors, which would qualify the work at least as a “metainteractive” piece” (Huhtamo, 2004: 6).

The art is of course interactive for the fish, but not for humans. They will keep being just the spectators of the artwork. However, the creators claim the sculptures are “designed to explore interspecies and transpecies communication”. If that is enough to call it interactive art, that will always remain questionable.

3. n-cha(n)t (2001) – David Rokeby

n-Cha(n)t is an art installation, created by David Rokeby. In this artwork, computers are communicating with each other. The installation consists seven computers, that run software for voice recognition, free association and language generation. Attached to the computers, tightly focussed microphones listen to the words that people speak in the immediate vicinity. The computers stimulate each other, because they are linked by a network, and the computers speak their stream of associations through the speakers. On the monitors of the computers we see ears. These ears indicate each computer’s state of receptivity. In the absence of outside stimulus, the community of computers finds its way to equilibrium. As Erkki Huhtamo says:

Although these works accept input from human participants, the processes happening internally between the various network ‘nodes’ within these works (in Rinaldo’s case, a flock of robotic creatures able to sense each other’s presence and reactions, as well as to receive stimuli from the outside) are at least as interesting and challenging. (Huhtamo, 2004: 5-6)

Although this installation allows human input, the main interactivity occurs between the computers, in the network.

4. Wooden Mirror (1999) – Daniel Rozin

In the years to come I had an opportunity to experience a whole line-up of ‘interactive’ works (…) As different as these works were, they had things in common: they were publicly exhibited as installations, used computer technology, images and sounds, and were supposed to be ‘activated’ by the user – they required a physical effort from the part of the visitor to function and to reveal their meanings. (Huhtamo, 2004:1)

Similarly as described by Huhtamo, this piece explores the line between digital and physical, using a warm and natural material such as wood to portray the abstract notion of digital pixels. Interactive artist Daniel Rozin works in a very particular artistic field, making mirrors from unreflective organic surfaces. One of his major creations, ‘the wooden mirror’ is a testament to his skill in this area. It consists of 830 square pieces of wood which are hooked up to an equal number of small motors which move the wooden blocks according to a built in camera. The camera picks up movement in light and somehow transfers the signal to the wood, and the result is an eerie representation of reality depicted in tiny wooden pixels.

Applying this project to the words of Erkki Huhtamo while looking at the aspect of user/viwer interaction with the piece, one could notice that there is an obvious link between it and the concept of different kinds of interacting:

(…) “old school” interactive art has had its day and is in the process of being replaced by something else, the outlines of which we don’t yet quite perceive. If this is so, wouldn’t it be best to give up the label of interactive art altogether – or save it to the “old school” work emphasizing direct active interaction between the user and the piece – and replace it with something else? (Huhtamo, 2004:4)

As the author call to reflect on the definition of interaction, he finally claims the ‘depth’ of the process as central to the discussion:

If the word interactive is to retain anything about its former distinctiveness, it should, perhaps, be after all reserved to cases where active and repeated user-intervention plays a significant role in the functioning of the system (Huhtamo, 2004:6)

Still, the piece created by Rozin could not be more interactive, as the idea of mirroring itself has the potential of reflecting all images from its sorounding, and similarly as described by Huhtamo, it plays a significant role where even the passive viewer is engaged in the artistic process generated by the piece.

(…) it might be suggested that “interactive art” as a category would be reserved for works where the issue of user interaction plays a significant role. Perhaps (…) “Database aesthetics” might be a viable candidate, as it would by-pass the difficulties associated with concepts like user interaction, passive interaction and system interaction (…). (Huhtamo, 2004:7)

5. ACCESS (2003) – Marie Sester

ACCESS lets you track anonymous individuals in public places, by pursuing them with a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system. It presents control tools generated by surveillance technology combined with the advertising and Hollywood industries, and the internet. It refers to political propoganda and media manipluation.

Beware. Some individuals may not like being monitored.
Beware. Some individuals may love the attention. (Sester, 2003)

It is often described as: scary-fun / obsession-fascination / control-resistance; it is impossible to determine who is actually in control.

Applying this example to the words of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer one could notice an obvious similarity between his relational architecture and the surveillance piece designed by Marie Sester. According to the words of Lozano-Hemmer:

(…) an important aspect of my work in Relational Architecture is to produce a performative context where default buildings may take on temporary specificity and where vampire buildings may decline their role in their established, prevailing identification. The pieces are usually ephemeral interventions designed to establish architectural and social relationships where unpredicted behaviours may emerge. (…) Using projections, robotics, sound, net connections and local sensors, the input and feedback from participants becomes an integral part of the work and the outcome is dictated by their actions. (Lozano-Hemmer, 2002)

As the author gives examples of other of his works, he moves to describing the term “relational”:

I named the series of interventions “relational” in large part because I wanted to avoid using the term “interactive”. This word has become too vague, like “postmodern”, “virtual”, “deconstruction” or other terms that mean too many things and is exhausted. (…) “Relational” has a more horizontal quality, it’s more collective: events happen in fields of activity that may have resonances in several places in the network. (Lozano-Hemmer, 2002)

Given the definition, Lozano-Hemmer carries on to his view on the two inseparable approaches to interaction:

The Italian approach is all about the window onto the world. You have this frame and you step back from the subject, from reality, as though looking through this neutral glass. This formula is what informs humanism and virtuality. (…) The Italian metaphor implies that you can look at a subject objectively, while the Dutch emphasis is on foldings or reflections that are already taking place in our own corporeal space, where perception is an apparatus. The two cannot be clearly separated as I suggest, but the Dutch approach illustrates more clearly my preferred understanding of perception (…). (Lozano-Hemmer, 2002)

As one may easily notice, this specific piece is probably the best example confirming the truth of Lozano-Hemmer’s words. ACCESS is an installation where both the active and passive viewer roles may easily shift, so one becomes the other. Due to the fact that random users of the Internet trigger this artwork, no one can ever know if he will become the target of the tracking device. It can be also related to the words of Josephine Bosma:

Instead of just reacting or responding to a changing perception of art, artists have started to interfere in the perception process itself by anticipating the audience’s movement. The artist now uses or guides the audience’s movements and is steering its perception and interpretation of the work. (Bosma, 2006: 31-32)

…but in this case the mentioned “anticipation of movement” will be done more directly.

6. Optical Camouflage (2010) – Takayuki Fukatasu

Active camouflage or adaptive camouflage, is a group of camouflage technologies which allow an object to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of altering their appearance, color, luminance and reflective properties. Active camouflage has the capacity to provide perfect concealment from visual detection (Wikipedia, 2011b). Optical Camouflage is a project similar to Invisible Cloak done by the University of Tokyo, but it uses more contemporary Nintendo Kinect body capture technology. This YouTube video is not only as a Kinect hack-performance. It can be seen also as a response to the previously discussed ACCESS installation.

Prototype: M. Inami, D. Sekiguchi, S. Tachi, Le manteau transparent! (Transparent Cloak!), Brochure of Demonstration at Laval Virtual 2003, Laval Virtual 2003, France, May 13-18, 2003, (French Version), (English Version)

7. Interactive Puppeteer (2010) – Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson

This puppeteering piece uses skeleton tracking on an arm to control the movement and posture of the puppet. The authors of this projecthacked the Kinect together in a day’s time using open-source Kinect drivers (which is really awsome!).

This specific piece can be related to the words of Josephine Bosma, where she exposes a similar mechanism of the true power of Internet art, given by bringing the audience and performer closer together:

Internet art is totally dependent on engagement and can only show itself to its full advantage by virtue if the active participant. This type of media artifact has been called ‘pull media’, the opposite of ‘push media’ such as television – a term which illustrates the efforts of the audience in new media environments. Without an audience which adds content, navigates, reacts or accepts an invitation of participation or an invitation to make use of specific work nothing happens, and more importantly, without this there is practically no art experience. By default, through contact with the Internet’s architectures, the audience for art on the Net is brought into a closer relationship to the person and works of the artist, and a step away from the aloofness of the traditional museum (Bosma, 2006: 31).

Even though this presentation of an interactive projected puppet can be seen as a simple play with the device, it opens up a whole new field for interactive play.

8. Pulse Park (2008) – Rafael Lozano-Hammer

Pulse Park is comprised of a matrix of light beams that graze the central oval field of Madison Square Park in New York. Their intensity is entirely modulated by a sensor that measures the heart rate of participants and the resulting effect is the visualization of vital signs, arguably our most symbolic biometric, in an urban scale. The author is very famous for his ‘interactive’ installations in large urban spaces (he prefers to call it ‘relational art’), where he encourages (haptic dimmension is key in his art works) viewers or passer-by’s to finish uncompleted piece of art. The grounding of his work is participation of the public.

The pieces are usually ephemeral interventions designed to establish architectural and social relationships where unpredicted behaviours may emerge [...] For me it is a priority to create social experiences rather than to generate collectible objects. The making of a piece itself is closer to developing a performance or a play than a visual artwork (Lozano-Hammer, 2002).

‘To accomplish this we use large-scale technologies of amplification that are usually reserved for publicity stunts and corporate events. These technologies are typically used to perform a pre-programmed commercial monologue, and it is always exciting to exploit them in ways they were not intended. Using projections, robotics, sound, net connections and local sensors, the input and feedback from participants becomes an integral part of the work and the outcome is dictated by their actions’ (Ibid).

In Pulse Park, evening visitors to Madison Square Park have their systolic and diastolic activity measured by a sensor sculpture installed at the North end of the Oval Lawn. These biometric rhythms are translated and projected as pulses of narrow-beam light that will move sequentially down rows of spotlights placed along the perimeter of the lawn as each consecutive participant makes contact with the sensor. The result is a poetic expression of our vital signs, transforming the public space into a fleeting architecture of light and movement.

9. iRiS (Immediate Remote Interaction System) – Alexander Wiethoff

Alexander Wiethoff of the Department for Informatics at LMU Munich has developed with the Univeristy of Saarbrücken a mobile device application that enables a radically new form of interaction with buildings. The design allows people in front of the building to literally paint with light on the façade by using their mobile phones. After loading the mobile phone application, users can select colors and draw over the image of the building shown on their phone’s camera which instantly triggers the lights on the faced to change color.

iRiS - http://project-iris.org/ from awiethoff on Vimeo.

By combining a recently developed mobile software application with the multimedia facade of the ARS Electronica building [...] we developed two prototypes: in the first application, users can paint interactively on the building using touch input on the mobile device. In a second application, users are able to solve a jigsaw puzzle displayed on the facade

As Lozano-Hammer said:

There are two main strategies for collective interactivity. The first one I call “taking turns”. You have one or two sensors and people take turns to use them, and the rest are spectators…. (Lozano-Hammer, 2002).

This is exactly what happens in this work. One takes turns and takes part in artwork production, while the rest are viewers, who also reflect on the work.

10. Hit Counter (2009) – Zach Gage

Hit Counter is at once sophisticated and remarkably simple work. It basic principle is that it shows measurement of the number of times someone has stood in front of the work. Face recognition software is used to keep track of the actual viewers and the number is displayed on an old-fashioned mechanical counter.

For the author viewer’s presence is very important and plays enormous role in finishing the artwork.

Seen in a certain light, the core of technological mediation has always been presence, absence, and distance. Writing established the possibility of presence during absence, arrows and gunpowder created force at a distance, the telephone created presence at distance, and network computing fundamentally altered the nature of being “absent” or “present” to an almost unrecognizable degree (Noble, 2011).

And this present is viewer’s ‘task’, which finishes the artwork. This artwork would of course exist without people participating in it, however would it be finished work?

Depending on public participation is a humbling affair because the work will not exist without the main protagonist, which is the public as actor (Lozano-Hammer, 2002).

References

Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods, Paris: Les presses du réel, 2002, pp. 11-24, 86-105.

Félix Guattari, ‘Machinic Hetereogenesis’, in Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992, pp. 33-57.

Erkki Huhtamo, ‘Trouble at the Interface, or the Identity Crisis of Interactive Art’, Framework: The Finnish Art Review 2 (2004): pp. 38-41.

Josephine Bosma, ‘Meet the Active Audience’, in Tom Corby (ed.) Network Art:Practices and Positions, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 24-39.

Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, pp. 1-15, 223-249.

Joshua Noble, ‘Interview with Zach Gage, in Rhizome, 16.02.2011 available at http ://rhizome .org /editorial /2011/feb /16/interview -zach -gage /

Chris Salter, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010, pp. xx-xxxix.

Waelder Laso, Pau. ‘Games of Pain: Pain as Haptic Stimulation in Computer-Game-Based Media Art’. Leonardo. Vol. 40, Nr. 3, The MIT Press June 2007, pp. 238-242.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, ‘Alien Relationships with Public Space’, in Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (eds) TransUrbanism, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002, pp. 139-159.

Brian Massumi, ‘The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens: A Semblance of a Conversation’, Inflexions 1.1 “How is Research-Creation?” (May 2008), www .inflexions .org

Wikipedia (2011a). “Interactive art” http ://en .wikipedia .org /wiki /Interactive _art (accessed february 23, 2011)

How does 'destructive creativity' in media art respond to informationalism and the postindustrial ideology of creative destruction?

2011-03-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

This essay focuses on the concept of error as a suggested aesthetic for contemporary computer arts. It works mainly on the thoughts of Liu and other influencing theoreticians, and presents their stance towards the future of contemporary society of information. It also works on the idea of “destructive creativity” as viral, in relation to the early concept of creative destruction.

In The Laws of Cool, Alan Liu analyzes the concept of “knowledge work” within a contemporary society. His critical analysis is based on the future possibilities for both arts and humanities, and inquires into the notion of “destructive creation” as a new governing aesthetic of the information age. He starts his argument with describing some of the characteristics of this specific net art movement:

Aesthetics in the age of knowledge work is now being defined by several contenders for a dominant ideology that have not yet fully articulated themselves or negotiated their intramural relationships. (…) I mean by this the aesthetics of mutation and remixing that recreate through new technologies something like the art of quintessential hybridity and chance (…). (Liu, 2004: 324)

After placing the idea within a specific environment, Liu focuses on the very definition of destructive creation. According to the author “destructive creation” [is] the critical inverse of the mainstream ideology of creative destruction”. He also adds “the most austere and terrifying implementation of such an aesthetics is what I alluded to in my introduction under the name viral aesthetics” (Liu, 2004: 325). As the author narrows down the definition, he then calls forth the idea of a viral destruction of informationalism as the first link between “coolness” and “destructive creation”:

The most avant-garde arts of the age of knowledge work break out of the confines of the arts to perform “destructivity” in corporate and other dominant social sectors directly. (…) the idea of “auto-destruction” is transmitted into domains of society external to the arts as “viral” – that is, as a destructivity that attacks knowledge work through technologies and techniques internal to such work. The genius of contemporary aesthetics is to introject destructivity within informationalism. This, we may say, is very cool. (Liu, 2004: 331)

After positioning the main idea within the context of informationalism, he moves to applying it to the postindustrial concept of creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1975: 82-85):

(…) Destructive creativity is only the most sublime of the contenders for a new governing aesthetic responsive to the postindustrial ideology of “creative destruction”. (…) Destructive creativity is the most “virulent” of the new aesthetics designed to propose an alternate vocabulary of creation/destruction (disturbance, chaos, play, transformation) intended to reconfigure “creative destruction” into a vision not just of global corporate culture but of a flourishing multiplicity of cultures. (Liu, 2004: 370)

Following, he moves back to the concept of knowledge work as a field for auto-applying of the new technology-based culture of cool. He believes that “all these struggling aesthetics are attempts to install within the life of knowledge work an “ethos of the unknown” able to mold “cool” – the popular form of such ethos – into more experimental, expansive, diverse, active, and aware forms” (Liu, 2004: 370-371). This is followed by a summary, in which Liu proposes a solution for the humanities – applying the techno-artistic ethos within information technology, therefore redefining cool, and finally moving to a new age in humanities:

The adequacy of such future aesthetics of the information age, clearly, will henceforth merit reflection, not just in respect to the ordinary generations of cool that the neo-avant-garde will mirror, amplify, and help educate. (Liu, 2004: 371)

Closing his argument, Liu points out the critical point of his conclusion by saying that destructive creativity may therefore reinforce the relations between arts and humanities, and their audiences:

Perhaps of special interest to humanities scholars, such artists are “relevant” in a way that does not necessarily surrender critical perspective. However contrarian or “shocking” the arts may be, they often have far greater appeal to audiences and donors than the professional humanities. (Liu, 2004: 322)

As Liu focuses on the future possibilities of the information driven society, Kelly presents an approach that might be seen as more ‘down to earth’. In his analysis of cracked media, working on theories of Serres, Adorno and Attali, he comes to an argument where the idea of destruction can be seen as giving a beginning for the creation of new meanings and sounds. According to Caleb Kelly:

“Noise … does not exist in itself, but only in relation to the system in which it is inscribed … long before it was given theoretical expression, noise had always been experienced as destruction, disorder, dirt, pollution, an aggression against the code-structuring messages.” For Attali, noise creates meaning through the interruption of the message, and through the freed imagination of the listener within pure noise, “The absence of meaning is in this case the presence of all meanings.” For new meanings to be created a crisis or catastrophe must occur, or perhaps an accident, that will focus the elements of chaos into a singular focused emergent meaning. (Attali in Kelly, 2009: 81)

While working on mainly digitally generated music and its cracked media devices, Kelly’s theoretical stance can be seen as a description of nowadays circuit benders, with all the noise following the artistic practice as well as the serious stance towards the power structure of the music industry. His approach can be perceived as a link to what is argued by Liu – a situation in which a new for of expression and ideology arises from the ruins of the actual:

Noise need not be seen as disturbance ; it need to be excess or transgression. Noise is the backdrop to all communication, but in those instance when the backdrop is brought to the fore it is simply not disturbing or blotting out any information; it is not a break in communication, but instead becomes the content of communication itself. (Kelly, 2009: 82)

Approaching the topic of error within different industries than music, it is important to recall www.jodi.org, a pioneer net art collective specializing in software, video and game art. According to Cramer, jodi works can be described as follows:

Even where www.jodi.org doesn’t randomize its own transmission by unstable addressing schemes, it reads and behaves as if it contained intact data disturbed only by faulty net transmissions or computer crashes; but in reality, the line noise is mocked up within the data itself. (…) jodi’s disturbance is not done in hardware with only partly predictable results, but is a clever simulation of unpredictability done in software. (…) They inspire and liberate the viewers’ imagination all the while locking it into deception, mazes and dead-ends. The naïve Cagean ontology of chance is replaced with a tricky rhetoric of simultaneous anarchy and entrapment, a neo-baroque conceit and Discordia concors of surface chaos with inscribed discipline, and vice versa. (Cramer, 2002)

Looking back at Liu’s description of a “flourishing multiplicity of cultures” within a society of information and the above description of jodi given by Cramer, one could say that this art collective is a living example of his idea. Still, Liu’s idea of a new aesthetic governing the society via reflection, amplification and education is brought down by Dirk Paesmans. According to the collective:

(…) net art is a victim of its b-status. It is treated as group phenomenon, as a technically defined new art form. That is something that we have to leave behind as soon as possible, because that is the standard way to do these things: A group creates a hype. They call it mail art or video art, and it’s doomed to die after five years. (Paesmans in Interview with Jodi, 1997)

Even though Liu’s idea of change within the society of information is in a way overthrown by Paesmans, other influencing theoreticians reinforce the criticism of the questioned idea to an even further extent. According to White:

There are certainly situations in which repetition and the related performative moments can be a research and political strategy. Nevertheless, the ongoing viability of such instances remains unclear. According to Christine Ross, the recent trend among media artists to focus on “insufficiency” and “fallible corporeality” indicates the limits of the performative as a political tactic. (White, 2006: 113)

After questioning the power of contemporary media/net artists, White claims there is another problem hidden within the aesthetics of failure:

Despite critical and theoretical arguments about the political effects of failure, this strategy also presents some problems. Spectator’s increasing recognition of net art and the growing interest of many traditional art institutions indicate that the aesthetic of failure will continue to become more stylistic. (White, 2006: 113)

In response to Liu’s concept, White claims that the possible changes (as in the analyzed example of avant-garde reforming the cool) will not happen that drastically, and they will keep forming within the world of technology based Internet art. Finally, even though the general contradiction of visions, White comes to an agreement about the culture of remix/deconstruction/chaos as a governing aesthetic:

The challenge for net artists, software producers, technology critics, and other spectators may be finding new critical strategies rather than relying on repetition to highlight the ways that technologies have been constructed. Perhaps with such effects and aesthetics, spectators can continue to read carefully as well as differently. (White, 2006: 113)

To sum up the above revision of theories in relation to the questioned idea of Liu, it is most important to recall the following notions. Liu presents the concept of knowledge work and its direct relation to the rise of information technology within a contemporary society. Within those environments he sees another rise - a mixture of cultures and styles, living and constantly shifting chaos. He perceives the socio-political features of hi-tech “cool”, and applies a concept of destructive creativity – a reverse concept to Schumpeter’s creative destruction, out of which he formulates suggestions of improvement for both humanities and arts. Some of the analyzed theoreticians would agree with Liu – Caleb Kelly believes that new can only arise from the devastated. Others would not agree: jodi.org a famous art collective described by most of the authors, as well as Michele White, would present a much more critical stance. Paesmans believes in short lifespan of net art projects and claims death of each and every one of them within five years of its presentation. White on the other hand perceives problems avoided by Liu, and suggests finding new critical strategies.

Bibliography and Readings:

Michel Serres, Genesis, trans. Geneviève James and James Nielson,

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 2-26.

Olga Goriunova and Alexei Shulgin, ‘Glitch’, in Matthew Fuller

(ed.) Software Studies: A Lexicon, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008,

pp. 110-119.

Michele White, ‘The Aesthetics of Failure: Confusing Spectatorswith

Net Art Gone Wrong’, in The Body and the Screen: Theories of

Internet Spectatorship, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, pp. 85-

113.

Rosa Menkman, The Glitch Studies Manifesto (2009/2010).

Florian Cramer, ‘Discordia Concors: www.jodi.org’, Nettime (2002),

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-

9708/msg00112.html

Tilman Baumgärtel, ‘Interview with Jodi.org’, Nettime (1997),

http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-

9708/msg00112.html

Caleb Kelly, ‘Recording and Noise: Approaches to Cracked Media’,

in Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 2009, pp. 1-82.

Alan Lui, ‘Destructive Creativity: The Arts in the Information Age’,

in The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information,

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 317-371.

Joseph Schumpeter, ‘Creative Destruction’, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1975) [orig. pub. 1942], pp. 82-85:, retrieved from http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english25/materials/schumpeter.html , 16th Feb 2011;

Tactics

2011-03-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

Abstract

According to Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter in their article ‘Dawn of Organized Networks’, “it is retrograde that tactical media in a post-Fordist era continue to operate in terms of ephemerality and the logic of ‘tactics’” (Lovink and Rossiter, 2005: 2-3). This essay focuses on the above quote in various ways: It approaches the concept of tactical media and provides a brief description of the entity, as well as explains the rooted aspect of short-terminism and concentrates on its logics. All this is related to the thoughts of most influencing theoreticians and my own experience within this specific field.

Tactical Media characteristics

There have been numoerous studies of ‚wired‘ political engagement in all its diverse forms, network-based activism and political organization (e.g., clicktivism, smart mobs) and hacktivism chief among them. While I do cross paths with some of these studies in my treatment of electronic civil disobedience and other hacktivist tactics, my interests lie in articulating the aesthetic strategies of artist-activists producing persuasive games, information visualizations, and hybrid (we might even say ‚new‘) forms of academic criticism. (Raley, 2009: 5)

According to the above author, as well as other influencing theoreticians, a new form of art expression emerges from the digital culture. Named tactical media, the entity got refined during the last few years of academic study and cyber-artistic activism; finally morphing into an extraordinarily extremist movement underlined with strong ideological background and guerilla tactics.

There is no simple way to describe this radical interest group. According to Raley:

Tactical media are what happens when cheap do it yourself media made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics are exploited by those who are outside of the normal hierarchies of power and knowledge. (…) It is not simply about reappropriating the instrument but also about reengineering semiotic systems and reflecting critically on institutions of power and control. (Lovink in Raley, 2009: 16)

As presented by the author, the concept of tactical media puts the pressure on the creative process via two important aspects: the idea of reapplying a new media item and the deeply rooted thought of opposing the current power structure. The author describes the second aspect more precisely:

In its most expensive articulation, tactical media signifies the intervention and disruption of a dominant semiotic regime, the temporary creation of a situation in which signs, messages, and narratives are set into play and critical thinking becomes possible. Tactical media operates in the field of the symbolic, the site of power in the postindustrial society. (...) [Tactical Media’s] critical object is the substitution of one message for another, the imposition of an alternative set of signs in the place of the dominant. (Raley, 2009: 6-7)

Following the explanation of the term one may think of this artivist media practice as balancing on the edge of extreme power; planting the idea in the minds of people, disappearing from the scene and waiting for it to grow. This fast pace of action working in ‘new’ fields of communication, omitting strategy and approaching the system with a viral attack, as well as the loose structure and ephemerality of bodies and actions create a situation where tactical media may be seen as problematic. As addressed by Lovink and Rossiter:

Tactical media too often assume to reproduce the curious spatio-temporal dynamic and structural logic of the modern state and industrial capital: difference and renewal from the peripheries. But there’s a paradox at work here. Disruptive as their actions may often be, tactical media corroborate the temporal mode of post-Fordist capital: short-termism. It is retrograde that tactical media in a post-Fordist era continue to operate in terms of ephemerality and the logic of “tactics”. Since the punctuated attack model is the dominant condition, tactical media has an affinity with that which it seeks to oppose. This is why tactical media are treated with a kind of benign tolerance. There is a neurotic tendency to disappear. Anything that solidifies is lost in the system. (Lovink and Rossiter, 2005: 2-3)

Ephemerality and Tactics

While analyzing tactical media in general as a search for ephemerality and the logics of tactics, one should first direct his attention to the words of most influencing theoreticians covering the field. Looking back at the examples and characteristics of this specific media field, one may notice that the concepts of short-terminism/ephemerality and the preference of tactics over strategy are strongly linked to each other. As presented by Raley:

Choosing tactics over strategy might seem to suggest a certain temporal structure: the temporary rather than the protracted, the unguarded and unexpected moment rather than the long-range plan. (Raley, 2009: 9)

The author while quoting Martin further explores this idea of invisible, infected substitutes carrying out the unexpected and unrevealed plan:

Incident based parasitic media response takes place in a very specific time and space. There is no need for the parasite to live longer than a few days or even a few seconds. The more complex system is generative parasitic media response. Generative parasites must adapt and grow with their host system. This growth creates an allowance for greater sustainability of backdoors or hijacks. A parasite need not take advantage of its host’s vulnerability to hijack. It is in the best interest of the parasite to live and feed alongside its host. (Martin in Raley, 2009: 9)

Similarly as the described parasite attacks a body, tactical media feed on the minds of its viewers by planting memories and ideas, spreading the ideology hidden within the transmitting medium. Following, the nature of tactical media (in its viral tactics) promotes information exchange between the viewer and performer. According to Holmes “there are two factors that help explain the consistency of self-organized actions” (Holmes, 2008: 527). The first one is called ‘capacity for temporal coordination at a distance’ and is strongly linked with a constant evolution of a shared environment. The second one is called by him the ‘existence of a common horizon’ and is based on a link between the scattered performers. The concept of audience is therefore a constantly changing one:

To concieve of tactical media in terms of performence is to point to a fluidity of its actants, to emphasize its ephemerality, and to shift the weight of emphasis slightly to the audience, which does not simply complete the signifying field of work but records of a memory of the performance. And here we must once again place tactical media in context of Bourriaud’s commentary on contemporary relational art, to stress that the audience is an analytic category, an experimental rather than ontological entity. (…) The audience concept is thus as flexible and ephemeral as the artistic activity itself. (Raley, 2009: 12-13)

While focusing on the question why is tactical media still keeping this specific structure, I find important to recall the Critical Art Ensemble’s comparison to Scythians (CAE, 1994: 14-15). As the authors keep investigating traces of power-flow in transition between nomadic dynamics and sedentary structures, they pinpoint the very true nature of the analyzed entity. They bring a story of an ethnic group of nomadic warriors whose land was too hostile to inhabit. Due to the conditions they kept pillaging the neighboring territories. Due to the lack of value for the land itself the warriors were in constant move – being unable to localize as well as with unstable and shifting leadership. This created “an invisible empire that dominated ‘Asia’ for twenty-seven years, and extended as far south as Egypt” (CAE, 1994: 14).

Driven by the same mechanism as the Scythian empire, tactical media does not want to be centralized. Similarly as the ancient warriors, tactical media projects prefer the ‘hit and run’ tactic as well as the phantom nature, as this may seem to be the only way of avoiding getting eaten by itself or the power they are meant to oppose.

Experience

During the last few months I had a chance to get closer to tactical media than I ever imagined. Recently I saw a movie on YouTube presenting the freshly growing technique of dead-dropping – a hybrid form of art combining digital data exchange and graffiti. Due to the fact I always was interested in street-art, wallpainting, urban activism and I always could declare myself as a fully armed urban-pirate, I watched the movie and got infected with the ideology of free culture, file exchange without Internet connection, and the viral unconventional approach to embedding data within a material urban landscape. The thought of installing USB flash drives within the city walls in places that are not covered by cameras grew in my head rapidly. I prepared my driller, stencil, glue and a stripped pendrive. I infected another person with my plan and went out to the city during night (as I used to with spray-paint). After the flash drive was glued into a building wall we vanished from the scene leaving no trace behind. In this particular example, the ephemerality of dead-drops is not found in the idea that sooner or later the drive will stop working due to the usage of material. As for my experience with this technique, ephemerality could be found the other day when we went to check if there was any additional data on the spot – the hole in the wall was even bigger than we drilled - both the stencil and the pendrive were gone.

Now as I think about this specific experience with a freshly emerged art practice, I am glad the USB vanished from the wall. Even though it is not there, someone who took it off got infected by the described ideas, and hopefully, one more ghost in Warsaw will try to spread the message under the banner of Jolly Roger.

Summary

While answering the problem stated by Lovink and Rossiter, one should bare in mind that the concepts of tactics over strategy and the preference of ephemerality over still structure are closely bound together. This is even more visible while looking at the participation of audience, transmission of ideology, viral structure of planting memories and ideas, artistic expression, and liquid structure. I believe tactical media, even though the common guerilla connotations and ‘borrowings’ of other artistic techniques, is best described by Raley in terms of its never-ending pressure on ephemerality of body and idea – its temporal nature:

Tactical media is performance for which a consumable product is not a primary endgame; it foregrounds the experiential over the physical. It leaves few material traces. As the action comes to an end, what is left is primarily living memory. (Raley, 2009: 13)

Bibliography and Readings:

Rita Raley, ‘Introduction: Tactical Media as Virtuosic Performance’c e , in Tactical Media, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, pp. 1-30.

Critical Art Ensemble, ‘Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance’, in The Electronic Disturbance, New York: Autonomedia, 1994, pp. 10-43.

Geert Lovink, ‘An Insider’s Guide to Tactical Media’, in Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 267-287.

Michel de Certeau, ‘On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life', trans. By Fredric Jameson and Carl Lovitt, Social Text 3 (1980): 3-43.

Brian Holmes, ‘Swarmachine: Activist Media Tomorrow’, Third Text 22.5 (2008): 525-534.

Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, 'The Dawn of Organized Networks', Fibreculture 5 (2005), http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-029-dawn-of-the-organised-networks/

Lev Manovich, ‘The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Production to Mass Cultural Production?’, Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009): 319-331.

Jacques Rancière, ‘The Paradoxes of Political Art’, in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, London: Continuum, 2010, pp. 134-151.

Minecraft Propaganda

2011-03-22T19:17:00.001-07:00

Some Minecraft Propaganda from our Pirate server ;)

in response to:

retrieved from Decibel design

Yarrrrr...

2011-03-20T11:37:00.001-07:00

Micro

2011-03-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

WoW Bugs ;)

2010-12-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

World of Warcraft EU Silvermoon - Last minutes before Cataclysm

2010-12-11T17:46:00.000-08:00

Last minutes on EU Silvermoon before WoW: Cataclysm expansion release.

Enjoy!

Commercialization, Googlization and Globalization of The Pirate Bay

2010-11-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

This movie touches on the topic of commercialization, googlization and globalization of the infamous torrent-tracking website: The Pirate Bay.

To create this movie I have used The Wayback Machine (WM) as an interface to the Internet archive found at archive.org, Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Ripper found at the Digital Methods Initiative website, and a Firefox extension/addon called GrabThemAll.

Thank You for watching this Video.

YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBNbTDdSsxk

Samurai Champloo Indoor Wallpainting

2010-11-23T15:10:00.001-08:00

This is an old one.. Forgot to drop it when I redesigned my blog.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/welpaa#p/a/u/1/bPI-pyw3Fkg

High5 for Charli, Karol n Wełpa.

Rasta.

War on Google

2010-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

Abstract

This paper concerns the issue of googlization of the Internet. It focuses on the study of Google search engines from three countries: Global Google representing Americanization, in opposition to the British and Polish engines. Various theoreticians have proved that google’s search is not a universal engine, and that it’s outcome has enormous power over the user. This study exposes how and to what extent is Google globalizing local information cultures.

Introduction

The issue of googlization is taking a central spot in nowadays debate about Americanization. Various influencing theoreticians have proved that Google’s search is not a universal engine, and that it’s outcome often affects how we perceive the world around us. This enormous power gathered by just one company raises many questions, as Google is taking over more and more firms each year.

“Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines had enormous influence on us all. They can shape what we read, who we listen to, and who get’s heard. Whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself.” (Grimmelman, J (2008/2009: 940)

One could say that since Google has become a corporate giant, the search engine started to convey messages dependent on various factors, making the corporation a globalizing force that drastically affects the Internet as a medium. According to Grimmelman:

“Call this problem the Google Dilemma. Google has the ability to shape its search results to prefer some websites over others. Indeed, whatever choice it makes – alphabetical, by link count, by politics, by whatever – will result in some sites being on the first page of results and others not.” (Grimmelman, J (2008/2009: 944-945)

Following the notion presented by Grimmelman, the main purpose of this essay is to investigate Google’s local search engines in search of globalization biases. I will conduct the study by analyzing three Google domains (Global, British, Polish), which will be followed by querying all three Google’s with the same phrase in language used by each country. The main target of this paper will be answering the question whether Google is a globalizing machine?

Does each query return global or local sources? How are those sources positioned? To what extent is the British and Polish Google Americanized/globalized? Is any of them glocalized, and if yes, how and to what extent?

Method

In order to describe the sample it is most important to remind that three different googles will be taken under consideration. The British Google and the Polish one will serve as a basis for the analysis in search of Americanization of the search outcome. The international or rather American Google will be seen as a measure for the previous two. This will enable to show how the same query in different cultures, and may give results that are more than ‘linked’ to each other, especially in terms of Americanization.

I have chosen those particular countries for various reasons, coming both from my language skills, as well as from the desire to generate a perfect sample. Choosing Britain and Poland in relation to America, gave me an advantage of having a group that is characterized by both a fully economically evolved country and an evolving one. This gave me a possibility to expose the process of globalization of Google on two different levels. Other important aspects describing the sample group can be found in the language used. Since Britain and United states use English as their native verbal communication, Poland in this case will stand as a counterweight for the exposure of the process described above.

The term that will be used to query the global and two local Googles is ‘war’ (‘wojna’ translated into Polish). I have chosen this particular word for multiple reasons. The first one relates to the universality of the word, as wars have struck humanity since the beginning of mankind. Each war has it’s own history and stories. This will probably remove the international bias of the query, giving each search outcome a chance to produce results typical for each country. The second reason why I have chosen ‘war’ as a perfect word to fit each of the search boxes is the recentness of the topic and its strong connection to journalism. This would give each country a chance to present its own recent view on the issue.

Before conducting the study, I find most important to discuss how should we perceive globalization carried by the search engine.

According to Richard Rogers, googlization is a “political-economy style critique, considering how Google’s free-service-for-profile model may be spreading across industries and cultures” (Rogers, R. 2009: 18). Following this notion, I will search both local Google queries for sites of, one could say, global origins. The idea is that local google search engines will try to boost global or American sites up the query. This related directly to what is described by the same author as Back-end googlization, where he claims that “(…) the power of search engines lies in the combination of its ranking practices (source inclusion in the top results) together with the users’ apparent ‘respect’ for the orderings (not looking further). Google’s model also relies on registrational interactivity, where a user’s preference as well as history are registered, stored and employed, increasingly, to serve customized results” (Rogers, R. 2009: 18-19).

Other important aspect of this study focuses on the following questions: What will be defined as Global? What will be defined as local? In this case global will mean sites of American origins, probably listed in the google.com query. While focusing on the definition of local, I perceive a small problem rooted in the language of two googles. As English language will be dominant across the two platforms, defining local British sites will be particularly problematic. In cases where the URL addresses will not prove the origins of a website, I will look at the content of the sites, trying to determine whether it is rooted in American or British culture. The definition of Local will therefore focus on the cultural origins, country’s history and a general national bias transmitted by each site.

Trying to get the results as unbiased as possible, I deleted all the history and cookies from the Firefox browser. While analyzing all three queries, I looked at the first fifty results of each search, but as described by the quoted theoreticians, the most important results should come from the first pages of each search to which the potential viewer is exposed at most.

Results

Due to the simplicity of the study, there were no major complications at all. While analyzing the produced outcome (appendix 1 and 2) the first notable fact is that Wikipedia takes the first two spots for each of the queries. The second point of high influence can be found by focusing on both British and global Google, where in both cases Warhammer Online EU and Warhammer Online US can be found on the first pages of both queries. On the other hand, Polish Google does not include any of these sites in the first fifty results for the query. Similarly to Warhammer, Internet Movie Database and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are also positioned on the first results pages of both queries. Catholic Encyclopedia appeared on the first page of the British Google’s query, and it was repeated on the second page of the global search, situated on the 11^th position. This repetition of websites was extremely common for the global and UK’s Google, where 31 out of 50 websites appeared on both lists (appendix 2).

Appendix 3 exposes some interesting facts about American websites taking over other countries’ Google search engines. Google.com has 41 websites categorized as American. The Polish Google has 44 results that can be marked as typically Polish. These two can be of good contrast to the British engine search results, where only 11 sites can be categorized as purely local. Combining the outcomes of appendices 2 and 3, one can also notice that out of the 31 sites that reappeared in the British query, 28 were categorized as American sites.

The last part of the analysis divided the content that appeared in all three queries into categories (appendix 4). This enabled me to state whether the websites that did not reappear in the Polish google, were of similar subject. I have divided the websites according to the following categories: War related (pink), info and search (lime), games, books, music, movies (orange) and News (blue). While looking at the produced table, the most notable point of interest is the domination of info and search websites in the first half of each query. Out of first 25 search results google.co.uk has 7 web pages categorized with lime color, google.pl gives us also 7 responses, and google.com shows 10 websites of the same category. The second most dominant category is games, books, music and movies; where both the global and British Google list 8 related websites each (4 on the first page of each query). The Polish Google exposes only 5 results of this category, but similarly this grouping dominates in the first half of the search. News websites tend to occupy the second half of all three queries. Additionally, the most interesting fact can be seen while looking at the War related sites, where neither the British nor the American Google does include any of those on the first results pages.

Discussion

The conducted study pointed out some interesting facts about the issue of googlization of the Internet. Each of the analyzed countries did prove that there is an influence of the American web on the rest of the world. Even though Polish Google search engine did not expose much Americanization (not counting the Wikipedia taking the first two positions in the search), it exposed small similarities in terms of the structure of search results. Polish Google can be seen as well glocalized, where the content of the query gives an outcome which is very similar in terms of sites categories, but different while looking at the links. Because of this, the difference in the outcome of links can be seen rather as influenced by the language barrier.

Opposing the Polish version of the most popular search engine lays the British Google that produced tremendously different results. The British engine can be seen as infected by American values. This can be seen in the enormous amount of repetition of American sites in the British search, but can be also found while looking at the similar positioning of websites across both English language searches. All this proves that Google is globalizing its local Internet search engines. This may happen slowly and affect the web step by step as in the Polish example, but in cases where there is no language barrier Google.com takes over local webs and imposes American values upon them.

References:

Rogers, R., 2009, "The End of the Virtual", Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA;

Grimmelman, J., 2008/2009. "The Google Dilemma", New York Law School Law Review, 53:939-950

Appendices:

Appendix 1: Search outcome list

Appendix 2: Reappearance List

Appendix 3: Local Websites list

Appendix 4: Categories list

In and Out - Censorship report on World of Warcraft Gold Farming Websites in times of Virtual Currency Ban in China

2010-11-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

Abstract

This report concerns the issue of Chinese government forbidding virtual items trade and exchange, and their gold farming companies bypassing this law. It deals with Internet censorship in the Republic of China, and focuses on unfolding the described problem by applying it to examples drawn from one of the most immersive virtual worlds. All this is explained by a study conducted on the censorship of websites, and a discussion of findings related to the issue.

Introduction

The emergence of Massively Multiplayer Online gaming and virtual reality, especially the largest artificial worlds such as Azeroth in World of Warcraft, opened a completely new branch for economies all around the world. This particular branch of trade via gaming started probably as soon as first virtual items have been crafted. In time, changing real money into virtual currency became even more popular, flowing alongside the intense evolution of the Internet and the MMO gaming industry. Soon after, the range of virtual economy started to cover not only gold and items, but also characters (powerleveling), vehicles (mounts), animal pets (companions), giving an opportunity to ‘boost‘ one’s avatar with in-game achievements, reputation, skills, etc. Richard Heeks from Manchester University points out the importance of certain historical aspects surrounding the rise of virtual economies: First cash payments in multiuser dungeons, and the appearance of ebay.com (Hunter, 2006 and Lewis, 2006 in Heeks, R., 2008).

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game (MMORPG), produced by Blizzard Entertainment, one of the world’s largest gaming corporations. It consists of more than eleven and a half million players from Europe, America, and Asia, giving the company billions of dollars of income each year.

Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China became an important issue for virtual world explorers since the Chinese government banned virtual goods trade within the borders of its realm. The incident that happened by the end of June 2009 did not generate much attention at the time. Even though the decree of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce may have affected millions of people who make their living through gold farming, minor blog and press releases appeared on the web.

According to the Ministry of Commerce all this is supposed to prevent virtual goods affecting the real economy:

"The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain
exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and
services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services, the
Ministries said (Claburn T., Informationweek.com, 29th June 2009).

Same author provides with some quantitative data, as he explains that virtual currency trade in China exceeded an amount of several billion yuan in 2008, which is around 146 million dollars, and is meant to be growing by 20% each year. He also quotes Richard Heeks’ study exposing that the virtual trade business employs hundreds of thousands of people all around the world, producing income ranging between two hundred million and one billion dollars (Heeks R.,“Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on Gold Farming“, 2008; in Claburn T., Informationweek.com, 29th June 2009).

All this proves that virtual goods economy, surrounded by a governmental ban, having an extremely vast and diverse ecosystem of users, and large amounts of money involved; is in a way a key factor in the debate concerning Chinese Internet censorship. This study is going to prove how does the Chinese government enforce its rules upon such a widespread industry.

Methodology

To conduct the study I have chosen a sample of forty websites from around the world. Because I wanted to include websites that are commonly accessed by the users, all of the domains were chosen on the basis of an outcome of a google search. The first twenty sites were chosen from the list generated by google.com, and the second part of the sample group was chosen from google.cn, excluding the duplicated websites from the previous search. This made me choose the sample from the first 2-3 pages of each of the used regions.

While searching for a sample group I queried both google searches for the sentence “Buy WOW Gold”. I realized that queries like “Buy Gold”, “Buy Virtual Gold”, produce a much poorer outcome of the search. Since World of Warcraft is one of the dominant virtual worlds in which I am particularly interested, adding the word “WOW” improved the validity of the study by making the list related to an exact environment.

I have chosen my sample according to some specific rules. The first and most important one was reliability of the content. While looking at this aspect of the sampled websites, I tried to pick ones that seemed not to be Internet scams or cons. I looked at the system of payment for the virtual goods, and if it was in any way disturbing or suspicious, I abandoned the site marking it as unreliable and I have not included it in the study. I also analyzed the websites by the graphics used: if the design of a site was not related to either the game in which it operated, nor exposing
the link to virtual goods trade, I also left the site behind. Fortunately most of the accessed sites from the first pages of each google search passed my reliability test.

The second aspect was based on the range of the company’s work. This means that all of the chosen sites had to supply virtual gold for at least one game, which in my study was World of Warcraft. It is important to add here that many of the companies responsible for virtual goods trade, deal items on many more platforms than just one game. Furthermore, each of the games or platforms that can be used as a basis for virtual goods trade is based in more than one place in the world. In this case, each game will have multiple servers on which it is placed, and multiple locations around the world. All this made me choose my sample group of websites based on the range of their sale, so each of the websites had to sell virtual gold to at least one game (in my case World of Warcraft), on two continents (Europe and United States) to at least one server. According to my definition, to get included in my sample such a gold supply group had to fulfill the above requirements (To view the complete list of websites from the sample divided between the ones accessed by google.com and google.cn, please see appendix 1).

After creating the sample group I have run it through the Censorship Explorer program which I accessed through the Digital Methods website. This allowed me to check whether any of the sites from the target group were blocked in China, via running it through three different Chinese proxies. I inserted each of the URL addresses into the Harvester, run it twice for each proxy to be sure the analysis is done correctly (addresses of the proxies can be found in appendix 2, 3, 4 and 5). After setting up the program to check whether the sites are blocked or not, I have analyzed the generated HTTP response codes and produced results.

Results:

There were barely any complications while the study was conducted. The Censorship Explorer ran each of the URL addresses correctly: each website scan produced a response code, the country of proxy was China, and there were no time-outs. This happened for all of the four scans.

Still, no matter how simple the study seemed to be, it produced very unexpected results. Each of the HTTP response codes for the first and last scan stated “1.1 200 OK”, which means that hundred percent of the analyzed websites were fully transparent to the viewer.

The only problem that occurred was linked to one of the chosen proxies not responding correctly (Appendix 3). One of the websites did not produce any response code, two gave a connection-failed response, and the rest responded with a server error message. The second scan through the same proxy produced the same server error for the whole sample (Appendix 4). Since I was looking for a client error message, those two scans can easily be discarded due to proxy failure.

Since all of the sites produced positive response codes (Appendix 2 and 5), one can state that Internet Censorship in the People’s Republic of China does not cover sites that deal virtual goods and gold.

Discussion

Since the findings can be perceived as unusual or unexpected, I find it extremely important to discuss why the Chinese government did not ban the access to goldfarming websites. I believe that there are certain facts that lie behind the occurred phenomenon.

The first one may relate directly to the new Chinese law, and is much similar to what Heeks describes in the article by GamePolitics.com:

“This [new Chinese law] therefore is not about what gold farming
clients do: use real money to buy these virtual currencies; it’s the mirror
image. And it’s not about the major trade in gold farming such as
World of Warcraft, which relates to other types of virtual currency. And
it’s not about buying/selling in-game items. And it’s not about the
power-leveling of avatars. Bottom line: it’s not about gold farming.“
(Heeks, R. 2008 in GamePolitics.com)

Still, this explanation and definition of the author’s ‘Mirror Image’ is not fully clear. The notion carried by Heeks can be seen as opposing to what was said by Claburn in the introductory paragraph of this paper. If this particular law restriction is not about farming, but about the exchange rate that may affect China’s economy, farmers themselves had to find a way around the system. Similarly as described by Claburn in relation to gold farming and various companies‘ attitude towards it, smartly built operating systems may be the factors that drastically affect the fail of the ban on virtual currency trade. According to the author:

“Game companies typically forbid gold farming but committed virtual
currency traders find ways around such rules. Some game companies
have recognized the futility of trying to ban the practice and have built
virtual commerce into their game infrastructure“ (Claburn T.,
Informationweek.com, 29th June 2009).

In this case, what I find particularly important to add is the thought of Dean Takahashi, which proves that Gold Farms as companies are built on a very smart and careful basis, commonly located outside of China’s boarders. In relation to why this specific law is so hard to enforce, Takahashi points out the factor of technicality:

“The practice of trading virtual goods for real money is easy to make
illegal, but hard to enforce. The gold farmers may not be affected...
because of a technicality. Most of China’s gold farmers, who operate in
sweatshops with dozens of fellow farmers, operate on servers on
foreign soil. The government can only control what goes on with
domestic servers.“ (Takahashi, D. GamesBeat, 30th June 2009)

Still, the most important fact exposed by the study and the target sample analysis is that all of the analyzed companies sell gold outside of China. If all the gold farming Chinese firms are located outside of the boarders, and they sell virtual currency to other countries, it is much probable that the Chinese government cannot do anything about it. This discussion exposes that there is an obvious confusion over the Chinese law regulations, presenting how in-game gathering of virtual resources bypasses a not fully operational restriction.

Nevertheless, some positive aspects of the study can be found while looking at the article by David Barboza in New York Times, where the author quotes an email received from one of the most influencing theoreticians of virtual and MMO environments:

“This action shows that at least one government is concerned about
the way virtual worlds challenge its control of society. (…) As virtual
currencies take over more and more purchasing power, control over
the effective money supply shifts from the central bank to the game
developers.” (Castronova, E., in Barboza, D. 30th June 2009)

References:

Barboza, David, 30th June 2009, “In China, New Limits on Virtual Currency”, New
York Times;

Claburn, Thomas, 29th June 2009, “China Limits Use Of Virtual Currency”,
www.informationweek.com;

GamePolitics.com, 1st July 2009, “Is Gold Farming Really banned? Confusion Over
China’s New Virtual Currency Rules”;

Heeks, Richard, 2008, “Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on "Gold
Farming": Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies
of Online Games“, University of Manchester;

Ministry of Commerce, 29th June 2009, “China bans use of virtual money for trading
in real goods”;

Takahashi, Dean, 30th June 2009, “China’s crackdown on virtual goods transactions
could ripple through the game economy”, GamesBeat;

Other sources:

♦ Internet Censorship Explorer
link: http://tools.issuecrawler.net/beta/proxies/

♦ HTTP response codes list
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

Appendices:

♦ Appendix 1: List of sampled websites

List of Gold Farming Companies' websites (retrieved from google.cn):

http://www.2moonsdilvip.com/
http://www.beautifulwowgold.com/
http://www.gamegoldme.com/
http://www.wow-powerleveling-wowgold.com/
http://www.goldteamsale.com/
http://www.bye-wowgold.com/
http://www.ugamesale.com/
http://www.mywowgoldsite.com/
http://www.yoyo-gold.com/
http://www.wowlion.com/
http://www.wowgoldfirm.com/
http://www.wowgold4s.com/
http://www.mmoshop.eu/
http://www.wow-goldstore.com/
http://www.wowgoldfed.com/
http://www.gamesworth.com/
http://www.wowgolddig.com/
http://www.wowgoldcow.com/
http://www.mywowgold365.co.uk/
http://www.wowgold-cheapwowgold.com/

List of Gold Farming Companies' websites (retrieved from google.com):

http://www.gold4power.com/
http://www.hisgame.com/
http://www.itemgarden.com/
http://www.wow-gold-team.com/
http://www.ugamegold.com/
http://www.game2guide.com/
http://www.zyy.com/
http://www.susanexpress.com/
http://www.wowgold2k.com/
http://www.worldwarcraft-gold.com/
http://www.wowgold-europe.com/
http://www.wow-cheapwowgold.com/
http://www.game4world.com/
http://www.power-level.net/
http://www.helpwow.com/
http://www.guy-game.com/
http://www.gdpchina.com/
http://www.offgamers.com/
http://www.wowgoldbank.nl/
http://www.wowko.com/

♦ Appendix 2: Censorship Explorer outcome for proxy 118.122.85.215:80
(China)

♦ Appendix 3: Censorship Explorer outcome for proxy 60.28.81.194:80
(China) – scan 1

♦ Appendix 4: Censorship Explorer outcome for proxy 60.28.81.194:80
(China) – scan 2

♦ Appendix 5: Censorship Explorer outcome for proxy 220.248.34.26:80
(China)

American Jesus

2010-11-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

Masters of Media LOGO

2010-11-04T08:06:00.001-07:00

slaythemurlocs.org

2010-10-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Hey! I just made this itsy bitsy T-Shirt graphic in response to savethemurlocs.org

Imagine these guys actually got a contract with Blizzard just for designing a T-Shirt and a Website, which allows them to sell Blizzard Store's plush toys.. All this is followed by virtual goods trade..

Hopefully there are still some hardcore players such as I that know there lies the barricade ;) so I say:

Enjoy!

All work produced in Inkscape ;)

Fat Bart ;)

2010-10-10T03:01:00.000-07:00

Check out my Fat Princess auto-portrait ;) Background sampled from the official website. enjoy!

World of Tweetcraft?

2010-10-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Since the development of Internet, humankind has been exposed to various new ways of communication: Starting from peer to peer chat, shifting into electronic mailing and blogging, enabling of large chat rooms hosting hundreds of people, and finally reforming into social networking sites. In time, each of the forms of social expression drastically evolved, advancing both in quality of use and in quantity of accesses – making those easy to handle and affecting still more and more users.

The emergence of MMO gaming and virtual reality, especially the largest artificial worlds such as Azeroth in World of Warcraft, gave us a new way of socializing with people from around the globe. Twitter is one of the most popular microblogging websites, and as a social networking system it covers most users in its domain, but this aspect is not the only one that links Massively Multiplayer Online games to social networking platforms.

This short entry will aim to answer the question: Why should we think of communication in virtual reality worlds not in terms of chatting, but perceive it rather as a social networking entity? I will do it by analyzing Twitter and World of Warcraft ingame communication mechanism, exposing similarities in structure and social usage.

Structure of Communication

The way in which both communication platforms are built is one of the main important aspects by which this comparison should be analyzed. The following part will therefore cover similarities between the game’s communication mechanism and Twitter by the terms of structure.

One of the most important points when it comes to the structuring of an online conversation is real time chatting within a large ecosystem. Enabled in both examples, this issue provides some points to the discussion on how to perceive WoW chat system. Similarly as in Twitter, a user of World of Warcraft is notoriously exposed to chat channels that include either familiar/nonfamiliar or friend gamers. The user is always placed in the environment in which he is exposed to both spam and chat with various amounts of other users having diverse relations with the player. Following this notion, chatting in various artificial spaces with various people from different social groups will be first and most obvious point linking MMO chat system to social media sites.

The large number of channels in the game carries the same notion as social media portals. It enables the flow of information such as real time reporting on specific events, collective knowledge, feeling of belonging to particular groups, and other multiple social aspects of such a constant information stream. Similarly as described by Scott, Twitter and WoW users tend to rely on real-time information flow, reporting on events as they are happening:

“Smart editors and reporters update blogs and media web sites in seconds. Consumers post videos and photos on the web anytime where the media can see them. Reporters now rely on Twitter for instantaneous leads from citizen journalists – who are often reporting from the scene as the events unfold.” (Scott, 2010: 52)

WoW gamers that update the channels on events that are happening ‘now’ use a very similar tactic. The events may occur either in the virtual world, such as sieges and raids on allied locations, forcing the spam of Local Defense channel, or real-world happenings such as various world news either game related or IRL oriented.

Other important fact that makes these two examples similar is that people are connected to multiple chat rooms at a time. Similarly as for Twitter, WoW chat system reveals to you vast amounts of short text messages, approaching the user from various channels and evoking the necessity of multitasking. The game channels allow you to communicate with people on various levels. Similarly as on Twitter, a user can send a message either from the personal level of whispering to someone, or approach an entire virtual city with his message. The channels vary on the location of the gamer, which can be matched to the tweeting sites having an option of talking to someone within a certain range. Furthermore, some of the channels may be embedded onto the gamers character, such as the officer chat, which narrows down the amount of chatting people to a few particular players.

More similarities can be easily found, such as the creation of Friends lists, or Block List in both of the platforms. Focusing on the first of them, WoW communicating system enables sending messages to Friends no matter if they are in this particular game. This gives the user the power to contact both his in-game and real friends, even if they are playing a different game of the battle.net platform.

Similar tactic can be found while analyzing the social networking example, and can be compared to the availability of Twitter for mobile phones, where the user can still access his friends in cases of being not in front of the computer screen. All this is followed by the release of World of Warcraft Mobile Armory that gives the user certain features such as communicating in the Guildchat channel via a cellphone.

Both the in-game communication system and Twitter allow creating groups to discuss certain topics. This gives the users power of microblogging on topics of choice. In both examples it can be done by creating/joining a channel or by making another account.

Idea and the Social Level

The second aspect that I find most important to analyze while comparing Twitter and the in-game chat mechanism is the idea that lies behind the actual usage of the platforms. In this part of the essay I will try to compare certain patterns of user behavior, focusing on similarities between the two examples. Cheong and Lee, while discussing Twitter, explain a few of the most common concepts of tweeting:

“Comm wrote about the concept of “mission accomplished” tweets to inform followers of accomplishments or milestones achieved (extending the findings extending the findings on online presence), and picture distribution tweets (extending the concept of URL sharing). O’Reilly and Milstein discussed the need of ambient intimacy with friends and family as a result of presence maintenance on Twitter by answering the “what are you doing?” question. Lastly, McFedries and Comm also highlight a current trend of Twitter usage – ‘live tweeting’ – which is to tweet about events live as they unfold, e.g. conferences, trade shows and exhibitions.” (Cheong, Lee in Alhajj, Memon, 2010: 356)

Similarly as in Twitter, the ‚Milestone‘ aspect can be found in WoW chat system: either as an automatic message telling your friends and guild that you reached a certain level. It can also appear automatically when a player scores an achievement as a similar message appears. Additionally users tend to tell about what they achieved to other players. When it comes to online activity sharing of knowledge and URL, the game communication system is also very active in those fields. This is enabled by the linking system, which makes possible sharing of knowledge about the virtual environment in which the gamer is placed. It covers both URL as well as ingame knowledge such as quests, items, achievements etc. The „what are you doing?“ question is probably one of the major spamming problems in World of Warcraft. Both the general and trade channel are filled with messages such as LFM Onyxia25 1Tank 2Healer 3DPS link gs and achi which are telling what a person is about to do and informing other players observing this particular channel what perspectives do they have in case if they want to join in a group. According to Java, Finin, Song and Tseng, all this is extremely similar to what Twitter users tend to write about:

„From our analysis, we find that the main types of user intentions are: daily chatter, conversations, sharing information and reporting news. Furthermore, users play different roles of information source, friends or information seeker in different communities“ (Java, Finin, Song, Tseng; 2007: 2)

But there are also other similarities between Twitter’ers and MMO Gamers. One of the most important point connecting the two groups is the development of shortcuts, both on the interface level, as well as in the language of use. While taking a look at the interface, both platforms have some similarities, such as hitting the ‚r‘ key for replying. The raising simplicity can be also found in the language that users of both platforms tend to develop. Shortcuts such as ‚imo‘ and ‚brb‘ are a pretty common theme of expression.

Another point linking the game communication platform to the social networking system is the idea of having a socio-virtual self. Either by having a specific nickname, or in a wider context, creating your virtual self or a virtual image of a group/brand/team. Basically what differs a social network from a chat is that it is based and built around user profiles. While looking at your profile people may assume what your interests and actions are, and what follows: you are not anonymous. Each user has his name, he stands for various ideals, and he has a voice in a community and is willing to share his thoughts with other within the environment.

The point that links Twitter and WoW is the way in which people tend to gather around various environments. Examples can be found in following someone on Twitter and listening to his messages, or even getting to know that person/institution and having a conversation or debate. All this is described by Comm (2010), where the author gives various uses of Twitter, such as creating specific groups:

“Twitter can help us to keep together a team that’s already been established. It can do that by helping scattered members to understand that they are working alongside each other and that thay are not alone. And it can do it by providing an online clubhouse where thay can get together to keep everyone informed.” (Comm, 2010: 155)

Similar mechanism can be found in World of Warcraft, where users tend to gather around various, more powerful, more experienced players. Examples of such a behavior can be seen best in the forming of guilds, where people gather around powerful players to lead them through various game content. Similarly as in the diversity of people being followed on Twitter, WoW groups can also be based on various interests: player vs. player gaming, arena matches, player vs. environment guilds, trading guilds, leveling guilds, achiever guilds, specific raids etc. The list is practically never-ending and dependent on the size of the game itself, so groups of people that are linked with a common interest are nearly as diverse, as the ones formed in the real world.

Summary

Even though Twitter is meant to work within the real world, and WoW communication programme is supposed to enhance the gameplay in a virtual environment, both of the samples tend to reveal similar ways of construction both in terms of the way they are built, as well as in terms of social communication usage. I believe that while analyzing Virtual Worlds we should refer to chatting systems as to in-built social networking platforms, where real time strategies, large ecosystem and the dynamics of an internet conversation have power over the actions of the user. To what extent are we going to be overloaded with spam, news, messages and requests during our daily activities such as work or play?

References:

Reda Alhajj, Nasrullah Memon (2010); “From Sociology to Computing in Social Networks: Theory, Foundations and Applications”; Springer;

Joel Comm (2010); “Twitter Power 2.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time”, John Wiley and Sons;

Akshay Java, Tim Finin, Xiaodan Song, Belle Tseng (2007); “Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”, University of Maryland;

David Meerman Scott (2010); “Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now”; John Wiley and Sons;

Botting, Plotting and Multiboxing

2010-10-01T14:32:00.000-07:00

This week I had some serious contact with bots. The industry sure is creative…

It all started when I was dropping my wiki entry on the net, and then it attacked me:

It happened when I entered the most popular virtual reality: World of Warcraft.
While sorting something out in the city of Stormwind, I saw a giant ‘neon-like’ exposition/performence of characters. It turned out to be an advert of WoW gold-farmer website. It did raise some questions, but to make this situation a bit more engaging I created a short movie which tells the story.

Enjoy!

wiki:gruba_ksiezniczka?

2010-09-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

I've just finished my first version of an article for the Polish wikipedia ;)

The topic is a PS3 game titled Fat Princess by Titan Studios.

Here's the link: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Princess

Enjoy! :D

White Wolf

2010-09-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Photos present Eddie, one of my dogs back home ;)

Thassos

2010-09-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

Photos taken on a Greek island, Thassos.

Eucarbon Packaging Designs

2010-09-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Packaging of Eucarbon, done for Trenka.

link: http://www.trenka.at/index.php?lang=en

Zen

2010-09-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite Wallpapers. Soon I will prepare it for dual-screen high resolution ;)

Napalm's Car Vinyl Design

2010-09-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Photos by Wełpa.
links:

http://wezprzestan.blogspot.com/
http://holograf.net/

Rastafari Sound Sticker

2010-09-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Design of a Rasta sticker ;)

Postcards from UK

2010-09-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Photos from Derby. A few sentimental spots.

Legalization March, Warsaw 2010

2010-09-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

Reportage from Warsaw Legalization March of year 2010.

Sprey, Sophie, Sprey!

2010-09-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

Photosession of my gf, Zosia ;)

PROSTO RASTA

2010-09-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

A variation of a classic Prosto T-Shirt.

First Spies in IPN

2010-09-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Photos from Warsaw Museum Night, when IPN's library was opened for public.

Borat, Borat!

2010-09-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

Photo of one of my friends, who felt the urge to try out a mankini ;)

Lolek

2010-09-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

Lolek is a friend from my yard.

Good Night Adolf

2010-09-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Portrait of a performer known as Dulny.

WLP: Welpa Lubi Pekin

2010-09-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Photo of a good mate from Warsaw.

Street Performers

2010-09-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

Photos of two street jugglers from Derby, UK.

Santa, Santa...

2010-09-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Photos of ex-homeless guys from United Kingdom, working during X-mass for the Big Issue Magazine.

link: http://www.bigissue.com/

Hephaestus

2010-09-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

Storytelling Boards: University Project

2010-09-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

Graphic Boards telling different stories: Destruction, War, Redemption

Blink Magazine: University Project

2010-09-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

Blink Magazine was a project for my University in the second year of Media Studies.

Based on a Photo session by Eugenio Recuenco titled Aeon Flux.

link: http://www.eugeniorecuenco.com/

Crazy Sam

2010-09-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Portraits of Sam from Senegal, a guy who lived in UK with me and Charlie ;)

Luxury Vibez: University Project

2010-09-14T12:14:00.001-07:00

Woman's magazine cover. University project.
Based on photography of Lil Kim by David LaChapelle.

link: http://www.lachapellestudio.com/

Mikrofibra EKO Project

2010-09-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Mikrofibra was a project designed for Sarantis Polska S.A. Itwas based on creating a logotype and packaging for an upcoming brand.

link: http://www.sarantis.pl/

Doncaster to USA

2010-09-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

Photos from Robin Hood Airport, Doncaster Sheffield. Dedicated to a friend back in the yard.

Mushroom wallpaper

2010-09-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

Microbe stickers

2010-09-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Sticker Designs presenting how small life can be :) but it also shows that strengh is in numbers and we should always 'stick' together ;)

Mazuria [2]

2010-09-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

Images present Wełpa visiting Olsztynek, a small Mazurian town.

My favourite logos ;)

2010-09-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

Internet Banners: University project

2010-09-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

The banners below were created as a project for the university. There were used to present various models of internet advertising, for non-commercial use only.

Catholic Poland?

2010-09-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

Poland is the only country in which 98% of people are Catholics. Recent news entries about the topic are slowly trying to present the shift of Polish youth culture as opposing the church. I personally find this change as positive and present it to You as a combo of two photographs.

Harlequin Display rebranding project

2010-09-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

One of my early work experience projects for the University of Derby, where I have totally rebranded a local display agency. The work included creation of a flash website, new logo, leaflets and posters. Website not yet launched due to technical reasons.

Valentines Day graphic for Sophie

2010-09-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

A photomontage for my gf ;)

Brushgarden

2010-09-14T09:56:00.001-07:00

Quick photoshop brush-play with my old logo :P

I&I

2010-09-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

Photos present Denver, a Rasta student from UK. Set up with a Rastafari flag with mr. Bobby.

LionPride Clothing designs

2010-09-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

Designs for Rasta T-Shirts. LionPride Project.

Train Abstract

2010-09-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

Not much to add. It's an abstract ;)

Hello Jungling Boy

2010-09-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

A T-Shirt project for one of my maties, Laser.

Hello Jungling Boy! :)

Mazuria

2010-09-14T08:41:00.001-07:00

Photos taken in Lutek. Summer brake in the lakeside of Warmia and Mazuria.

Special thanks to Mazuria locals: Ziutek-Wielki and Wielkigibon

Mindmess

2010-09-14T08:38:00.001-07:00

One of my pen and paper projects. The only one that survived drunk-drawing ;P

Technocrati

2010-09-14T08:31:00.001-07:00

Another old montage. It presents the solid construction of the Eiffel Tower in the reflection of a fragile cyber-eye. While created, was meant to present how quickly the technology is evolving, and how are we, humankind, living alongside this techno-shift.

The Design Cave

2010-09-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

One of my first photoshop brush-plays. Has a sentimental value, but it is still a pleasure for my eye ;)

Homeless in UK

2010-09-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Picture of some homeless guys trying to have a nap in the streets of Derby. England turned out to be very different to how I remembered it as a Kid. Still, the weather stayed the same.

Fresh Start

2010-09-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

This Autumn I am starting to refresh my blog. From now on, it will present not only photography, but also other visual media. I also allowed for comments, so I will be glad to get feedback from You guyz ;)

Cheers!