Boom Pearls
Gillion Grantsaan Registration Unavailabe
Seimi Nørregård I Grow All Kinds of Flowers
Antonia Low ROLLBOCKZWILLING, kreisend
Pernille With Madsen Endless Structure
Gitte Broeng Dessert Room
Tommy Støckel Primitives Collection Field
Hilarius Hofstede Paleo Psycho Pop
Thomas Bøndergaard An Introduction to the Rhetoric of Simulation
Linda Hilfling on the paradox of extra-territoriality
Sofie Marie Høegh Nielsen The technical issues concerning the experience of art in Second Life
Joachim Stein Law and Art
Jan Northoff 2D3D4D
Jacob Nielsen on Digital Art
Veronika Kær Roleplaying in Murotima Koenigrech
About Boom Pearls
Boom Pearls is a series of art works curated in the populated 3D world Second Life. The invited artists get free access to work within the given frame of the project. A world where the users can build, write, script and experience themselves through a 3D universe build by the users. It is central to Second Life, that the local currency can be changed to other valuta. The social aspect is not to protect the users from Real Life(RL), but to make it possible to extend the value of online properties.
Users mundane actions make it clear that it is not enough to
understand the persistent worlds as games or not games. When the
emergence of new and less skilled users in the world can be
appropriated, the perception of this media and the world is not only
dominated by the producer of SL. The participating artists in Boom
Pearls are: Hilarius Hofstede, Tommy Støckel, Gitte Broeng,
Pernille With Madsen, Antonia Low, Seimi Nørregård, and
Gillian Grantsaan. Boom Pearls run from the summer 2007 and two years
on.
There will be links between Boom
Pearls in Second Life and BoomPearls.com
with documentation.
Jon Paludan, 2007
The projects are supported by the Danish Art Council
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Gillion
Grantsaan on Registration
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i grow all kinds of flowers from Boom Pearls.
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Antonia Low on ROLLBOCKZWILLING, kreisend
Rollbockzwilling, kreizend by Antonia Low at Boom Pearls in Second Life from Boom Pearls on Vimeo.
Pernille With Madsen on Endless Structure
Video of Endless Structure
Gitte Broeng on Dessert Room
Tommy Støckel on Primitives Collection Field
Paleo Psycho Pop Hofstede reading Paleo Psycho Pop.
The context of art in a virtual world which can be hard to reach, but brings together different local experiences of how the common simulated space works as a place for social and professional being online.This combination of different local experiences of media in SL and RL was challenged and discussed as consequence for artistic practice and exhibitions of art and the opportunities for experimentation not possible in other places.
Boom Pearls relate to how people use online culture in different ways and play upon the fact that culture in Second Life(SL) is divided into several smaller cultures without contact. Furthermore many people can not navigate in SL and never experience it, while single artists has their whole practice within SL. A series of talks was arranged to challenge and discuss opportunities for art and curating in online worlds. The invited talkers where artists, writers and curators, and some are integrated users of Second Life. The talks took place as a series of discussions and talks in and outside SL, some with visitors from all over the world, and a few just two people. Both as chats and talks in SL and talks in physical space. On one occasion independent media broadcaster Ze Moo helped to stream the talk from SL, so people could hear it without installing SL. The invited artists and talkers contributed with different approaches for interventions in online spaces. The art projects, planned before the talks and discussions, was made by artists new in SL. This way there has been a focus on SL as a new platform for art. The transition between SL and Real Life (RL) can be seen as concrete in different ways throughout the projects and series of talks.
The series of artist talks and performances were introduced by Hilarius Hofstede. In relation to his installation of a list of all titles since 1995 in his project Paleo Psycho Pop a video of him reading the titles while an avatar tries to follow the reading in the installation. His idea was to spread his work in SL, which he like some of the other invited artist in the beginning met with scepticism about new media. He thought of it as a doll house you could not get into, even in the most intimate situations, so to make the world better he would make new and old meet in a float of psycho pop. Tommy Støckel considered how an artistic practice can be carried out in SL, where the content of the virtual world is build by the users. His installation, Primitives Collection Field (2007), consisted of freebies build by other users in SL, thereby focusing on what makes SL different from the rest of the world. Poet Gitte Broeng thought of SL as a wasteland without scent or taste. The starting point for the work is Broeng’s conceptual poem Hypothetical Imperatives (Desserts) based on dessert recipes that she has “emptied” of all ingredients. Instead of descriptions of delicious desserts we are faced with imperatives such as whip, grate, decorate. Recipes like to make use of imperatives in the instructions and if the ingredients are removed the odd thing happens, that the recipes will appear as insensible commands. Completely inverse of the product they describe the making of. Her final project Dessert Room was presented as a reading of the poem you could hear when your avatar flew into a monumental cookbook. Broengs work was a hybrid between artforms, which she would probably not have thought of doing outside SL. In our talk she told about the difficulties some of her friends had while trying to get into SL. Navigating in a virtual world today is often something new to the visitors of art exhibitions. In Pernille With Madsens moving sculpture, Endless Structure we can play with the experience of vertigo. When we dissappear in media holes it can be fun one moment and scary the next. The meeting between the artwork and visitors in SL she saw as a somewhat accidental quality not unlike that of public sculptures.
Antonia Low has an interest in temporary architectural beauty, such as scaffoldings on building sites. She uses scaffoldings as sculptures, usually installed in different locations within an art context – the white cubes of art institutions in RL. In her project she took the chance of installing two scaffoldings in SL. The two 700 meters high scaffoldings where clones, simultaneously moving around in circles on two different locations in SL. In these two different areas – one a typical SL domestic suburb and the other a campus mainly representing institutions of RL – the scaffoldings where located between other SL inhabitants’ private buildings, institutional venues and a virtual copy of Berlin’s RL Bar Babette. To Seimi Nørregaard experience inside SL is all a kind of theater, where noone are themselves, it’s a representation. In a sense you don’t really have to account for what you do. But your actions are real, and you can control your avatar. Her installation I Grow All Kinds of Flowers talks to the visitors imagination. After teleport to Boom Pearls you saw your avatar in a small wood, where there was a small hut. Inside the hut a recording of a reading starts when you sit in the sofa, and roses fall down like rain from the ceiling. She has stated that she wishes the border between fantasy and everyday didn’t exist so that the worlds, which she tries to create also exists in reality. Gillion Grantsaans installation is focused on representation in virtual worlds seen from different localities. Some places you can't get access, or maybe people have access but it can be hard to manage to arrange a meeting with more than one person at a time, since time is not the same. His opening will be supported by a group of musicians from Ghana he invited to join his project in SL.
The combination of several networks is said to break geographical limitations. Especially when people arrange and participate in roleplay as pointed out by Veronika Kær, who game me the opportunity to watch a battle in the Murotima Königreich and meet the players. A good example on how SL is a simulation of trade and networks which is used as platform for different kinds of art. A few of the paradoxes about digital art as appropriation or immersion into a cross cultural creativity has been dragged out in the talks and in the meeting with other users in SL. Issues of play and work crossing national borders is not a finished discussion. Copyright and ownership issues is a central problem in online spaces which blocks the thought of democracy in most online worlds, as pointed out by Linda Hilfling and Joachim Stein. Hilfling reminds us that SL is part of the world, not outside it, so a swedish embassy in SL should follow the rules, which is not possible in relation to the SL Terms of Service. Artist Jacob Nielsen points out that digital art outside SL can also be more about getting closer to the machine and use it as a language than using some software to simulate tools for communication. As a user you risk to loose the right to write and only being able to read or participate. It is central if you believe in the possibilities of simulations, Thomas Bøndergaard introduces the rhetoric of simulation. In stead of seeing it as a problem they can be used as models to solve them. Though SL is not as visited by big companies as in spring 2007, integrated inhabitants in SL can still make a living on the economy in SL. Jan Northoff states that art is just a context you choose. Sofie Marie Høegh Nielsens looked on the technical issues of experiencing art in SL with regards to the different skill-levels and user-abilities from a philosophical point of view.
To a curator in SL it is interesting that so much of the inworld possibilities for the inhabitant culture is focused on learning. A network really can grow in there. However it is very specialized and if you concentrate on your SL network, RL network might not get across the transition into the actual show, and a lot of information is needed outside. So the work itself will surely not be seen by all who are interested. But those who do see it, or attend the talks can share the rich possibilites of real time 3D. Learning in 3D hold the experience of the works to the provided software, you need to learn how to navigate and use the software. And the 3D models is connected to the context which can not be exported. Our neighbours stay in there, and the surrounding virtual land is sold from time to time over two years. It does not always make an installation better. And none of the participating artists have been interested in trying to export their work. Developing a virtual world in this decade have not been about solving copyright restrictions, more making them more clear and regressive, to protect the economic interest of the local currency and make it grow. A lot of hype about virtual worlds and SL in the end of 2006 and some time forward made people who would maybe not have been interested in this travel to places like this from their home computer, and a few of them have seen the show. It has not been crowded in there, but word of mouth has been able to spread more than in RL. The focus on creativity and nothing special you have to do to be in SL is what makes the place interesting for projects like this. The reason to choose to work solely in a virtual world may be the possibility to do something you can not any other places. The point is, that to most people it is not so important that it is art. The institution of art is not the one that makes the law in SL, or decides when someone should be banned. So if you want to make it accessible to visitors interested in an art experience it is a situation reminding of migration art, to offer a different experience. SL offers a slightly different set of aesthetics and a network which different localities experience differently. SL is not secluded from reality, it is part of it. Boom Pearls has offered a series of artists experiments with how they wish to participate with their work in the context of a more or less free accessible use of 3D simulated in real time which most of the participating artist would not have done otherwise.
THIS IS A MANIFESTO
We shape and are shaped by cultural artefacts. No cultural phenomenon stands alone and none are ideologically neutral. With the myriad of new social media anyone can make public the produce of their creativity to the entire world, unmediated by the old gatekeepers of mass media. User-generated content does not represent mass culture but culture by the masses. The Internet thus facilitates now in novel ways a decentralised construction of society. As for societal ideals, a healthy democracy needs constant critical review by means of broad engagement by a knowledgeable public. One premise among others for such engagement is a general feeling of community; society is per se a common thing. Another is the dissemination of good channels to facilitate that engagement. I see in computer games and in digital media technologies in general the potential to embody, instil, advance, and not least to function as laboratory for such a democratic attitude of critical social engagement.
The concern of this essay is to provide perspectives of three consequential usages of simulation each representing currently evolving tendencies of digital media technology. As computer games, social software and simulations are used increasingly in political advocacy, commercial advertising, and many other areas of communication, science, art, and entertainment by governmental and non-governmental organisations, private businesses and individuals, so increases the social need for exact conceptual tools with which to examine and describe the communicative and facilitating qualities of such media. I will start with a short introduction to the potential for a far higher sophistication than is the case today of computer games in the cultural field between entertainment and art. Following a sketching of the communicative qualities of using computer games for instance in awareness, advertising or political campaigns, I will end by drawing a perspective of the expansion and fusing of computer games, social software, and scientific simulations to a new kind of digital laboratory and parliament of participatory democracy where collaborative solutions can be found for complex problems utilising computer-supported experiments based on corroborated data provided by feeds from the world’s statistical institutes, knowledge and research centres, and data repositories. The larger claims thus set forth is of the high potential of simulations for artistic expression, communication, and experimental mediation for finding non-zero sum solutions for natural, economic, political, social, or cultural problems on a global, regional, national, local, or personal scale with computer-supported collaborative deliberation.
ENTERTAINMENT
It was not long ago that the mention of computer games or video games would immediately and almost invariably conjure up visions of pimpled teenage boys in darkened rooms wasting sunny days trying to beat some arbitrary high score or some end-of-level boss or each other with fictional and absurd weaponry. And indeed many computer games today still peddle adolescent male power fantasies in spite of many things it would seem. I will not go into any deeper analysis of the computer game industry but only state a few tendencies indicating a change I hope will manifest itself ever wider. Many big computer game publishers seem reluctant to experiment as they publish mainly what has paid off in the past. The result is scarce innovation and only minor tweaks to the established form of punishing hardcore gaming although puzzle games and all sorts of so-called casual games are very much on the rise both in terms of market penetration, diversity and quality, attributable to many things such as the success of the Nintendo Wii video game console, shifting demographics in Europe [pdf] as well as the US, and the ubiquity of personal computers and access to the Internet.
This supposed cultural adolescence of computer games or their developers is changing, though, as the industry is forced to reinvent itself to keep up with and take advantage of the evolution of gamer demographics, which show that computer games are no longer exclusively, and far from even largely, played by children, as well as to keep up with and take advantage of the steep advancements in technology.
Intuitive interfaces are being developed in the field of human-computer interaction well beyond the already revolutionary controller of the Wii. Even research in brain-computer interfaces is coming along. Especially interesting is the technological progress in the power of computing, which at an exponential rate places today the capacity and speed of yesterday’s supercomputers in the hands of ordinary citizens in personal computers and by means of the emerging so-called cloud computing. The explosion of raw computing power available to be exploited by entertainment software will continue to feed the race toward ever more realistic computer visualisation, which according to computer scientist Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory will pass the Graphics Turing Test in the foreseeable future when computer generated images become comparatively indistinguishable from real images while also being interactive. Similarly, Tim Sweeney, computer game engine programmer of the Unreal Engine by Epic Games, predicts in an interview on game development and publishing website Gamesutra.com that computer game graphics will be completely life-like in 10-15 years. Together with advancements in physics simulations, artificial intelligence, semantic and natural language capabilities, and the expanding possibilities of tapping information by real-time data-feeds from endeavours such as weather forecasting, the global stock exchanges, traffic supervision, medical research, geological and astronomical survey, and statistics, all in all it is not hard to envision that computer games before long will exhibit a deep and multi-levelled realism that will enable them to deal delicately and indeed maturely with highly complex issues.
As computer games become increasingly complex both technologically and culturally it can be argued that some sort of vocabulary addressing their intellectual level of challenge is called for, which for instance considers their level of rhetorical, philosophical, or moral sophistication. Such a vocabulary would provide an opportunity for a positive perspective from which to analyse serious social potentials for computer games complementary to the purely negative perspective of moral rating systems.
Established moral rating systems of entertainment software such as provided by the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) and the American Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) work from the premise of protecting children from exposure to morally inappropriate game content. Both PEGI and ESRB provide warning of age appropriateness and of reprehensible content in the form of two complementary types of icons printed on products: age categories and concise content descriptors. Mutual for both organisations is that the intensity of the content as indicated by the content descriptors is relative to the age rating of the game. It is thus reasonable to conclude that moral rating systems such as PEGI and ESRB embody the perspective that computer games present moral obstacles to defend against. They arguably have their place for safeguarding children from exposure to inappropriate game content but they say little else of the qualities of computer games; certainly nothing of any constructive qualities.
Positive qualities, on the other hand, are the main subject of commercial game reviews such as published in myriad game magazines and websites. I will not describe any one of them in detail but merely provide a synthesis of their apparent objectives. Many such as the British computer game magazine Edge and on-line review sites such as ComputerAndVideoGames.com, GamePro.com, IGN.com and GameSpot.com conclude each game review by giving an overall point score, a one-line verdict, a few highlights of pro’s and con’s, or a rating in categories typically such as graphics, sound, gameplay, and replay value or lasting appeal, which often are contracted into the supposedly comprehensive category of fun-factor. Metacritic.com collects reviews and presents an overall metascore along with a user score. Mutual for the overwhelming majority of reviewers is that audiovisual production quality and engaging, fun gameplay are core issues of critique. They are seemingly informed by a naïve and hedonistic approach to the quality assessment of computer games with the narrow scope of evaluating the fun-factor of entertainment games.
There are certainly room for a framework complementing moral rating systems such as represented by PEGI or ESRB and the traditional reviews of entertainment value allowing for an evaluation of a much wider spectrum of computer game attributes other than fun-factor and how morally reprehensible a game is. No formalised qualitative rating criteria exist for literature, film or other art forms, although they too are often in reviews simplistically reduced to a usually single-digit numerical value, so why am I proposing one for computer games? I am not. But I will argue that for literature and film for instance there exists a well-developed, critical vocabulary and tradition, whereas for the much younger expressive medium of computer games two diverging vectors of critique exists, both with rather narrow critical objectives as I have indicated.
Between these two vectors lies a critique vacuum. A vocabulary and conceptualisation with which to describe constructive qualities of computer games other than some vague notion of fun is tentative and compartmentalised inside academia and closer to non-existent in the general public. With the growing popularity and complexity of entertainment software as well as of computer games and other forms of simulation with uses other than entertainment and with high social impact such as in science, learning, advertising and even politics, it is ever more pressing to skilfully be able to explore, describe, and explain their exact qualities as platforms for nuanced expression. Part of establishing such a critical vocabulary and conceptualisation is the necessity to expand public awareness not just of the capacity of computer games for sophisticated entertainment and artistic expression, but also to expand awareness of the potentials of digital media technology in general for communication, science, and the facilitation of democratic processes. The rest of this essay will continue to draw a rough sketch of such potentials.
COMMUNICATION
Computer games are composite artefacts boasting status as objects as well as processes. On one hand they are discrete program code on physical or electronic storage media, on the other they are dynamic possibility spaces for players to act in. They have much in common with simulations as have been explored [pdf] in some depth by computer game researcher and designer Gonzalo Frasca and game studies pioneer Espen Aarseth who argues [pdf] that computer games posses an “omni-potential” for representation and carry the status of “complex media machines” and that “the computer game is the art of simulation.” But what are these complex media machines? With the advent of the Internet and the digital so-called new media the word media have acquired diverse and many-levelled meanings. Media researcher Anja Bechmann Petersen explains in the article “Cross media som kommunikationsform” in På tværs af medierne (2007) that with the digital basis for media the possibility arises to simulate, incorporate and communicate with all known forms of media. And here we have the omni-potential of computer games for representation: the ability to span the entire range of symbolic media formats or media modalities such as text, audio, image, and video. In other words the computer game is a multimodal media product. As if echoing that notion, computer game researcher and designer Ian Bogost in Persuasive Games: the Expressive Power of Videogames (2007) proposes the new rhetorical domain of the procedural describing procedurality as “the unique representational property of the computer.” It seems that process can be added to the list of media modalities with the procedural symbolic format being the essential modality of not just computer games but that of any digital media.
Computer games as expressive works represent process with process. To play games require active engagement. To engage in the processes of a model system is to learn about the procedurally represented original system, whether real or imagined, in a certain light. This light is cast by the characteristics and behaviours included in or excluded from the model system. In this respect a computer game is existentially an argument for participation; a discretely biased argument, which the player unavoidably negotiates as part of playing.
Bogost’s mission is the proposal of the mentioned domain of procedural rhetoric. But in Bogost’s many analyses where he shows instances of procedural rhetoric he gives plausible conclusions but largely fails to provide the reader with the theoretical means to span the gap between them and the concrete elements of the subject games consisting of procedural, visual and audio modalities other than what is given by his personal interpretations. I propose the use of the model of argument developed by British philosopher Stephen Toulmin in The Uses of Argument (1959) to enable deeper and more precise analyses of computer games as simulative multimodal rhetorical artefacts.
The Toulmin model of argument provides a powerful tool for evaluating and making arguments. It consists of six elements: claim, data, warrant, backing, rebuttal and qualifier. Toulmin exemplifies the model with the following argument: I can claim that Swen Petersen is not a Roman Catholic and as grounds for that claim provide the data that Petersen is a Swede. Backing for that data would be that he was born in Sweden of Swedish parents and is a Swedish citizen with a Swedish passport. The warrant of the argument validating the step from data to claim as reasonable would be that Swedes can generally be taken not to be Roman Catholic. Such a warrant would need a backing such as “according to Whitaker’s Almanac, less than 2% of Swedes are Roman Catholic.” But with those two percent lurking in the shadows I need to provide the rebuttal that unless he is one of those two percent my claim is true. This prompts a qualifier tempering my claim so that now “almost certainly” Swen Petersen is not a Roman Catholic. Claim and data are usually the most prominent elements but the four others are of special interest when evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, and founding values of an argument.
The analyses of Bogost are also concerned with the underlying values of computer games. With inspiration in the concepts of metaphor and frame as developed by linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980), Bogost talks about the ideological frames of rhetorical expressions. Through multimodal patterns consisting of text, audio, image, video and structuring processes computer games provide configurative possibility spaces. The interplay of the actions of the game player with the various symbolic media formats can be seen to give life to intricate enactments of argumentation, which can be broken down into the elements of the Toulmin model. Though games are nonlinear or ergodic in nature the process of playing them can be interpreted as the discovery of or rather the active participation in completing nonlinear arguments, reassembling them in linear rows or hierarchies in the process of making sense out of, that is, forming and reforming mental models of the multimodal arguments. By means of intellectual and emotional investment the player discovers and assembles the arguments in interaction with the ergodic text and thereby makes a non-trivial effort prompting an attachment of value and thus attention to the arguments. These configurative possibility spaces where players by non-trivial effort interpret, complete and reinterpret arguments about the simulations themselves and about the real or hypothetical systems they simulate embody in this manner certain framings of those systems. Such metaphors can be expressed more or less abstractly and are at one end of the spectrum – with games such as Tetris almost completely void of significant cultural references – restricted to highly abstract symbolism and can at the other end even incorporate a self-focussing, ambivalent argumentation for its own confessedly subjective, particular framing. But on the other hand such sophisticated cultural metaphors embodied by the multimodal communication of computer games might falsely frame themselves as objectively true often with no more backing of their claims than the simulation itself. Politically charged games such as September 12th from Newsgaming.com, the Kuma\War series from developer and publisher Kuma Reality Games, or indeed the immensely popular recruiting tool of the American Army aptly named America’s Army seriously bring up this question if a given computer game acknowledges its own subjectivity and inevitable bias. If not then it would seem the application of the concept of propaganda could begin to show its relevance. This presents an absolutely crucial distinction, which not everybody that works with communication through computer games seems to acknowledge. Keith Halper, CEO of Kuma Reality Games, states in an interview on Gamesutra that “at the most basic level, there really is no difference between a political game and an educational one. Both are trying to teach the player about a process, an idea, or a concept, and by involving the player, games are an effective medium for doing so.” This point of view has the consequence of diluting and generalising the concept of learning to the degree where it no longer distinguishes between quantifiable facts and unsupported subjective evaluations.
With this I point attention to problematic issues concerning the use of computer games for communication, which might be solved by a framework that would distinguish between the overtly subjective message and the covertly subjective message expressing itself as objective fact.
Umberto Eco’s ideas of open or closed works and the model reader, which discriminates between a critical and a naïve communicative and interpretative strategy, Lakoff & Johnson’s concepts of metaphor and framing together with the Toulmin model of argument and the concept of metacommunication as pioneered by Gregory Bateson tempered with Aarseth’s seminal work Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997) and grounded for instance in Luciano Floridi’s work [pdf] on information ethics could all certainly produce interesting observations about how computer games and other sorts of digital – essentially simulative – multimodal media products communicate.
PROBLEM SOLVING
According to writer Lene Andersen in her book series and mammoth project of popular enlightenment, Baade-Og (2005-), three of western society’s great schemes or so-called meta-narratives – how a culture tells its own story – are presently changing fast: the Aristotelian binary logic behind Søren Kirkegaard’s question of “either/or” is being supplemented with the nonexclusive, fuzzy logic of an affirming “both/and”; linearity and the sequential is giving room for the exponential, chaos theory, emergent phenomena, and cut-up come to life; and somewhat polemically she states that the pacifying myth of the one, perfect hero that will save us all – be that in the shape of James Bond or Jesus – is changing into a holistic mythology or ideal of mutually beneficial, collaborative efforts. These three shifts in meta-narratives all seem to manifest in the sifting social and scientific usage of the Internet specifically with the open source movement, social media such as social networking websites, photo, video, and audio sharing, blogs and wikis, as well as the increasing use of simulations, which can provide a safe and powerful field for systemic experimentation.
At least since humankind began to formulate coherent hypotheses of causal relations have we in some manner been constructing, learning, and rearranging mental models of our world. Untested or unchallenged hypotheses discordant with reality but forcibly applied on large scale can have grim results as Europe’s history of totalitarianism among other things shows. Scientists have long been constructing mathematical models to predict natural phenomena such as apples falling to the ground and other approximate spheres moving through space. With the adoption of computers this practice has shown itself powerful beyond what could be imagined in the time of Newton or Copernicus. Simulation expands further than pure modelling allowing for user input, and the complexity and depth of computer simulation is unprecedented. An important aspect here is the means to interface such simulation. Director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology at UC Santa Barbara JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is working on one of the largest scientific and artistic instruments in the world, the Allosphere. This gigantic and immersive spherical theatre/instrument maps complex data as dynamic and interactive audio and visual representations onto its almost completely enveloping walls with its operator standing inside of it. It represents data in a novel way and assists scientists in finding solutions to even unthought-of problems. In an article on the website of popular science magazine the New Scientist physicist Dirk Helbing points out how the flow of city traffic cannot be sufficiently described by mathematical predictions but that computer models with millions of virtual vehicles interacting on realistic road patterns can discover potential problems before they occur in reality. Helbing goes even further and urges that “we need to bring together scientists from different fields and put together tools that can be used as a kind of wind tunnel for testing out social and economic policies.” Such simulations could provide virtual laboratories fed by empirical data and where elements and mechanisms of actual issues of all types and scales could be tried, adjusted, and retried a million times over in the time it would take – if at all possible – to perform one such experiment in the real world. And that at an infinitely lower cost in any measure, be it money, lives, or environment.
With the paradigm shift presently taking place on the Web such problem-solving simulations are no longer only for scientists and others with access to expensive supercomputers and proprietary or siloed data. Supplementing the World Wide Web of linked documents and sites for social interaction a new application of the Internet is emerging; a Web of open, linked data interrelating former information silos of isolated islands of data so they can be shared and used by anyone with a need or a use for them. The DBpedia project, for instance, is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and make it available as raw data. Renowned statistician Hans Rosling uses presentation software from Gapminder.org to produce a stunning visual representation of the real state of world poverty in a talk given at TED 2006. This free software can be used to produce beautiful and very clearly read animated and interactive representations of large data sets such as those made available by DBpedia. Users can play, stop, rewind, change the representational focus, and in other ways interact with these dynamically animated graphs, which provide a simple example of how simulations can constitute fields of experimentation. The nonprofit Gapminder was purchased by Google in 2007, which now incorporates the graph software as a free gadget for Google Spreadsheets and also makes it available through Google Visualization API. This data-centric application of the Internet is popularly referred to as the Semantic Web and has been given the marketing moniker Web 3.0. With this approach as embodied in the concept of mashups combined with the collaborative potential of social software, the Web seems to be moving towards the manifestation of an open, decentralised toolkit facilitating innumerable variations of such wind tunnels for testing out social and economic policies as called for by Helbing.
If “the medium is the message” as the famous aphorism of Marshall McLuhan goes then computer games and other simulative media products are fundamentally arguments for deliberative participation. The goal of such experiments could very well be to identify and/or decide on policy or the best course of action in a given situation possibly involving multiple parties with diverging means and agendas. And there are indeed already both governmental and private endeavours to support public participation through the Web. A Danish programmer has by own initiative created Folketsting.dk (Eng.: the people’s parliament) to do what the official website of the Danish parliament so far has not succeeded in: engaging the Danish citizens, which now has a focussed national blog-type platform to debate politicians, law proposals, and what goes on in parliament. Platforms for debate and argument are currently being refined to accentuate posts of more well-supported arguments. The MIT Deliberatorium, formerly called the Collaboratorium, is “a tool designed to enable better large-scale collaborative deliberation around complex topics like global warming.” It is being developed by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the goal of harnessing collective intelligence by providing a forum biased towards rational arguments rather than unfounded claims or emotional manipulation for structuring online debates. This tool for large-scale online deliberation is still under development and is in the words of principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence Mark Klein “currently based on a style of interaction that is somewhat formal and artificial” but it’s main strength is “to tap, in ways not previously possible, the skills and knowledge of large numbers of people in the service of solving complex multi-disciplinary problems” such as in political decision making processes. Also there are many other academic, private, and collaborative efforts to produce web-mediated discussion and decision making tools or methods aiming to save the world, raise productivity by getting and sharing ideas effectively, or to raise the quality of debate about public policy issues. And then there are those that aim to completely revolutionise the democratic process by technological means such as the submittal for The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the ambitious “EarthOS 1.0: Designing an Operating System to Govern Spaceship Earth,” which aims for world governance by participatory democracy or such as the related project Metagovernment, which is an avant-garde approach to collaborative deliberation with the political focus of direct democracy on any organisational scale applied through open source social software under the term open source governance.
One of the major problems in politics seems to be that conflicting parties often cannot or will not agree even on completely factual issues. This is a problem also treated in the commentary “From Karl Popper to Karl Rove – and Back” by controversial financial speculator George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. Soros argues that democratic politics leads to manipulation because the main goal of politicians is to win elections rather than arrive at a better understanding of reality. Therefore a strong commitment to the pursuit of truth is required as a new ground rule for political discourse. This is exactly where the emerging Semantic Web can help by providing a reference framework of verifiable and replicable data on which to mediate the collaborative deliberation as set forth by the above mentioned tools and methods. Furthermore it can be imagined with the progresses in high performance computing and in graphic and physical realism of simulations, as discussed earlier, that procedurally rendered 3D environments will be able to enact the mediating framework of data, the arguments of the debate, and their potential consequences in a virtual world-style simulation à la Second Life and thus clearly visualise and guide the collaborative deliberation.
A key condition for the utility of such a system in assisting the pursuit of truth as the criteria on which to judge political views would be the feasibility of providing a framework of mutually agreed upon and satisfactory corroborated facts via open data feeds. This problem points to the key issues of using simulation to say anything about real world matters. These include the acquisition of valid source data and the selection of characteristics and behaviours of the simulation, which unavoidably will produce certain simplifying approximations resulting in assumptions or biases within the simulation. These issues are likely to impact the fidelity and validity of any outcome of a simulation. But if these issues can be overcome simulations can act as disinterested third party mediation in negotiation and any other sort of single- or multi-party decision making or problem solving. A convergence of innovative technologies for entertainment, communications, and scientific problem solving can thus produce simulations for use as experimental mediators for finding non-zero sum solutions to complex and global challenges with computer-supported collaborative deliberation.
Linda Hilfling looks at
the paradox of extra-territoriality, with focus on the swedish
embassy in Second Life. Her analysis will comment on the relationship
between represenation, materiality and context and remediation. The
talk relates to the paper “For
any reason or no reason – on virtual (extra-)territoriality“,
published 2008 in ‘merge’.
The talk consists of three recorded soundfiles.
hilfling #1, hilfling #2, hilfling #3
Sofie Marie Høegh Nielsen is a danish art
historian and SL user. She will talk about the experiences of art in
a virtual world. She will disucuss the connection between the user
and the art work as related to the users experiences with the media.
The experience of an art work in a virtual world depends very much on
use of the technology and how users manoeuvre in the world. As an
inhabitant of SL you develop your skills to move around in world and
thereby your exploration skills. Høegh Nielsen will talk about
different skill-levels and user-abilities from a philosophical point
of view. Literature: Merleaut-Ponty: Phénoménologie de
la perception, 1945.
Høegh
Nielsen will also comment on the work of Antonia Low, which is
presented by the artist in the same event. With the work being a
scaffold, she would like to shortly present Martin Heideggers Theory
of the Ge-stell (german for scaffold). Literature: Martin Heidegger:
Die Frage nach der Technik, 1954.
Recording from Boom Pearls talk
In the Youin3D office in Berlin Joachim Stein presented a talk on a video about a courttrial, a collision between law and art, two systems that are very virtual in the sense they are based on rules.
Joachim Stein is an experimental thinker and artist, who challenges concepts of reality, play and work. He improvises and constructs narratives by doing what seems absurd and by using found situations and constellations. In 2007 Stein initiated and helped realize a TV documentary about people’s lives in Second Life. During Ars Electronica 2007 he provided workout, diet and medication plans that helped people achieve their Second Live avatar’s body in real life. In his latest work he used Second Life as a tool for re-enacting and filming of a court trial about a copyright case he had provoked by deliberately using and altering a digital map without permission.
Here’s a link to a talk he did at Pecha Kucha, Was ist Kunst? in relation to the court trial mentioned above.
Recording from Boom Pearls talk
Jan Northoff is one of the two founders of newBERLIN, a true to scale interpretation of the german capital in SL. After working with sculpture and massive installations in Real Life, he created a virtual city with a living community of Citizens Friends and Creators of the online international melting pot. So he also invites artists to catch up with the latest 3D realtime technology and online art scenes.
Jan Northoff has been an incredibly help in the process of realizing Boom Pearls in 2009. People connected to NewBerlin are helping out scripting and building in 3D which couldn’t be done in Real Life, and neither in SL, without help of high skilled people understanding how art works in a virtual world.
Interview with artist Jacob
Nielsen, about digital art. For now the interview is in danish.
JN Jacob Nielsen JP
Jon Paludan.
JP:
Min interesse for din praksis og viden om computervirus er i forhold
til hvordan kreativitet i online simulationer handler om passiv
accept gennem deltagelse, eller mere aktiv navigation igennem udbudet
af medier og systemsoftware. Jeg tænker især på
hvordan de adskiller sig fra det mediebillede der er idag, med
mulighed for kreativ udfoldelse som deltagelse i spil og andre
sociale online rum som Facebook og Second Life.
Hvordan er virus som dem du interesserer dig for sted for eksperimenter der ellers ikke kunne lade sig gøre?
JN: Den specifikke gren af computervirus jeg har
beskæftiget mig med, var specielt udbredt i starten af
halvfemserne og kan betragtes som en slags software hacking. Det
specielle ved disse vira var at de formidlede deres tilstedeværelse
på de inficerede computere, på mere finurlige måder,
end med deciderede ondsindede algoritmiske handlinger – som det
jo oftest er tilfældet i dag. Deres såkaldte payloads
iscenesatte irrationel funktionalitet, grafiske mutationer og
lignende effekter – ofte med et humoristisk præg –
og udøvede sjældent direkte skade på den
inficerede computer. De havde derimod karakter af at være en
slags semiotiske angreb, rettet mod den måde, computerbrugeren
så og forstod computeren via dens grænseflader. Min
fascination ligger i disse viras bestræbelser på at hive
tæppet væk under de gængse forståelser af
software. Hvor forestillingen om den kommercielle softwares neutrale
karaktertræk, vanligvis er metaforisk manifesteret i det
grafiske interfaces brugervenlige overflader, blotlægger
computervirussens indbrud i softwarens struktur den subjektivitet der
er indlejret i softwarens algoritmer; de påpeger at den måde
vi ser og forstår softwaren er en konstruktion. I mine øjne
har disse kreationer karakter af at være en slags digital
“Culture Jamming”. Min interesse for disse
viruskreationer bunder i at de i mine øjne repræsenterer
en anden tilgang til computermediet end den gængse i dag.
Udtrykker man sig via slutbrugersoftware, så er der defineret
nogle rammer som man udfolder sig i og med. Skaber man et kunstnerisk
udsagn indenfor disse rammer gør man det med andre ord
indenfor den algoritmiske konteksts præmisser. Computervirussen
er interessant fordi den netop søger at bryde med
softwareplatformens rammer og logik. Denne praksis forholder sig
altså til det medie den udfolder sig i på en meget
selvreflekterende måde.
JP:
Din interesse for hvordan kreativ brug af computere handler altså
om hvordan du syntes kunst gør sig bedst som en del af
samfundet, og hvordan afsenderen ser på hvordan et objekt
fungerer sammen med algoritmer eller hvilken kontekst det ses i,
altså hvorfor digital kunst er vigtig i samtiden – fx som
et afgrænset miljø?
JN: Den digitale kunst er vigtig i samtiden, fordi de digitale medier indtager en stadigt større plads i vores hverdag og verden. Derfor mener jeg heller ikke at det er interessant at betragte den digitale kunst, som et afgrænset miljø. De digitale medier er en del af vores kultur og fungerer i en vekselvirkning med denne. Den digitale kunst må derfor også være bevidst om den kulturelle kontekst software er blandet ind i og betinget af. Den strøm af visuel kommunikation vi omgiver os med i informationssamfundet, påvirker den måde vi forstår og afkoder billederne og verden på. Medierne afspejler med andre ord ikke udelukkende verden, men er ligeledes er med til at konstruere den. Vi bliver konstant bombarderet med billeder der forsøger at sælge os et budskab – i form af underholdning, reklamer og nyheder i en stor pærevælling. Jeg mener at et af samtidskunstens største potentialer er at den kan levere alternativer til massemediernes visuelle retorik, æstetik og logik. Den kan sætte spørgsmålstegn ved den måde vi forstår, afkoder, bruger og ikke mindst forbruger billeder på. Det kunstneriske udsagn kan potentielt åbne op for sin egen, billedernes og mediernes subjektivitet, hvorved den kan evaluere og genforhandle de systemer, magtforhold og formidlingsmæssige mekanismer, der helt grundliggende er indlejret i repræsentationer af virkeligheden.
I den forbindelse er noget af det interessante ved det digitale medie at det er eksekverbart, hvilket vil sige at det er et medie, som blander repræsentation og handling sammen. Det lader os udføre virkelige handlinger via mediet, med de muligheder og konsekvenser dette indebærer. Der er altså en umiddelbar forbindelse mellem repræsentation af- og handlingen i- virkeligheden. Et interessant spørgsmål er i den forbindelse i hvilken grad de digitale medier kan få os til at se og handle på bestemte måder.
JP: Du ser digital kunst som vigtig fordi den kan udfordre hvordan vi opfatter virkeligheden gennem medier, altså meget politisk i kraft af at vi bliver brugere med ret til at læse og bruge software som værktøj?
JN: Mediekunsten kan undersøge hvilket forhold der er mellem virkelighed og repræsentation, med en præmis der hedder at det givne medie lægger sin egen logik ned over det indhold der bliver formidlet. Det politiske findes så i at efterhånden som vores hverdag i stadigt store udstrækning er blevet infiltreret af digital teknologi, så lever vi i en verden, hvor tekniske, ideologiske og kulturelle koder ikke længere kan adskilles fra hinanden. Når vi f.eks. bruger Google, Facebook, Second Life osv. så er der en lang række interesser indlejret i den kode der driver maskineriet – det kan bl.a. være markedsøkonomiske eller ideologiske interesser. Samtidig har software en tradition for at fremstille sig selv som rationelle, formålsbestemte og neutrale redskaber. Der er med andre ord et misforhold mellem det vi som slutbrugere ser på skærmen og det der foregår bag skærmen. Tidens mest oplagte eksempel er jo Facebook, som er et glimrende redskab til blah blah og socialisering, men det er også en glimrende mekanisme til informationsopsamling, markedsanalyse og – i et paranoidt perspektiv – overvågning. Anskuer man software og dets grænseflader fra en semiotisk synsvinkel er det særegne så, at disse interesser, som kan være helt umulige at gennemskue på skærmen, er helt konkret algoritmisk defineret i programmets kildekode. Samtidig er denne kode som oftest behændigt gemt væk bag intellektuel ejendomsret. Så for at vende tilbage til dit spørgsmål – vi har som brugere tilladelse til at bruge de kommercielle softwareredskaber, men vi har ikke ret til at læse og forstå hvordan den i bund og grund fungerer og opererer, hvilket jeg mener er meget problematisk.
I et historisk perspektiv er det jo sådan at det at afkode og forstå computerens arbejdsprocesser var en hverdags beskæftigelse for tidlige computerbrugere, men undervejs i den grafiske brugergrænseflades udvikling blev det primært en aktivitet for softwareproducenter. Computeren har taget form som et medie, der nok giver den almene bruger et utal af anvendelsesmuligheder, men det er samtidig muligheder, der er låst fast i softwareindustrielle pakkeløsninger. Dette skift er tæt forbundet med massekommercialiseringen af computeren, som bragte et krav om brugervenlighed, og med dette krav forduftede idéen om brugeren, som én der programmerede computeren. Tidligere tiders mere utopiske forestillinger om et medie, der var fleksibelt – eller demokratisk – i brugerens mulighed for at modellere både form og indhold, bristede under fascinationen af letfordøjelige pakkeløsninger. Dette resulterede i en markant adskillelse mellem kodebruger og almen bruger dvs. software-producent og slutbruger.
Jeg kan godt lide når kunsten søger at nedbryde dette skel. Når kunstneren er en der betragter mediet som et materiale frem for et redskab. Det vil sige når den kunstneriske praksis bliver en undersøgelse af det materiale der hedder software – både i teknisk, konceptuel og kulturel forstand. Computerkulturen er ekstremt instrumentaliseret i dag og jeg mener det er et problem, hvis det kun er store kommercielle selskaber, der har mulighed og ret til at formulere sig via computerkode. Computerkode er jo potentielt et middel til magt og manipulation, og kan bruges og misbruges på et utal af måder. Tænk bare på Google der har defineret de algoritmer, som størstedelen af verdens befolkning benytter til informationssøgning. De ynder at beskrive deres system som objektivt, men det er noget sludder – algoritmer er helt grundlæggende en række subjektivt definerede instruktioner.
Det træk jeg finder interessant ved computervirussen forholder sig ligeledes til denne problemstilling, da man kan opfatte dennes indbrud i den kommercielle software, som et forsøg på at nedbryde skellet mellem software-producent og slutbruger. Viruskoden, som kiler sig ind og modificerer computerens operativsystem og programmer, rummer en insisteren på ikke udelukkende at udtrykke sig via den kommercielle softwares præformaterede indholdskanaler, men ligeledes gennem dets struktur og form. De tilkendegiver hermed en modstand mod at blive reduceret til passiv forbruger af færdige softwarepakkeløsninger.
JP: Som jeg forstår det ser du Second Life som et forsøg på at inddrage brugerne til at lave indhold, og give dem færre begrænsninger. Men ligesom i andre sociale online rum er det svært at undgå at begrænse brugerne eller indbyggerne som de kaldes nogle steder, fordi man simpelthen vil beskytte sine økonomiske interesser. På den måde bliver en virtuel verden mere industri end betydningsfuld mødested for folk verden over, og derfor er det problematisk at udtrykke sig kunstnerisk sådan et sted?
JN: Tjaa… noget af det jeg finder problematisk
ved at udtrykke sig kunstnerisk i dette medie er at det i mine øjne
først og fremmest er en underholdningsindustri og jeg mener
fundamentalt set at hvis kunst skal have nogen berettigelse i dag, så
skal den forsøge at være noget andet end
underholdningsindustri. Skaber man kunst i Second Life vil man
uundgåeligt bidrage til denne industri – på nettet
er opmærksomhed jo den vigtigste økonomi af alle. En
anden ting, jeg ikke er begejstret for med kunst i Second Life er
dens paralleller til den digitale kunsts historie. Op igennem den
digitale kunsts forholdsvis korte levealder er computermediet primært
blevet benyttet som et redskab i relation til værkproduktion og
præsentation. Det vil sige at mediet primært har været
benyttet til at skabe kunstneriske udsagn – oftest fiktioner –
der lå uden for mediets domæne. Der har været en
udbredt fascination af utopien om at bryde repræsentationens
rammer og begrænsninger ved hjælp af de nye teknologier.
Det har handlet om at skabe en fornemmelse af umedieret adgang til
det repræsenteredes niveau og i den forbindelse søge at
gøre mediet transparent – som man f.eks. så det
med virtual reality teknologien. For mig går der en lige linje
fra VR teknologien til virtuelle online verdener som Second Life og
det stejler jeg på, fordi jeg mener at vi nu er nået til
et punkt, hvor computermediet ikke bare er en eller anden
oplevelsesmaskine. Mediet er dybt involveret i vores hverdag og
verden og derfor finder jeg det også væsentligt mere
interessant når den digitale kunst retter fokus mod selve
mediet og den kulturelle kontekst det er en del af, end når den
søger at skabe virtuelle simulationer og fiktioner. Men det er
selvfølgelig også knyttet op på mine
smagspræferencer indenfor mediekunsten.
JP:
Kan du fortælle lidt mere om dem?
For mig er mediekunst en kunst der tager højde for at den udfolder sig i et medie. Det kan så være hvilket som helst medie – ikke kun digitale. Jeg synes det er interessant når kunsten tager sig ud som en undersøgelse af forholdet mellem form og indhold i medieret kommunikation – på hvilken måde blander mediet sig i det der bliver formidlet med det?
I den forbindelse kan man sige at min egen kunstneriske praksis er ret formel. Dette er igen knyttet op på den redskabsproblematik jeg tidligere har været inde på. For mig at se er der sådan en tendens til at opfatte computere og software som sådan nogle rationelle fasttømrede størrelser. Grænsefladerne forsvinder nærmest for os i vores daglige brug af computeren, fordi de er så velkendte og forudsigelige. Jeg kan godt lide at ryste op i forventningerne til maskinen og de betydningslag der er indlejret i dens grænseflader. Mange mennesker tror at det at programmere computere er ren matematik, men det er det jo ikke. Computerkode er et sprog. Den streng af binære tal der kører rundt nede i computeren er snarere et alfabet end en matematisk formel. Det er et alfabet med to i sig selv betydningstomme bogstaver 0 og 1 – betydningen opstår først når man kombinerer dem. Det specielle er så at det binære alfabet kan rumme alle mulige andre sprog og medier og at man kan eksekvere de formuleringer man konstruerer. Det betyder også at software i sig selv ikke er rationel eller formålsbestemt, den kan jo i princippet formuleres ligeså irrationelt og kryptisk som f.eks. et digt.
veronika kćr on roleplaying in murotima königreich.
Acting is about as Stanislavski would put it “Be like you were the evil Queen. Think to yourself what life did she live? (ie. What is her background story). How did her background impact her? How would she react to different things because of her background and so forth. Think like you would, if you were her, be her, live her and become her in the glimpses of role-play you do”. What kind of circumstances does she have. Is she rich, poor. Where does she live, does she have a land, people? What kind of lover would she pick? Does she want to be a killer or is she feeling forced into being a killer due to her background.
