Chris Joseph

Gamer Theory
McKenzie Wark

Date: Tuesday 20th March
Time: 18.00hrs
Room: RHB 137
Place: Goldsmiths College
Free and all welcome.

In a world which seems increasingly game-like, what is the cultural function of actual computer games? McKenzie Wark argues that our game-like everyday life, in which work is a rat race, politics a horse race, and the economy a casino, does not actually follow the rules of the game it so vigorously espouses. The playing field is not level, competition is rarely ‘perfect’. Computer games appear in relation to this experience of everyday life as the only place where the rule actually work, where play comes close to perfection. Thus games are the utopian version of everyday game-play, and can be the basis of a critical theory of everyday life in an imperfect ‘gamespace’.

Beside talking about the content of his new book, Gamer Theory, Wark will also talk about its form. It began life as a collaborative web based text in a specially designed web interface. The writing of the book was in itself a kind of play between its originator and the readers who became collaborative co-authors.

McKenzie Wark is the author of Gamer Theory (Harvard University Press), A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard) and several other things. He is associate professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research and culture and media at Eugene Lang College, in New York City.

This lecture is organised by the Centre for Cultural Studies.
With thanks to the Institute of Digital Art and Technology
http://www.i-dat.org/ and http://www.kurator.org/

Call for Applications: Two Merit Scholarships available for emerging or mid-career artists to take a two-week course with artists E.G. Crichton and Susan Working at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado. The course will take place August 13-24, 2007.

These awards are designed to help artists interested in combining video with objects and space. Students will learn about the technologies behind creating embedded video works and video installation and will discuss a critical context that informs these works. Scholarships include: Full tuition, lodging and three meals a day for the duration of the course. Winning applicants must provide for their own travel and studio fees.

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Become a reviewer for Furtherfield.org
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Furtherfield receives regular submissions from artists and groups from all over the world, inviting us to feature and review their projects. We have an excellent team of reviewers working with us at the moment. Yet, because we are receiving more innovative and high quality media artworks from different cultural contexts, than we ever have before, we are finding it hard to keep up. So, now we need even more reviewers.

We welcome contributions from all kinds of writers - but would especially value bi-lingual reviewers who are able to introduce work created by artists in non-English-speaking cultures.

We are also interested in people who understand and know net art, software art, social networks, live net art, live Internet tv, open source, tactical media, art blogs, net films, media art connected- self institutions, psychogeography, activist games, media art related exhibitions online and in spaces, and related conferences.

As a reviewer you will be asked to select from these works and contribute to the context of what is being created and write about why it is relevant. You will also have the option of seeking out and writing about other works that you personally think should be seen on Furtherfield.

If you possess knowledge and enthusiasm for any of these subjects, are able to write and communicate clearly;-) and are interested in being part of a explorative group, that is growing daily as an adventurous, networked and mult-platformed community in its own right. And like us, are passionately and critically engaged in investigating the constant shifts and reinvention of the creative, digitally related vista as we know it; we welcome you aboard…

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contact - marc garrett:
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Other projects related to Furtherfield:
http://www.http.uk.net
http://blog.visitorsstudio.org
http://blog.game-play.org.uk
http://www.nodel.org (with many others)
http://netartfilm.furtherfield.org
http://blog.furtherfield.org
http://www.furthernoise.org

Bob Stein (from the Institute for the Future of the Book) gave a great lecture in the IOCT this week that Bruce Mason has blogged here.

Aside from the obvious enthusiasm Bob has for thinking about the issues around how people read and interact with multimedia texts, I was struck by the latest version of his multimedia authoring software, Sophie - “designed for reading and writing next-generation electronic books”. Although Bob only had a short period of time to demonstrate how Sophie works, it is clear that the software will be much much easier to use than (say) Flash, despite using similar authoring concepts (e.g. timelines). There has clearly been a lot of intelligent thought put into the interface: Sophie uses contextual menus that popup when you need them, rather than the omnipresent toolbar across the top; files can be easily drag-and-dropped into your ‘book’, etc.

I was initially a little surprised that Sophie produces its own standalone files rather than being a browser-based software, but there are lots of benefits to this, not least that you aren’t subject to the kind of changes that IE7 implemented that rendered many flash movies inoperable without a laborious permission-setting process.

It is difficult for any multimedia authoring software to be both instantly accessible to new users and still have a wide range of features and possibilities, but Sophie seems like a fantastic step down that path.