October 1, 2004
code and creativity 3.0 report
The discussions were lengthy and inspiring at code and creativity 3.0 (participants included John Klima, Anne-Marie Schleiner, Alex Galloway, Ruth Catlow, and yours truly Mary Flanagan), hosted by Jon Ippolito and Joline Blais at the University of Maine. Conversations hovered around the idea of computer gaming and how gaming interfaces with / against larger political and cultural issues.
Each artist assembled showed work that subverted governmental or conventional game systems: hacking FBI monitoring (Galloway/RSG’s Carnivore), the latest US war in the middle east (Klima’s The Great Game), invading America’s Army (O.U.T. by Schleiner), reworking abstract war gaming through chess (Catlow’s Rethinking Wargames ), and changing game goals and storytelling conventions (Flanagan’s domestic and the RAPUNSEL project). Themes emerged about the importance of rethinking how games are played, how winning states or outcomes are created, and . I spent much of the weekend brainstorming a game focused on a game which could equally focus on collaboration and cooperation with Ruth Catlow, one of the founders of UK’s arts organization furtherfield. Her 3 player chess game, Rethinking Wargames, explores conflict resolution in a hack on a classic chess game –it calls for ‘pawns to join forces to defend world peace’. My game, called “Six Circles,” is a ‘now drawn out on a slightly used paper plate, soon to be a programmed” game… A single player against a computer or two players against/with each other must create circles out of simple shapes while fending off illness/negative pieces whose only desire is to spread throughout all the pieces. Working together and bringing resistance through crossing player pieces helps make the pieces more resistant to harm.
October 2nd, 2004 at 2:17 pm
Mary — I can’t figure out The Great Game. Can you offer any insight from the presentation?
October 10th, 2004 at 8:42 pm
Did anyone mention that in many two player games there are black & white pieces (examples off the top of my head, chess, go, and othello) which seems to smack of racism? (Catlow’s Rethinking Wargames reminded me of this.)
Loved the post!
October 11th, 2004 at 10:26 am
Suggesting there are racial undertones to black/white pieces seems to be projecting modern US/European racial politics where they don’t really make sense. Go has used black and white pieces since before there were either “black” or “white” people in Asia at all!