Choice Blog 3

Choice Blog 3 - eTeam

While at the Off the Grid exhibition at the Neuberger I became particularly interested in the work of the group Eteam. Eteam is a collaboration between Franziska Lamprecht and Hajoe Moderegger (I found it pretty difficult to find information about the team itself, there website only provided information about their work, sometimes only pictures). They are interested in exploring themes of land ownership, value, investment and function. eTeam has been know to purchase random plots of land on eBay and then work with the residence of the area to understand and research the aforementioned themes. "Once they have located their lots, they activate the possibilities that are inherent in the site and turn them into temporary realities". They keep track of their findings on individual websites that they create (most projects have their own websites). They document carefully and fully what people are doing with their projects. (http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/web/DAW/Participants07).

The piece that was exhibited in the Off the Grid show was the “International Airport Montello”. This project is about a small and remote town in Nevada. The team worked on a 10.5 acre plot of land, (that the purchased for a small fee) on an abandoned airstrip. The piece shows the impact of a fictional airport on the citizens of the town. The artists worked very closely with the residents of the town and ended up with a personal cross section of the town. The piece is presented as a large video installation. I thought it seemed like a freeform documentary. From what I saw it lacked narrative and showed the towns people waiting for an imaginary plane while displaying their personality.

Another interesting piece that eTeam has created is the Second Life Dumpster. In this piece they purchased an area of land (4096 square meters) in Second Life where people could drop off unwanted items from their inventory. It was a public place that was open to all avatars and was left for one year. They set up a camera that took pictures every minuet of everyday thought the project. The goal of this project was to understand what kinds of items people throw away, what it means to own something in 2L, what it means to own land and what would the other avatars reactions be to the site. They documented what was happing in the dumpster in the form of a day to day database. Each day told a story of what was happing in the dumpster. They also recorded what they were doing in other areas of Second Life.

Another piece by eTeam that I find particularly interesting is "Face Trace" 2005 which is very different from their work with land concepts. This project lacked a formal description but its function is obvious. It seems to be a live installation. There is a computer program which traces a persons dominant features and projects neon lines around the person. A copy of the lines without the person is displayed on a computer screen. What results is a cartoonish image. It seems like they have kept track of the three days the piece was up on a website specifically made for the project.

Face Trace

A still from 2L dumpster in the artist database from November 19, 2007

International Airport Montello

http://www.meineigenheim.org/ (I think this is the groups official website?)

Choice Blog 2

Choice Blog 2 - Online Gaming Addictions

At first I thought that online gamming addictions were ridiculous but after reading about toxic immersion in Castronova's Synthetic Worlds and discussing the issue in class I became more interested in this unusual phenomena. The thing that I found most intriguing was the man who played an online game for 80 hours with even eating or going to the bathroom. I came to understand that these synthetic worlds are very important to people because it is an easier way to communicate with and to meet people and it gives you the opportunity to become something bigger than yourself like a wizard or warrior.

A game becomes addictive when the game becomes your life, "The game almost ruined my life. It was my life. I ceased being me; I became Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North. Thinking of it now, I almost cringe; it's so sad." This came from an article about Dennis Bennett whose “Everquest” addiction interfered with his education, marriage, and being a father. In this case the game because much more important to the player than his own well-being. He preferred being his charecter rather then himself. People have even been divorced because of excessive game playing (www.news.com/2100-1040-881673.html).

How do you know if you are an online game addict? I found a list of common warning signs of addiction which include:

Inability to stop the activity

Neglect of family and friends

Lying to employers and family about activities

Problems with school or job

Carpal tunnel syndrome

Dry Eyes

Failure to attend to personal hygiene

Sleep disturbances or changes in sleep patterns

Feeling empty, depressed, irritable when not at the computer

Craving more and more time at the computer

All of the above symptoms are very unpleasant but often do not help an individual notice their condition. It is thought that there are underlying psychological issues that players have that facilitate their addictions to online games. These issues are often socialization problems. Addicted players sometimes do not even realize that they have a problem because they are so immersed in the games.

(http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jenchan/OnlineGamingAddiction.html)

While doing research on this topic a word came up, “heroinware”. This is a name given to game like “Everquest” and “WOW” which show just how addictive these games can be. Games become addictive because the chat functions offered by the games and the games competitive nature. These online chats become just as fulfilling as a real life conversation and once you have completed one mission you are eager to accomplish the next one (http://www.news.com/2100-1040-881673.html).

There have been four cases where online game addiction has ended in death. Two of which have happened in China, South Korean and India. All of the deaths were caused by exhaustion due to playing the game for extended periods of time. In the case from India, a 21 year old college student played the game daily for three months and died of exhaustion and starvation. Online gaming is such a problem in China that they have passed legislation called the anti online gaming addiction system in 2005 that limited rewards in the game after three hours which is supposed to make the game less rewarding. A video is included at the end of this blog, it shows how they are trying to remedy this widespread problem (Wikipedia).

Along with these cases of internet abuse there was the man that we talked about in class who may have committed suicide because of the game he was involved with. Or that player who committed murder because another player sold his sword (Synthetic Worlds). These occurrences just show the level of dedication and addiction that some of these players have. To these people games become more important than real life and they become sucked into a fantasy world.

Websites Used:

http://www.news.com/2100-1040-881673.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_addiction

http://www.igda.org/articles/austin_addiction.php

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN6vr91wQ21&feature-=related (really bizarre) A video showing just how seriously online gaming is affecting China and they ways that the attempt to solve addiction.

Event Blog 3

Event Blog 3 - Off the Grid        

 On April 21, 2008 our class attended a tour of the Off the Grid exhibition in the Neuberger Museum.  The tour began with a short presentation given by the museums curator.  She focused on the artists Trevor Padlen, Louis Hock, Nina Katchadourian, and Eteam.  The exhibition focused on the theme of things and people that are considered to be Off the Grid.  Being off the gird means being self-sufficient and not relying on public utilities (wikipedia for help).   Many of the pieces also focused on the environment.  Other works focused on paranoia, risks, environmental risks and the apocalypse.  I will talk about the artists that I remember because I lost my notebook which contained these notes.

 In the case of Trevor Paglen, he investigated black operations in the military.  Military operations are considered off the grid because the military relies on itself and keeps most of its information confidential.  He used GPS, photography, and telescopes to look at military installations and to track military planes.  He worked with other people to create a collective intelligence.  There was an online community of plane spotters.   The results of this project were attractive and almost distorted pictures.  This project required a lot of research, which was a common theme for all of the pieces in the exhibit.  (http://www.paglen.com/)

     

Other artists chose to take a different approach.  Louis Hock made public installations, documentary, video research, and public performances.  He is very much interested in boarder politics, especially between California and Mexico.  An interesting piece that was shown in the presentation was a water fountain that he had built to connect two groups of people that had been separated by a fence.  While people drank from the fountain they could look at a person on the other side of the fence.  He also had another project involving an art rebate to migrant farmers.  He gave farmers $10 as an art rebate.  He showed the people who received the money on a website.  I think it is funny that the people who gave the grant for the project demanded there money back because what Hock had done was not considered art. The following picture is a complex geometric design made out of baskets the hold strawberries.  The installation that was actually shown in the museum was called "Feral" 2004 and is a video a border patrol police officer signaling cars as he is pulling over suspicious cars (http://louishock.info/)

  

Other works that were pertinent to the Computers and Culture course were the pieces done by the eteam (that was shown in the presentation before the tour).  A piece that was shown in the curators presentation was the Second Life dumpster.  In this project people are able to dump whatever they do not want into a designated area in Second Life.  They purchased 4096 square meters of space in the game.  The artists said "We see “Second Life Dumpster” as a continuation of our interest in the value of property, possibilities of land use, (web) site specifity, ownership and investment. The project will be transported into “still life” in form of snap shots and text."  The piece that was actually shown in the museum was the "Internation Airport at Montello".  It was a video installation about how the residents on the rural town interacted with the land.

Nina Katchadourian's pieces utilized natural elements and systems to create her work.  She examines the natural systems of animals and tries to alter them.  In one project she corrected sloppy spider webs.  One of her featured projects was about caterpillars.  In another piece she magnified a video of an ant colony and put the image on a television monitor.  The result looked like TV snow (I really like this piece).  This piece showed the combination of the nature and technology in a strange way.

Other pieces were about environmental risk and emergency situations.  There was a series of pieces that were transistor radios made of found objects like first aid kits.  There was another piece that calculates the risk of things like food poisoning and natural disasters in the areas where the piece is located.  Even though some of the predictions that the system made seemed ridiculous, it still made me a little nervous.

http://www.meineigenheim.org/)

(http://rhizome.org/editorial/fp/blog.php/493) 

Choice Blog 1

Choice Blog 1 - Economy of Neopets

After reading Synthetic Worlds I became aware that an online game that I play can be considered a synthetic world. This book also made me think a lot about the importance of the economies of synthetic spaces. Neopets is a good example of a complex economy in an online game.

Neopets was created in 1999 and is primarily used by children. (I don’t really care that I’m probably too old for the game but its fun). I see some element of toxic immersion in this game because I often find myself play for a few hours when I'm supposed to be doing homework. The game takes place Neopia a land filled with strange and magical creatures. Neopets is a free game where you own a pet. Many of the pets have little or no resemblance to real animals. You can have a house and even own your own store. The game is based on primarily based on traditional capitalism. The game even has its own stock market, which I know next to nothing about.

The point of the game is to play games in order to obtain Neopets currency called Neopoints. You can use these Neopoints to buy things for your pet like food, clothes, medicine, toys and pet pets (pets for your pet). The amount of Neopoints you can earn depends on the level of difficulty of the game you are playing. You can also complete missions that fairies ask you to do (I only play the games because they are easier). The ultimate point to the games is to have your pet battle other users pets (this is something I know very little about because I do not play competitively and my pet has been at level one since I chose it). To battle you need to buy weapons, shields, healing stones, potions and you can even purchase strength.

You can store the Neopoints that you earn in the National Neopian Bank. If you leave all you money in your inventory it can easily be stolen, so the bank is a good idea. It functions similarly to a real bank. You store you money there and you can collect interest on it. You can pick an account type based on the initial deposit you make, the higher your account type, the more interest you are able to collect. You also have an interest rate .

A picture of my Neopet and the Neopian National Bank page.

User market place and examples of food and prices.

Another important element of Neopets is the ability to create you own store. Once you have collected enough Neopoints you can open up a store with your extra items. Items in Neopia have recommended values set by the creators of the game. In a store you can create your own prices. The other day my Neopet became infected with a disease called Chickaroo. The only way to cure the disease was with an herbal omelet. This is considered a rare item that you cannot find just lying around. The game suggested that the item cost 300 Neopoints (NP) but ended up costing 10,000 NP. Neopia does have stores which quickly go out of stock and often contain few items at a time. You need to go to a store own by another user. They sell there products at a much higher rate than at the stores. You have no choice but to buy from other users. The user shops in a way set a monopoly in the sense that you can only buy from them and they control prices. You still have the option of shopping around users stores but they all have similarly high prices.

I think another important point of interest is the ways in which the Neopets comapny makes their income. Aside from the online game, the Neopets company is currently selling Neocash (this is a very new development) which you can use to purchase items in and outside of the game. You can buy exclusive items with this real money. Neopets also has a line of video games for various game platforms. They also sell plush toys and other toys. The website also has many advertisements throughout the site. Some companies that have ads on Neopets are Capitol One, Verizon, Microsoft, McDonalds, Virgin Mobile, various brands of cereal and Target most of which are targeted towards children. The ads appear on almost every page and even appear in the game windows. Some games are also promotional. I remember a Limited Too matching game and another game for some fast food chain (I can't find an example of this right now, this type of game changes).

Event Blog 2

New Media Lecture - Torsten Burns

On Wednesday March 5^th there was a New Media Lecture given by Torsten Burns. Burns is a video artist who is currently a visiting professor for this college. He makes highly saturated and fantastic videos, which include themes such as collaboration, space training, medicine, future technologies, the human body and zombies. In addition to his video art Burns also works with sculpture and performance art. Much of his work includes complex and futuristic computer graphics.

He has done residency work in both EYEBEAM and The Experimental Television center in New York. He has also won awards and participated in many media festivals with his works. The videos were often visually interesting and disturbing at the same time. I found some of the content in the videos hard to understand and I often was not sure what the point of most of their videos were.

Collaboration plays a very important role in most of Burn’s work. He influenced the audience to one day go to the Experimental TV center so that we could work and learn with other people (This is actually something that I would like to do one day). It is so important to him that the lecture was entitled “Collabotronica”. He collaborated with many other artists for various fields. Her works with dancers, his own family, videographers, and visual artists for his work. One can see a blending and different points of view for many different art fields in his pieces.

Another theme that I noticed in Burn’s work is the interactions between the human body and technology. This theme was displayed with his explorations into a re-imagined space-training program. The videos within this theme reminded me of the cyborgs from Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto. In this series of work Burns dressed up in modified space suits and created activities that seemed like space training. One video showed a man who was attached to a small rocket launcher. It was like the launcher was a part of him and he was part man and part machine.

Burns’s uses highly saturated colors and bizarre digital effects to create his videos. The colors in his videos are so distorted and unpleasant, that they are almost sickening. He also shows disturbing imagery and strange happenings. There are people spinning around and dancing in strange ways. Much of what was shown seemed very unnatural and far removed from the realm of the natural world. I felt uncomfortable during most of the lecture.

Another important aspect of Burn’s work is his incorporation of his videos and the music that he chooses. I found it amusing that one of the songs that he chose was “Barbie Girl” by Aqua. All of the songs seemed synthetic and deeply involved with technology. The music complimented the videos and made them seem more strange and sometimes reminded me of a video game. Even thought much of what Burns created did not actually function, the music made it seem more real.

I had mixed feelings about this lecture. Though I did not understand the point of some of the works, his videos were visually appealing and contained some compelling content. It was interesting to see someone else’s unique view of what they think about technology.

For more information and examples of work go to:

http://mysite.verizon.net/holyokeresearcher/

http://holyokeresearch.blogspot.com/

Event Blog 1

Event Blog 1 - Amy Franceschini

On February 13, 2008, a New Media Lecture was given by Amy Franceschini. Franceschini is an accomplished artist, professor, web designer, inventor and activist. Her work focuses on notions of the environment, research, sustainability, and the conflict between humanity and the natural world. She founded the Futurefamers (1995) and Free Soil (2004) organizations and is deeply involved in the activities of the Green Party.

Some of the works shown that I found to be particularly interesting were her Botanical Gameboy (2004). In this project Franceschini attempted to power a Gameboy system with lemons. The project would required thousands of lemons and about five acres of land to function. Though this project ultimately failed Franceschini still tried to look at the positive. Another major part of her presentation involved the process of learning. She said that failures are also positive and they are an essential part of learning. I think that this project is important because it is an interesting juxtaposition of the natural and the man made. It is also a telling thing that these two did not go together in this project.

Another major aspect of Franceschini work is research. She worked with a New Media learning resource center called Playshop in 2004. This was a free program in which anyone could be involved. During this time Franceschini and other groups of people would examine how we use technology and the history of computer gamming. She likes collaboration because it gives you the opportunity to take advantage of other peoples strengths and learn things together. One of the projects that she worked on during this experiment was the Fingerprint Maze in 2004. In this collaborative project a system would be used to map out one fingerprint so that it could be used a s a game. The ridges and contours would be translated of your fingerprint would be translated into walls in a game environment. You could travel around your own fingerprint. Again this project shows a fusion of technology and humans.

Some of her more political works included a website where you could deface the current president to see what people were thinking. This website was set up as a visualized discussion board and an online community. People had their own avatars and the site influenced sociability and community. All the avatars were placed on a continuum so you could visually see the discussion.

Many of Franceschini other pieces are heavily involved in Internet based work. Her Victory Gardens project in 2007 examined the role of gardens in people’s lives. She modeled this project after Victory Garden of the World War II era. In this project she influenced people to make there own gardens. She tracked these people on her website and she archived the data that she collected on www.sfvictorygardens.org. This project was able to create an online community that was bringing people from remote locations together.

I enjoyed this lecture and would like to see more of Franceschini’s future pieces.

Used for further information:

http://www.futurefarmers.com/

www.sfvictorygardens.org

Reading Response 3

Discussion Blog - Robert Gapinski and Sara Greer

I was planning to write a dialogue post in response to a blog that was posted on this week's readings. However, there was no blog on which to respond. By Sunday evening, I couldn't wait any longer. Of all the articles we've read this semester, The Star Wars article was my favorite. I identified with it became I am an amature videographer myself. The following is a response to Robert Gapinski's 4/21 blog on the middle portion of the Castronova book. Sara Greer has posted about this blog as well.

Before reading this book, I didn't give much thought to synthetic environments. When I thought of WOW and people with WOW addictions, I thought it was really stupid. This book has changed my mind and I now have a better understanding of the importance of these complex worlds.

Like Sara, my personal experiances in the kinds of synthetic worlds are limited. However, from time to time, I do play in the virtual community Neopets. (Unlike other worlds, I think this world would be very hard to become addicted to because a strong social element is absent. )I do see elements of real life in the game. There is a rather complicated economy, a fluctualting "stock market", currency, you can have your own house, and you can run a store . One of the main points of the game is to collect many items to sell in your store and and take care of your pet. These experiances have helped me to understand what the Castranova book was trying to say. Virtual worlds definately do immitate and have implications in the real world.

I do agree that the lines between virtual and real life are constantly becomeing increasingly blured. People have a lot of time and effort invested in thier avatars and their synthetic world of choice. The virtual world can easliy become an important part of ones life (when this becomes and addition is called toxic immersion). People can take these games so seriously that they will kill someone for stealing their sword or refuse to leave their world for 80 hours and die of exaustion. Iwas interested in a portion of Robert's blog where he talked about how a tramatic event in a synthetic world like rape or theft could effect a persons RL interactions and relationships.

I think that the "membrane" metophor was a very good description of the sparation of virtual and real worlds (Robert's chosen quotes on this were insightful and useful in understanding this idea). There is a sparation between virtual and real worlds but there is a constant exchange or information and items between them. You can have a profession soely based on the synthetic world that you are part of. People build up charecters and collect gold that they will sell to people. People will pay up to $500 for a higher level charecter (pg 149). This is a clear blending of the virtal items, money and eBay which are in RL. This is not suprising because some people take the game so seriously.

Another way that I have seen this blending of RL and virtual worlds is in advertisment. In Neopets there are real advertisments every where. There are ads for McDonalds, Limited Too, and childrens TV programs. Also, Neopets has just added a feature where you can buy Neocash (which you pay real money for) to buy real and virtual items through the game. It is a constant reminder that there is a real world out there and it is bleeding into the game.

Explore:
http://www.neopets.com/