[syndicate] Re: <nettime> Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games
bobig
bobig at bobig.com
Mon May 20 14:51:53 CEST 2002
ok it's for you !!!
amitiés
http://www.bobig.com/forvelvet/
http://www.bobig.com
" Free your art and your mind will follow "
<========>
----- Original Message -----
From: "anne-marie" <amschle at cadre.sjsu.edu>
To: <nettime-l at bbs.thing.net>; <syndicate at anart.no>
Cc: "bobig" <bobig at bobig.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 9:40 PM
Subject: [syndicate] Re: <nettime> Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality
Games
> chere bobig,
>
> si vous plais exposez quotidiennement quelques des images de
> velvet-strike dans les jeux en réseau (team fortress, etc) To see you
> expose them daily on online games would be beautiful! c'est un bon
> travaille--spreading love tendrails in the world.
>
> Merci beaucoup!
> Velvet-Strike Team
>
>
>
> >http://www.bobig.com/tag/
> >
> >amitiés
> >
> > http://www.bobig.com
> >" Free your art and your mind will follow "
> > <========>
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "anne-marie" <amschle at cadre.sjsu.edu>
> >To: <nettime-l at bbs.thing.net>
> >Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 1:17 AM
> >Subject: <nettime> Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games
> >> (War Times From a Gamer Perspective)
> >>
> >> When I first heard about the attacks on September 11, just a fraction
> >> before I felt a wave of sadness, a nauseating thought passed through
> >> my mind. What terrible timing-with this president in office, perhaps
> >> even more so than previous ones, he could use this event as
> >> justification for dangerous actions on a global scale and at home. A
> >> few weeks later, I left for Spain to give a workshop on modifying
> >> computer games. When I arrived the next morning at the workshop I
> >> learned that the U.S. had declared war on Afghanistan. The workshop
> >> organizers had installed a new demo of "Return to Castle
> >> Wolfenstein", a remake of an old Nazi castle shooter game, on all the
> >> PC's. The sounds of the weapon-fire echoed off the concrete walls of
> >> the workshop warehouse space--what I once approached with playful
> >> macho geek irony was transformed into uncanny echoes of real life
> >> violence. At that moment, that room was the last place I wanted to
> >> be. Joan Leandre, (one of the other artists presenting at the
> >> workshop), and I discussed creating some kind of anti-war game
> >> modification.
> >>
> >> Not long after the Sept 11 attacks, American gamers created a number
> >> of game modifications for games like Quake, Unreal and the Sims in
> >> which they inserted Osama Bin Laden skins and characters to shoot at
> >> and annihilate. Since the Sims is not a violent game, one Osama skins
> >> distributor suggested feeding the Sims Osama poison potato chips. If
> >> you cant shoot him, then force him to overeat American junk food, to
> >> binge, death by over-consumption, death by capitalism. (The Sims is
> >> essentially a game whose rule sets are based on capitalist
> >> algorithms, although according to the Sims designers these rules are
> >> balanced other factors.)
> >>
> >> The most disturbing Osama mod I saw was on display in October 2001 at
> >> a commercial game industry exhibit in Barcelona called Arte Futura.
> >> To give the exhibition organizers the benefit of the doubt, they were
> >> probably unfamiliar with urban American ethnic cartography. In this
> >> mod, Osama is represented as an Arab corner grocery story owner, as
> >> is common in many tough inner city neighborhoods in North America.
> >> The goal of the mod is to enter the corner liquor grocery store and
> >> kill the Arab owner. (At the time I saw this I has just gotten an
> >> email from my sister in Seattle describing how she and other college
> >> students were taking turns guarding mosques from vandalists.)
> >>
> >> Harmless release of tension or co-conspirator in the industrial war
> >> complex? Playful competition or dangerous ethnic and gender politics
> >> of the other? The first computer game, created at MIT by Slug Russell
> >> and other "hackers", was called "Spacewar", an outer space shooter
> >> influenced by cold war science fiction. Since Spacewar, computer
> >> games evolved and bifurcated into multiple genres, some related to
> >> war and fighting simulation, (and using technology occasionally
> >> directly funded by the US military), and others less so. (RPG, Real
> >> Time Strategy, Shooter, God Game, Action/Adventure, etc). In the
> >> 1990's, within the shooter genre, characters evolved from white guy
> > > American soldiers into oversize funny male monsters of all shapes and
> >> stripes and pumped female fighting machines. It seemed to be about a
> >> kind monster fantasy workshop, humorous macho role-play, taking
> >> things to their frag queen extremes. Within online Quake and game
> >> hacker culture, gender restrictions and other boundaries opened up.
> >>
> >> Then beginning with Half-life and continuing with shooter games whose
> >> alleged appeal is "realism", a kind of regression took place. In
> >> terms of game play games like Half-life are universally seen as
> >> advancements. Yet in Half-life you are only given one white guy
> >> everyman American geek guy to identify with. And all of the NPC
> >> researchers and scientists in the game are male. Half-life remaps the
> >> original computer game target market back onto itself, excluding all
> >> others and reifying gamer culture as a male domain. (Not that I
> >> didn't play Half-life but I would have enjoyed it more if I could
> >> have played a female character.)
> >>
> >> The trend towards what male gamers call "realism" solidified in 2000
> >> with the Half-life mod "Counter-Strike". Counter-Strike is a
> >> multi-player game where you choose to play on either the side of a
> >> band of terrorists or on the side of counter-terrorist commandos,
> >> (all male). The tactics of the terrorists and the counter-terrorists
> >> are essentially indistinguishable from each other. (Perhaps this
> >> similarity between terrorist and counter-terrorist is telling about
> >> the current situation in Israel and other places where the "war on
> >> terrorism" has been forged for a while or is only just beginning.)
> >>
> >> People who love Counter-Strike have told me that the appeal is the
> >> "realism"-its not about "silly" muscly monsters bouncing around space
> >> ports like in the Quake Series -in Counter-Strike you play
> >> realistically proportioned soldiers and commandos killing each other
> >> in stark bombed out bunkers. When you are killed in Counter-Strike
> >> your character really "dies" instead of immediately regenerating.
> >> (Although you get to play again in a few minutes as soon as the next
> >> round begins.) So "realism" is not about faster game engines,
> >> graphics processing and "photorealism". It is about reproducing
> >> characters and gameplay environments that are considered closer to
> >> "reality" and farther from fantasy.
> >>
> >> But now, in the wake of Sept 11, are these games too "real"? Or is
> >> the real converging with the simulation? Who defines what is real?
> >> According to an email rumor, President Bush recently approved of a
> >> deal between an American television network and the US military to
> >> create a series of wartime docudramas of US soldiers fighting the
> >> "war on terrorism" abroad. The news section of the TV network was
> >> apparently miffed at the arrangement because they had been unable to
> >> gain access to reporting on the war in Afghanistan. (Recall in
> >> Orwell's 1984 the merging of state controlled war time news and
> >> docu-fiction.) The trend in brutal reality TV, beginning with popular
> >> shows like Cops, and continuing with a slue of reality game shows
> >> like "Survival" is another field of convergence.
> >>
> >> You are for or against us, you are with us, "the one", or you are
> >> with the enemy is the underlying logic of the West, as I understood a
> >> talk by Marina Grzinic at an international cyberfeminist conference
> >> in Germany in December 2001. (Pre-axis of evil.) Although computer
> >> games replicate this binary competitive logic maybe there is
> >> something ultimately subversive in the knowledge that it is only a
> >> game, that at any moment you may switch sides with the "other", you
> >> may play the terrorist side in Counter-Strike. But reality games
> >> pretend to erase this awareness. And if you are going to converge
> >> network shooter games and contemporary middle eastern politics into a
> >> game, (Counter-Strike), then you leave out a number of complexities
> >> such as economics, religions, families, food, children, women,
> >> refugee camps, flesh bodies and blood, smell etc.
> >>
> >> Maybe the problem is that convergence with "reality" is happening
> >> with the wrong game genre. Instead of replicating the binary logic of
> > > the shooter genre, of Cowboys and Indians, of the football game, if
> >> the US government borrowed tactics from real time strategy gamers or
> >> RPGers, we might be looking at a different global response. (But then
> >> again given who our leadership is now, its unlikely he is capable of
> >> the intellectual planning required of a strategy gamer.) "Winning" or
> >> advancement in massively multi-player Role Playing Games like
> >> Everquest is enhanced by strategically building social bonds amongst
> >> players. And strategy games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer,
> >> while directly enacting tactics of imperialist colonialist
> >> expansionism, at least take into account other factors in addition to
> >> military might.
> >>
> >> After playing Counter-Strike for a couple weeks I must confess it
> >> incorporates social maneuvers beyond shoot and kill, (and I must also
> >> confess to enjoying many aspects of the game--I have actually always
> >> enjoyed shooters.) Team play and communication between members on
> >> your side are complex, including live voice radio, and a number of
> >> coded chat "smileys" and automated radio commands that take some time
> >> to learn. Formulating strategies is also necessary for survival, as
> >> in other network shooters. As a Counter-Strike newbie I was sometimes
> >> even able to solicit help from my enemies, indicating a clear
> >> awareness of the game as fictional play space. Some of the combat
> >> environments are quite beautiful. But I still am critical that this
> >> domain, the network of thousands of international Counter-Strike
> >> servers spanning Taiwan to Germany, has been reified as an
> >> exclusively male "realistic" combat zone. (You can hear live audio
> >> voices of male players on many servers.) I am also disturbed that the
> >> binary logic of the shooter is being implemented on a global military
> >> scale.
> >>
> >> Personally I would like to see computer games move towards fantasy,
> >> away from military fantasy which pretends to "realistic". I like
> >> fantastic environments where there is more room for imaginative
> >> habitats and characters. Japanese games for children and adults are
> >> engaged in this undertaking, filled with curious animal Pokemon
> >> creatures, Robo-cats, transformers, Anime people, monsters, demons
> >> and fairies, of all genders. I identify more with these characters
> >> than with counter-terrorist or terrorist soldiers and they are what I
> >> want to be my reality. Reality is up for grabs. The real needs to be
> >> remade by us.
> >>
> >>
> >> About:
> >>
> >> Velvet-Strike is a collection of spray paints to use as graffiti on
> >> the walls, ceiling, and floor of the popular network shooter
> >> terrorism game "Counter-Strike". Velvet-Strike was conceptualized
> >> during the beginning of Bush's "War on Terrorism." We invite others
> >> to submit their own "spray-paints" relating to this theme.
> >>
> >> The Velvet-Strike Team:
> >>
> >> Anne-Marie Schleiner opensorcery at opensorcery.net
> >> Joan Leandre retroyou at retroyou.org
> >> Brody brody at tmpspace.com
> >>
> >> http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/
> >>
> >>
> >> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> >> # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> >> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> >> # more info: majordomo at bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg
body
> >> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at bbs.thing.net
> >>
> >>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>
> -----Syndicate mailinglist-----------------------
> Syndicate network for media culture and media art
> information and archive: http://anart.no/~syndicate
> to post to the Syndicate list: <syndicate at anart.no>
> Shake the KKnut: http://anart.no/~syndicate/KKnut
> no commercial use of the texts without permission
More information about the Syndicate
mailing list