ISEA Istanbul presents Demand Player Sovereignty Workshops by Third Faction :: September 10-13, 2011: See times and venues here (presenting for the first hour live in Istanbul and then continuing the program in World of Warcraft. To participate please join us on Demon Soul server (US) and message Myriammoore on the Horde side or MataHari on Alliance).

Demand Player Sovereignty or DPS is a movement in civil disobedience led by Third Faction. Our goal is to gain greater autonomy for the players of the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft not only to support the diverse and creative play styles that are created by the players, but also to earn the players a voice to change the rules of the game itself. Continue reading

neomaflux by Troy Innocent + Indae Hwang :: Part of UNCONTAINABLE: Terra Virtualis — Curated by The Australian Centre of Virtual Art (ACVA)
 @ ISEA2011 :: September 14 - October 14, 2011 :: Nuru Ziya Suites, Istanbul.

noemaflux describes an act of shifting perception. In this work it is centered on the experience of an augmented reality to enable new experiences of urban space and different ways of seeing the city. This experience is constructed via a network of relationships that connect AR markers, urban space, generative writing systems and abstract virtual spaces.

Players use mobile devices explore streets and laneways and find nine signs integrated into the urban environment. Continue reading

Turbulence Spotlight: Six Sided Strange by Jason Nelson [Needs Speakers/Headphones]:

Six Sided Strange is a net-artwork series built from unsolvable Rubik’s cubes and hidden narratives, from pixilated game character collages to abstract streams of color and lines. The cube is central to how we organize and understand. It is a puzzle of unsolvable junctures, a humanistic shape created to order and organize. Six Sided Strange disrupts the cube, wandering inside/around the recombinatory playground of Rubik’s 56 squares, exploring how images and designs relate to narrative. These are interactive/dynamic sculptures, brief storylands, and all manner of wonderments. There is nothing to win, but then again there never was. Continue reading

“… Shadow Cities isn’t just the future of mobile gaming. It may actually be the most interesting, innovative, provocative and far-reaching video game in the world right now, on any system.” - Seth Schiesel, Brave New World That’s as Familiar as the Machine It Fights With.

From their website: Shadow Cities is a location based Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game on your iPhone. The battlefield of the game is the cities across the world - Literally every city on the planet will become part of the game.

In Shadow Cities you play on the streets of your home city or jump into new cities where you have friends to continue your conquer. You fight Spirits, cast spells, collect Energy and build the best strategy for your team to win.

Jeff Koons Must Die!!! The Video Game from Hunter Jonakin on Vimeo. More here.

Returning Fire: Interventions in Video Game Culture — Written, Directed & Edited by Roger Stahl :: with interventions by Anne-Marie Schleiner (Velvet-Strike), Wafaa Bilal (Domestic Tension), and Joseph DeLappe (Dead in Iraq):

Video games like Modern Warfare, America’s Army, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield are part of an exploding market of war games whose revenues now far outpace even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. The sophistication of these games is undeniable, offering users a stunningly realistic experience of ground combat and a glimpse into the increasingly virtual world of long-distance, push-button warfare. Far less clear, though, is what these games are doing to users, our political culture, and our capacity to empathize with people directly affected by the actual trauma of war. Continue reading

SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology, MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies and MIT Music and Theater Arts present Dance Technology and Circulations of the Social, Version 2.0 :: April 21-23, 2011 :: Media Lab, 6th Floor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 25 Carleton Street, Cambridge, MA :: free and open to the public.

What is dance technology? What are its international implications and applications? How are artists, researchers, audiences, and game players engaged in experimentations in motion capture, digital film production, or live performance that place dance and other stylized forms of movement at the center of inquiry? And how do technologies of dance circulate changing concepts of the social? Continue reading

Source Code :: until April 10, 2011 :: Modified Arts, 407 East Roosevelt, Phoenix, Arizona.

Source Code reintroduces Jon Haddock’s Isometric Screenshots to Phoenix after ten years of extensive exhibition nationwide. Alongside this acclaimed series, the video game art of Jason Rohrer (New Mexico), Paolo Pedercini (Pittsburgh), and Carlo Zanni (Italy, 1975) will be shown in Phoenix for the first time. In each artwork, the intimacy in gameplay and subjects developed by the artists draws on the collective experience of mass media and daily life.

In Jason Rohrer’s Passage, personal journey and navigating the obstacles of life and relationships are explored in what the artist calls a “memento mori,” (translated in Latin as, “remember you must die”). Continue reading

Naked on Pluto is a Multiplayer Text Adventure on Facebook. When you enter the game, you find yourself on Pluto, in a city under the rule of Elastic Versailles revision 14 (EVr14), an Artificial Intelligence functioning as an entertainment colony. It is the Las Vegas of the Solar System, a true paradise for consumers and corporations alike.

Versailles is a capital of convenience, a non stop 24hr zone of endless pleasure, provided by Pluto’s huge entertainment corporations. Amuse yourself and your friends for hours on end collecting meaningless tokens, talking to our bland robots, or you could always just relax and take in the staggering conformity of your new home. Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: Playing Duchamp by Scott Kildall:

I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists. — Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp is widely recognized for his contribution to conceptual art, but his lifelong obsession was the game of chess, in which he achieved the rank of Master. Working with the records of his chess matches, Kildall has created a computer program to play chess as if it were Marcel Duchamp. In a series of open challenges, he invites all artists, both skilled and unskilled at this classic game, to play against a Duchampian ghost. Continue reading