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Potential
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Any parent / artist will tell you how difficult it is to maintain production and a family. Dennis Oppenheim’s solution was to involve his children. The result was something between a behavioral psychology experiment and an existential musing on procreation.
Oppenheim also collaborated with Vito Acconci…
Acconci, in contrast, had no children. After marrying early and joining the army, he left family life behind. He revolted and rebooted. Refusing certain traditions (while embracing others) meshes well with common avant-garde narratives. Starting over, a clean break, a radical vision, even child-like innocence, are all modernist themes. This kind of essentialism was not Acconci’s project — even if such a read may favor him. My point is that the avant-garde does not necessarily reconcile itself with actual children, however it may celebrate them.
As a new father, I think about Dennis and Vito collaborating, intersecting for a moment in their careers as they move in opposite personal trajectories. Like one person with two potentials deciding for both.
New Game Engine
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I’ve used SW3D for a lot of games in the past, but Macromedia / Adobe’s reluctance to upgrade their engine pushed me to explore other options. I’ve played around with Torque, GLFW, and now Unity. Recently, I’ve been liking Unity. Unity is nice because you can code in several syntaxes, including javascript. You can also make direct open gl calls. I find their application a little unstable, but I am hoping this will be addressed in the imminent release of 2.0. Having a complete editor is very nice and really accelerates development, which is essential if you are a one-man-band.
I’m developing a new game using modish generative techniques. The game is an evolution of an earlier game I made, M, which was part of Dark Network.
Trauma
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For a time in the early 90’s, I worked as an archivist in the New York Public Library’s Audio/Visual Department. I summarized interviews of survivors of the holocaust, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, and various natural disasters. These interviews were conducted by Dr. Robert Lifton, the psychoanalyst who first diagnosed post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS).
What I learned from this experience was instructive to pieces like RGB and, in particular, Trauma. Traumatic experiences may desensitize and block an individual’s imaginative capacities. This reaction is a kind of reflex to avoid disturbing memories and events. Problems occur when the instinct will not recede; when feelings and thoughts will not return to normal.
Likewise, when networks of people are impacted by a singular event, collective “points of failure” or a shared blind spot, may develop and persist. Certainly destructive historical events have imposed many limitations, most notably the ability to see beyond them.
With this in mind, I tried to come up with a logic for networked video games which rely on such “points of failure.” Discrepancies in game worlds close off portions of the network. Avatars, often in conflict, cannot completely detect each other. This is a link between my earlier projector pieces and more recent game systems. I find myself wondering about what can be “seen” and what cannot — and networks as a kind of projection system.
Evolution of WPS1 Art Radio
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Last week I helped launch a redesigned WPS1 Art Radio website. If you’ve never listened to it, WPS1 has audio from the MoMA archives, music from WarmUp, DJ sessions, and conversations with artists. I’ve done a few shows myself.
WPS1 is located at the Clocktower in lower Manhattan, where I currently have my studio and web shop. Thing is there as well. It looks like Open City will be joining us. Amit Pitaru will be moving in to develop high tech toys for disabled children and run some workshops… and there will be others. There is a growing community being organized around WPS1 which will further invigorate it. It is becoming a very interesting center of activity and a platform for an increasing number of cultural groups.
Basic Literacy
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I came across this Al Gore quote from his new book last night:
The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic.
Gore argues that the internet’s low barrier to entry and interactive nature is intrinsically more democratic than television; the consolidation of media ownership and a top-down broadcast structure undermines public discourse. Implicit in his argument is that the internet is linked to literacy itself… which is something I’ve thought for a long time.
As a freedom speech issue, as a feature of literacy, network neutrality is a cultural issue which has broad implications to the arts. Nonetheless, the mainstream artworld plays a limited role in this discussion. I recognize that artists like myself may have a special interest in these matters, but the level of incomprehension concerning such big-picture issues among gatekeepers is unacceptable. I will spare you the anecdotes; my point is that this is an issue of basic literacy more than an emerging genre concern.
My advice: learn to read and write.
Digital Economies
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This weekend I attended a wedding reception of a friend of mine, Ben Reddy. I bumped into some old acquaintances including Zach Miner of Christie’s. Zach is thinking about global economic trends and how they are transforming the art world. This is great information for video game models. I was interested. Zach surprised me with his anticipation of digital artworks that slip into the art market like an integrated circuit; manifesting creative paradoxes while simultaneously (and directly) manipulating the market itself. I’ve heard this kind of future-think at electronic arts festivals in Berlin, such as Transmediale… but from Chrisitie’s? Zach might be the exception to the notoriously conservative art auctionhouse, but still, you gotta wonder…
New Platform
A lot of my earlier pieces use Shockwave 3d, which had a nice workflow with 3d StudioMax and a fairly wide plugin install base. I’ve been looking for a new solution which gives me direct access to OpenGL. I’ve fooled around with Torque and Unity, but I decided instead of relying on an authoring tool or complete engine, I would use GLFW, a portable framework for OpenGL application development. I recently picked up a MacBook, so I am in the process of adjusting to XCode. Things have been a little quiet on my blog as I settle in. I will post some of my initial experiments soon.
Machine Reader
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I ordered a recently published book of Acconci’s early writings today. When you write code on a daily basis you see similarities to other writing all the time. Acconci’s writing, which is linked to performance, is suggestive because, like code, it provides an operational definition. That definition may be approximate or precise, influenced by random events or not. As potentially “actionable” script, it is concerned with public and private implications / scope. It approaches participants behaviorally; not unlike video game avatars. At this point, it is clear that this is more than coincidence.
As artists code the behavior of avatars into artworks, as small game developers seek to carve a place amongst dominant genres modelling themselves after the film industry, there is a strange aligning of historical circumstances that runs deeper than the usual comparisons made between performance art and virtual reality.
Eclipsing Projector
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I built this piece while at a residency in Maine several years ago. I got it up and running using camping supplies. Note the battery. Working with limited resources, in a rural setting, I developed a lean, portable, and flexible projector.
I am posting this piece because I considered it as I built the projector in my previous post. If you compare the two images, you may notice some similarities.
Whenever I am trying to figure out something new, it is helpful to “get back to the basics.” For me, that means a new projector. Small video projectors are like sketches in which I can work out all the basic elements of a piece, primarily the relationships between the component parts, their arrangement, and imaging.
I showed the Eclipsing Projector in Paris where it was well recieved. The contrast between the circumstances leading to the creation of a piece, the context where it is shown, and, finally, how it is understood by critics, the public, your peers, etc. always gives me a lot to think about.