Photo by Marek Kapolka, courtesy Mojang.

The differences between interactivity and agency aren’t entirely clear, but one way of looking at it is to see an interaction as an atomic element–one action and one reaction–and agency as the sum of an agent’s potential actions. More important, though, is to distinguish the aesthetics of interactivity and agency from the aesthetics of non-interactive elements within a video game. When creating an interactive system, there are necessary non-interactive elements that deliver information about the state of the system to the player. In a game, these might be avatars showing the position of the player characters or health bars displaying their physical state. These non-interactive elements have their own aesthetic and can contribute significantly to the overall feel of a game, but they do not necessarily indicate the level of agency for players.

In digital video games, the distinction between interactive and non-interactive elements is understood, respectively, in terms of “gameplay” and “visuals,” “graphics,” “sound,” etc. It is generally accepted, among gamers, that gameplay has a preeminent position among the other facets of a video game. A game that has very airy and lighthearted visuals can still feel claustrophobic if interactive player agency is too limited. The other facets are nice. They are a spectacle and can keep a game intriguing, but they are not a game’s artistic raison d’être. In other words, artists working in different media can express non-interactive ideas better than with video games, whereas artists working in the domain of games have the unique ability to advance ideas about interactive player agency.

Photo by Marek Kapolka, courtesy Nintendo

Most gamers are not self-declared artists, however, and they do not share the same artistic goals. Games qua games exist as a platform on which to learn how to better manipulate and conquer the system of play. They provide an environment with rigidly defined rules, clear winning and losing conditions, and a limited set of potential actions that players can take. The players’ goal is to become better at winning. The design ideal is to constantly present challenging problems that players must surmount, so that as they defeat the challenges they are bathed in exaltations.

To some video game artists, however, this myopic focus on challenge is asphyxiating. Although games are unique in their ability to provide this kind of confrontational, direct challenge, there is another potential paradigm–to explore agency in terms of interactive aesthetics as an end in itself, rather than as a means to challenge players. Simply acting within a video game can provide an immense amount of aesthetic pleasure, even if those actions are not challenged by the hostile requirements of an antagonistic system or directed towards the completion of a mandated task.

The aesthetic potential of undirected interaction has been proven in several existing video games: for instance, jumping around aimlessly in the castle garden of Super Mario 64; carving out mines to build castles in Minecraft; or, driving around in Grand Theft Auto. Each of these undirected interactions, even if taken outside of the larger context of the game, would be interesting and engaging. However, for some reason when artists do venture to make a video game that sets aside the larger narrative and stacked challenges, such as in the case of Noby Noby Boy, critics accuse them of making something pointless, which raises the question: what’s the point of a goal-driven game?

By Marek Kapolka

Scene one: silhouettes of a high-rise building skyline by night, blue smoke clouds, and a small group of people with Mickey Mouse ears who are playfully swiping or, perhaps, actually punching each other. Above, the light beams of military helicopters are circling coolly and quietly.

Another scene: two watchtowers on the beach, a romantic sunset in front of which the watchtower guards wave to each other and look deeper into each other’s eyes through binoculars. Between the towers, someone is hauling a lifeless body away. On the horizon, a warship is cruising sedately through the ocean, underscored by the staccato of Morse code signals.

A further scene: night reigns and between the camouflaged bushes and trunks, several human silhouettes are discernable, pulling on a rope. Perhaps they are in an adventure camp–the jungle rhythms and the mating calls of a tropical frog seem to suggest so–and is it a big stone, a whale, or a tank tied in the rope that they are pulling. Under a tree, two reservists seem to have been waiting a long time for their deployment; a sea of emptied beer bottles has accumulated around them. An ostrich nearby is sticking its head in the sand; as usual, a cripple is struggling away on his crutches; and further groups of human figures pass by, carrying each other away or hitting one another.

Indeed, Paz develops her dramaturgies as a collection of isolated combinations of reality and fiction. The mysterious mood of the scenes from IS THIS A GOOD DAY TO START A WAR (2009)–an exhibition with several videos and large scale panoramas–arises from Paz’s unconventional use and superimposition of documentary references and images with the aesthetic subjects and motifs of animated film, which assume a contrasting function.

Image courtesy of the artist.

The scenes allude to social and military events without explicitly specifying any particular incident. Since Sharon Paz is an Israeli artist, it is a logical step to interpret her work within the very specific political situation of her country. Where else can one watch warships and warplanes from a beach towel and afterwards go to work or to the shopping centre? The everyday, the holiday, and the constant potential for political and military emergencies merge into one layered existence in Paz’s homeland, producing a pervasive tension from which the search for entertainment offers an escape. Juxtaposing the cut-out silhouettes of sparring figures with Mickey Mouse ears and military equipment, Paz aims to imagine a collective memory, while also referring back to reality by incorporating documentary photography from the Palmach archives. Indeed, there is a specific political undertone to her work.

Founded in 1941 by Hagana, a Jewish underground organization in the British Mandate of Palestine, the Palmach was a paramilitary outfit that specialized in covert military training. The Palmach was relatively small, but played an important role in Israel-Palestine relations. Its members were trained in basic military capabilities, which qualified them for positions of command in the subsequent Israeli armed forces. The photographs from the Palmach archives show young men and women training in attack and defence exercises in disturbingly cheerful camps.

These photos were the inspiration for IS THIS A GOOD DAY TO START A WAR. However, Paz is not interested in simply reproducing or re-staging these photographic documents; she is interested in understanding how people manage to accept war as part of normal life. In the composition of images, choreography of action, and sequences of movement, her layered video art resembles a computer game more so than photographs. For example, computer game figures repetitively simulate activities, programmed in micro-movement loops, until they get an action command from a player. Waiting for that command input, the figures seem to be holding themselves in permanent readiness for (violent) action. They are the perfect reservists, so to speak, or witnesses whose endlessly repeating micro-movements have neither reason nor purpose: these are movements that go nowhere, movement for movement’s sake. While the fairytale ambience à la Lotte Reiniger gives an almost childlike, gaudy, cuteness to the figures, their performance, which follows the logic of a computer game, reinforces the aspect of constant simulation. Hilarity creeps into the work due to the absurdity of this permanent escalating simulation. Still, one cannot be quite sure about the actual aggressiveness of the silhouette figures. There are several astonishing examples of commercial computer games that are beamed into the market and transform young people into cold-blooded amok runners. It is exactly this situation that interests Paz–virtually arming people against perceived threats–and the possibility that eventually this rehearsed violence will be useful.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Paz hits the nail on the head with the title: IS THIS A GOOD DAY TO START A WAR. The question seems absurd, at least in Europe, which according to its own self-conception waged its last war more than 60 years ago. Israel, on the contrary, is a country which has been tangled up in half a dozen warlike conflicts over the last few decades and perceives itself to be encircled by enemies. Things are different there, and perhaps people really do ask themselves some mornings, before taking their children to kindergarten, whether someone has not deemed today the day to start the next war. Military logic creeps into everyday life in Israel. Citizens must be prepared for the outbreak of war at any time. Hence, any day could be a good day to start a war. When I called Paz shortly after the outbreak of the Gaza attack in December 2008 to discuss whether or not I should postpone my planned visit, she showed concern about the calmness with which Israelis were carrying on with their normal lives. However, with the title of her work, Sharon Paz summarizes an attitude that is not exclusive to Israelis. It is no different from when the German army mission in Afghanistan staged a peace mission. Citizens in many parts of the world consider the next war to be completely unavoidable and, as a result, mentally prepare for it.

Alongside the use of Mickey Mouse pop culture iconography, cut-out silhouettes from early cartoons, and computer game aesthetics, a formally striking aspect of this video artwork is the slide-like ordering of scenery into panoramas that are traversed by the eye like a sequence shot in a film. In the foreground and background, various small fragments of the action are installed. The panoramas displayed in the exhibition follow a very similar principle and aesthetic. The narrative fragments of the works are reminiscent of romantic paintings, as well as the photo wallpaper developed by contemporary designers. Paz succeeds in keeping her complex worlds of layered aesthetics and histories formal and yet transparent enough to accommodate photographs inspired by the Palmach archives, other war imagery from documentary and fictional film epics, and, ultimately, the private image banks of observers.

By Dörte Ilsabé Denneman

Willard McCarty has been contributing papers on the subject for years (a monograph too). Under the earlier appellation, John Unsworth has advised us “what is humanities computing and what is it not.” Most recently Patrik Svensson has been publishing a series of well-documented articles on multiple aspects of the topic, including the lexical shift from humanities computing to digital humanities. Moreover, as Cynthia Selfe in an ADE Bulletin from 1988 reminds us, computers have been part of our disciplinary lives for well over two decades now. During this time digital humanities has accumulated a robust professional apparatus that is probably more rooted in English than any other departmental home.

Digital humanities, which began as a term of consensus among a relatively small group of researchers, is now backed on a growing number of campuses by a level of funding, infrastructure, and administrative commitments that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Even more recently, I would argue, the network effects of blogs and Twitter at a moment when the academy itself is facing massive and often wrenching changes linked both to new technologies and the changing political and economic landscape has led to the construction of “digital humanities” as a freefloating signifier, one that increasingly serves to focus the anxiety and even outrage of individual scholars over their own lack of agency amid the turmoil in their institutions and profession.

Whatever else it might be then, the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally accustomed to, a scholarship and pedagogy that are collaborative and depend on networks of people and that live an active 24/7 life online. Is that not something you want in your English department?

From http://mkirschenbaum.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/kirschenbaum_ade150.pdf

By Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

I met Beatriz da Costa over the summer of 2010 while she was an artist in residence at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA.  At the time, da Costa was working on finishing up a project creating an iPhone application that would allow users to look at information about the endangered species found in the United Kingdom. She was looking for an assistant to help her track down the immense amount of information required for the application.

The project was to go in conjunction with an installation project she had done at the John Hansard Gallery.  This installation included a number of specimens that were on loan from the Natural History Museum in London and the Horniman Museum that were “regional taxidermed specimens currently being under threat of extinction.” [i]

SG – How would you describe your work?

BdC – I am not tied to any specific medium and the topics I address vary. Over the past five years, I have been very interested in interspecies relations though, and all of my projects have somehow circled around that subject.

SG – One of your latest works deals with making an iPhone application for endangered species. Could you explain how this idea came to be? What do you hope it will accomplish? Do you think it was has been successful?

Endangerd Species Finder - iPhone App

BdC – I was working on an installation project, called “A Memorial for the Still Living,” commissioned by The Arts Catalyst in the United Kingdom (UK). As part of that project, I worked with the collection curators at the Natural History Museum and the Horniman Museum in London to display specimens of endangered species endemic to the UK. I was particularly interested in confronting visitors with the sole remaining mode of relating to these species once they have become extinct–a formal, museological research display that’s no longer an encounter between one living entity with another. However, I wasn’t quite satisfied with just leaving it there. I also wanted to find a way to encourage visitors to go outside and engage the still living counterparts of these specimens. That is were The Endangered Species Finder came in.

The Endangered Species Finder is a smartphone application that, in its initial version, allows users to geo-locate themselves in relation to known habitats of UK-based species under threat. It provides both images and textual information about breeding habits, migratory patterns, and the currently understood reasons for why and how a particular species has become endangered. [Furthermore,] it directs users to known habitats and provides identifying information, since many species are quite widespread and simply navigating a person to an approximate region would not be enough. With The Endangered Species Finder, I am interested in getting users to see for themselves, outside of the context of a museum or gallery, the places where various species struggle to survive.

The application is designed so that it can easily be read while in transport–on a plane, train, bus, car, or subway–and then tested once users arrive at a given location. It can be used in a variety of settings, [whether] people are interested in learning more about the species under threat within their own neighborhood or while on nature trips and family vacations. Whatever the chosen setting, the goal of the project is to help assist in creating encounters between endangered species and humans in the effort to help produce awareness and potential for public action.

At this point, I cannot say that the project has been entirely successful. The main reason being that simply not enough people are using the application yet. However, I received a lot of interest from people in the United States to build a version for the American context (the current one was specifically designed for the UK). In fact, it is a group of researchers from Stanford University who would like to collaborate and develop this next version together. I feel confident that we will get there. The Endangered Species Finder UK was the first release. There are more to come.

SG – Much of your work is interested with environmental and biological issues. Where did this interest originate?

BdC – I was interested in political issues surrounding “new biology.” I worked on a number of projects addressing transgenic organisms and things just developed from there.

da Costa’s work on transgenic organisms led to her exhibit, Invisible Earthlings in 2009, and was a study on the link between humans and microbes­, members of the lived non-human worlds that are not recognized as social actors within their urban environments. The project sought to show the interactions we have, consciously and unconsciously, with the lived world.

Her work is evocative in the way that it addresses environmental issues through art and make the repercussions of human influence more accessible to people. It is at once shocking and inspirational.

www.beatrizdacosta.net

[i] “Beatriz da Costa,” A Memorial for the Still Living, http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/memorial.php (accessed February 21, 2011).

By Sara Gevurtz

– Barnett Newman, Selected Writings (1953)

Artists entering online virtual environments that offer the ability to create three-dimensional objects in space, such as Linden Lab’s Second Life, encounter a set of materials, forces, and interactions unlike those that they encounter in the physical world. These artists are faced with an immediate dilemma: whether to expand their current material art practice into the virtual realm; or create a new art practice based on the unique characteristics of the new virtual environment. In essence, whether to “keep a foot in the real world” by expanding their artistic vision into the new environment, or to fully embrace an alternative existence in an unfamiliar metaverse and develop a new artistic vision that fully integrates and reflects that existence.

Artists who choose the second alternative, to create a body of artwork that is “native” to the three-dimensional virtual environment, are literally inventing a new visual art paradigm with rigorous disciplinary principles to make it possible. This work, which comprises what could be called a “native” or “vernacular” art practice, is ultimately conceptual rather than material.

Oberon Onmura "Storm Cells"

Artists seeking to create an effective body of work within this context, along with an identifiable visual idiom, are finding ways to encode meaning in the virtual environments’ unique characteristics by consciously exploiting the unique capabilities of those environments, and often by actually integrating those characteristics into the work itself.

American minimalist artist Donald Judd wrote about the new installation work in the 1960s that:

Selavy Oh and DC Spensley at Brooklyn is Watching

In the physical world, artists have many different materials to work with (clay, stone, paint, chalk, fabric, metal, etc.), each material having a set of effective techniques for conversion into art. By contrast, in virtual environments artists have one material to work with–the prim (primitive object)–but almost incalculable ways of manipulating its form and behavior. The multiple components of the art discipline that is developing in 3D virtual environments necessarily derive from that premise.

First and primarily, artists working in virtual environments must be comfortable manipulating, combining, and rotating three-dimensional objects directly within the virtual space (if possible), and using various three-dimensional rendering programs on their computers. Next, any artist intending to use textures must develop some familiarity and skill with image processing programs and image file formats. And, if intending to texture sculpted prims, must be able to map those images onto three-dimensional shapes using UV maps and other tools. In addition, artists seeking the ability to control the behavior of objects, or to make them responsive to various forces and entities within the virtual space must gain some familiarity with scripting, which can in itself become a serious discipline. Other useful skills include audio editing and processing for artists interested in using sound in their work; video and still image capturing and editing to document and exhibit the work outside of the virtual environment; real-time motion capture techniques for artists interested in using avatar animations in their work; and so forth.

I propose that a distinction be maintained between art that is “native” or “vernacular” to 3D virtual environments, and art that is first created in the physical world and then imported into virtual environments for display. Exciting developments in virtual world art making occur only when the art making process–and all the discoveries artists make during that process–manifests fully within the virtual environment itself. Additionally, I feel that the losses experienced in the exchanges between environments are so great that artworks transformed for viewing outside their respective “native” environments sustain damage to the extent that they literally can no longer be seen, and so are not appropriate for critical appraisal or any kind of meaningful discussion.

In drawing such a distinction, like Judd stated in the 1960s, I do not claim that artwork made in online virtual environments constitutes some kind of movement or direction. I would claim, however, that a specificity of differentiated art practice is developing based on a discipline that is unique to and closely correlated with online virtual environment experiences. If we consider those experiences, when embodied fully by participants, as constituting a kind of “post-human” awakening, where we embrace “the [liberating] possibilities for disembodied communication and exploration presented by cyberspace”, then artists will be more prepared ” … to think carefully about how these technologies can be used to enhance human well-being and the fullness and richness of human-being-in-the-world …” as they go about their business of creating new ways to make and exhibit art.If we consider those experiences, when embodied fully by participants, as constituting a kind of “post-human” awakening, where we embrace “the [liberating] possibilities for disembodied communication and exploration presented by cyberspace”, then artists will be more prepared ” … to think carefully about how these technologies can be used to enhance human well-being and the fullness and richness of human-being-in-the-world …” as they go about their business of creating new ways to make and exhibit art.. In these virtual environments, art making becomes at once a discipline wherein agency exists and artists seek to “get clear of these forms” left behind in the physical world they also inhabit. And in the same sense, a new critical practice, solely focused on the unique characteristics of online virtual environments and on the art made there seeking to “get clear of these forms” must arise if meaningful discourse about “native” virtual art is considered imperative to its ongoing development.

By Oberon Onmura

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