omnivore /What Am I Doing

What is it that makes a good video game fun, and why do people keep coming back to the games they love? Classic and universally acclaimed games such as Ms. Pacman and Super Mario Bros. have only the barest of overt story lines, and rather crude mechanisms for generating graphics and sound. While graphics, sound and a developed story line are all indispensable elements in a game designer's toolkit, they cannot make a game on their own. It is meaningful play, colloquially known as gameplay, that mediates a compelling game experience, and this holds true across cultural and technological boundaries; from Soccer to Chess, to Monopoly and Bridge. I believe that a critical approach to this topic is crucial to the development of Interactive Art in general, because we need to be unambiguous about the importance of meaningful interaction in these experiences.

• My Experience:
• Music (Traditional and Electronic)
• Programming
• Theoretical Linguistics/Formal Rule Systems
• Video/Photography
• Relevant Work
• Modula (a modular synthesis interface designed in Max/MSP. Co-written with Duncan Malashock)

• Bixbyquest (a documentative text adventure game written in Python)

• Current project: Reflux (collaboration with Phoenix Toews)
• Older game systems have simple display systems that operate on abstract layers of sequenced, nxn pixel tiles

• Reflux will be a collection of programs and/or Jitter objects designed to allow the realtime analysis and transformation of representational elements in NES games
• Separating the structure from representation in classic games serves as a window into the complex interaction between these elements in creating meaning
• Reclaiming the Playable Game in Transformational Game Art
• Cory Arcangel (below) used Nintendo games as an intermediary medium for producing non-interactive or trivially interactive video works

• mmonoplayer (Kyle Buza) has built a Jitter external, jit.atari2600 that allows for so-called "virtual circuit bending" of Atari 2600 games in realtime

• For the most part, hacking these games in any interesting way results either in non-interactive media or an unplayable state
• My goal is to push beyond the postmodern cliché of technological subversion, using the ideas outlined above to create installation works that draw attention to the importance of game structure and gameplay in building meaningful interactive experiences.
• Intended Directions
• Experimentation with surreal and abstract modifications to game representation: in what ways would extensive representational modification alter a game's narrative, and it what ways will the gameplay maintain the meaning it imparts? In other words, how far can one go before a Pacman is no longer recognizable as Pacman?
• Social installation idea: navigational game such as Marble Madness controlled by automated formant analysis of a chanting mass of participants. By mapping "vowel space" to 2D space, collective participation in the game would require, above all, intense concentration and active co-operation between participants.

• Essentially a commentary on the common "meditative" themes consistent with this category of game, installation-specific game transformations and physical objects (gongs, bells, etc) would be integrated in order to bring these aspects of gameplay to the surface for extended contemplation.