Exploring the Zone of Alienation

Please, allow me to indulge myself. Let me tell you a tale about a book, a film, a series of video games and what is perhaps the world’s eeriest man made disaster area. I’ll even throw in a bit of media theory. Let me tell you about the Zone of Alienation.

Following the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor station in 1986, a 30 km exclusion zone was established around the plant to ease the evacuation of civilians and prevent others from entering the highly contaminated area. Despite being a horrible example of technology gone awry, this Zone of Alienation, as it’s come to be called, has acquired almost mythical properties. Mankind attempted to control a mysterious, invisible force and failed. The crumbling architecture and abandoned machinery bare silent witness to this failure even today. As a tale of human hubris, it bears a striking resemblance to the story of Icarus’ burned wings, only with less feathers and more concrete. One can even go so far as to say that the Zone as a whole is a direct manifestation and perhaps permanent reminder of the failed Communist experiment.

Though it might seem obvious that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is a fertile breeding ground for the imagination, the idea of an invisible, unknowable force infecting the land already resonated within the former Soviet Union. The 1972 science-fiction novel Roadside Picnic, written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, describes the existence of a mysterious quarantine zone. An area where the normal laws of physics seem warped and sometimes completely broken. Most likely extra-terrestrial in nature, this zone is filled with strange objects and materials utterly alien to mankind. Though cordoned off by the military and regularly examined by researchers, the zone is also routinely raided by ‘stalkers,’ desperate individuals who crawl through the zone’s muck, hunting for alien artifacts and hoping to sell them on the thriving black market. Though the zone still bears traces of human habitation – abandoned houses, factories, railways – it has become something else entirely. The land itself has become poisoned and lethal. Like ants and forest animals confronted with the remnants of a roadside picnic, mankind simply cannot fathom what has taken place inside the zone. As with the real Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, the zone described by the Strugatsky’s was seen by some as a metaphor for the entire Communist system. A system that had proven to be hazardous to its people as well as its lands.

The story doesn’t end here, though. In 1979 Andrei Tarkovsky directed a movie called Stalker. Loosely based on Roadside Picnic, the movie tells the tale of a stalker as he guides a professor and a writer through a mysterious zone. Tarkovsky’s presentation of the zone is strikingly minimalist. Long, meandering takes that pan across the still landscape, sparse dialogue and an atmospheric musical score lend the movie an otherworldly feel. The zone’s deadly anomalies are never actually seen, but the ruined industrial landscape combined with the stalker’s reverence for its power make the zone feel authentic. This is an area that can break a man if he doesn’t obey its rules and treats it with respect. The danger is real. Over the years many rumours have surfaced pertaining to the actual locations depicted in the movie. Some said that it was actually filmed in the areas surrounding the real Chernobyl plant. The movie, however, was shot on location in Estonia. In a curious blend of reality and fiction, the film reels containing the first version of the film were destroyed due to the dangerous chemicals that saturated the area. The film crew themselves were also effected. Many experienced illness and even cancer due to their time spent filming on location. Like the fictional stalkers, they had risked too much and the zone had changed them.

The actual event of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is still felt throughout the modern day Ukraine and Belarus. Confronted with the Zone of Alienation, nearby inhabitants reached out towards the compelling stories of the fictional zones depicted by the Strugatsky’s and Tarkovsky. Soon, real life stalkers ventured inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone risking health and freedom to loot whatever valuables were left behind during the evacuation.

The mythology surrounding the Zone of Alienation, already as vibrant as, say, that of Area-51, received a new impulse in 2007 with the release of the computer game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl by GSC Game World. This game fuses the fictional zones of Roadside Picnic and Stalker with the myths and locale of the actual Chernobyl exclusion zone. Presented as a first-person shooter, the player assumes the role of a stalker and hunts for artifacts, fights mutant wildlife and explores derelict military-industrial complexes. Consisting of three separate games at this moment, the series depicts the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation as a highly atmospheric, desolate area filled with dangers both visible and invisible. Spending the night in a ruined factory complex, huddled around a campfire gives a real sense of adventure, despair and ever present danger. Another example of fiction bleeding into reality are the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cosplay events where fans dress up in a mix of disheveled military gear and home-made sci-fi equipment and battle each other across outdoor areas.

To add a little theory to this hopefully entertaining yet otherwise light piece, I’d like to call upon the remediation and premediation theories presented by Bolter & Grusin and Grusin respectively. Remediation theory is based on the concept that one medium can be represented inside another medium. Of particular interest is the idea that “remediation… reform[s] reality itself.” Starting chronologically, the movie Stalker is a remediation of the book Roadside Picnic. Not so much because it cinematically represents the book itself, but because it remediates its fictional reality. Together, both the book and the movie premediate the creation of the actual Chernobyl Zone of Alienation. This might seem odd, but is in line with Grusin’s theory which states that “the logic of premediation…insists that the future itself is also already mediated.” A more radical standpoint would be to say that the Chernobyl event was actually a remediation of the book and movie, because it reformed reality itself according to their fictions. The next step in this chain of remediation events is the creation of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. computer games. In its fictional depiction of the Chernobyl zone, the series remediates both the book and movie, but also the actual Zone of Alienation. Because the games are set in the near future, who knows, they might even be premediations of a future yet to unveil itself. Other examples of remediation include the real-life Chernobyl stalkers adopting the ‘stalker’ moniker and customs and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cosplay events.

If all this talk of reality warping zones and stalking has peaked your interest, perhaps you should look into taking a guided tour of the actual Chernobyl area. I’m not kidding, this is actually possible. If you prefer a less intense introduction to the zone and its wonders, maybe you should start by reading the book, watching the movie and playing some of the games. I highly recommend them. Be careful not to stare into the zone too deeply, though. It might look back.

This post was inspired by Jim Rossignol’s post on BLDGBLOG, which is a wonderful website with an out-of-the-box approach to architecture.

Literature

Bolter, Jay David and Grusin, Richard. “Remediation.” Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311 – 358. Print.

Grusin, Richard. “Premediation.” Criticism 46.1 (2004): 17 -39. Print.

Gently Down the Stream: Advances in the Digital Distribution of Video Games

The landscape of video game distribution is changing. Despite its relative youth, the video game industry has known quite a few different distribution methods already – tapes, floppy discs, CDs, DVDs and now direct downloading and streaming services.

In recent years direct download gaming has been on the rise. Nowadays, whole games can be downloaded legally without ever seeing a DVD and a thriving market in DLC – downloadable content – exists based on the concept that gamers are willing to pay extra money to add additional content to the games they already own. Small indie gaming outfits as well as major design studios and publishers are benefiting from this shift in distribution. Take for example Good Old Games, a platform that is solely dedicated to the distribution of older games that are currently out of print or otherwise hard to come by. Also, think of the ongoing success of Minecraft, that ridiculously popular indie game that continues to make ludicrous amounts of money for its one man development team (For an interesting analysis of why Minecraft is doing so well click here).

One of the big direct download players is Valve's Steam platform. Steam is a stand-alone platform that offers a direct download store, automatic updating and patching and full access to your library of purchased games with the option to make offline backups. Overall, Steam provides a clean, integrated gaming solution, but as with all platforms of this nature it also breeds dependency. For example, what happens to purchased games when Valve goes bankrupt and Steam is taken offline permanently? (Valve has promised that playable stand alone downloads will be made available in case this ever happens). Also, Steam still maintains staggered international release dates and various product and pricing regions, all of which are minor irritations and can be hard to justify given that all their products are fully digital. Proprietary platforms like Steam allow easy integration of DRM – digital rights management – solutions. The term DRM is often discussed negatively due to specific implementations that impose varying and sometimes baffling limits on the usability of the purchased game. For example, think of the Spore activation backlash or the reactions to Ubisoft's 'always online' authentication scheme. The main problem with these DRM implementations is that the restrictions imposed by the software are in no way counterbalanced with additional added value. This is a pitfall Steam has so far managed to avoid. (Overall, Valve has generated so much good will that they could probably get away with charging 9,99€ for an in-game hat that's purely cosmetic. Oh, wait...)

With direct download services now firmly entrenched in the video gaming landscape, the next generation of such platforms is starting to arrive. Services such as OnLive and Gaikai are designed to be browser integrated, streaming platforms. Both services aim to make gaming more accessible and remove hardware limitations. By actually running the game on the server end, all the hardware a player needs at home is a machine that can handle a compressed video stream similar to that of, say, YouTube. While this may sound like the holy grail of gaming - never worry about hardware upgrades ever again! - it further emphasizes the questions already raised by direct download services. What happens when the service goes down, or worse bankrupt? And what about the payment plan? OnLive was planning on using a monthly subscription model but has announced that these plans have been dropped in favour of pay-per-game model. The question remains however: what are you actually buying? Are you buying the game itself or are you merely purchasing temporary access to the game?

Personally, I’m very curious as to how these services actually work. OnLive is currently not available in Europe and Gaikai is yet to launch, so I haven’t been able to try either. In my opinion, these services will only survive if they can provide an extended gaming catalogue, clear added value and ease-of-use and a reasonable pricing scheme. Ignoring the network latency, video compression and availability issues for a moment, I’m particularly interested in the chosen approaches to in-game (in-stream?) advertising and the integration of these platforms into existing websites. Gaikai’s concept of having a clickable game ad that allows you to immediately try out a game demo followed by the option to actually purchase the game, all without leaving your browser, seems highly conducive to impulse buying and is worth further exploration.

The US-only launch of Onlive has been - as far as I can tell - a relatively quiet one. If succesful as a platform, its existence will undoubtedly further stimulate the spread of casual gaming into the mainstream (think of the mind boggling success of FarmVille). Though Onlive's recent change in pricing scheme may be an indication of their success thus far, I'd love to see some real usage figures. With the launch date of Gaikai fast approaching, it'll be interesting to see what the future holds for both platforms. Will the stream swell into a tsunami of eager gamers, a churning maelstrom of DRM unrest or will it just wither away until it's nothing more than a small trickle? Due to the variety of issues involved here - open versus proprietary platfoms, digital ownership, piracy, DRM, commercialization, Web integration - the future of streaming gaming platforms could remain an interesting topic for years to come. OnLive, Gaikai, I’ve got my eye on you.

That Twitter Thing That You Do

So, Twitter. It seems to be all the rage these days. Blog posts about it seem to be popping up everywhere. Then again, a tool that simultaneously fuels revolutions and allows me to share with the world the mundanity of the wonderful sandwich I’ve just eaten is bound to be divisive. Could there be more to it, perhaps?

Twitter’s been around since 2006 but it’s only really taken off during the last two years or so. This rise in popularity has sparked all kinds of new ideas about what this service actually is and how it can be used. Is it a tool that allows people to organize collective action? Is it a real-time, distributed, grass roots news ticker? How about Twitter as zeitgeist tracker and global mood ring? Or perhaps it’s a marketeers ultimate direct marketing tool? It seems to be all of these and more. Researchers such as danah boyd and Akshay Java et al. have already written extensively about how people manifest themselves on Twitter and why they seem to like it so much (boyd, 2010) (Java, 2007). It seems the final word on Twitter has yet to be spoken.

Take for example Nicholas Carr’s recent book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. In it, Carr talks about how many of the modern Web’s features - such as short form text services like Twitter - are turning all of us into constantly distracted drones with minimal attention spans and diminished reading comprehension. As negative as that sounds, it is probably safe to say that platforms such as Twitter are changing the way people communicate and divide their attention. Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times that people seem to be flocking towards bite sized information chunks that can be consumed with minimal effort? This line of reasoning seems to match Manovich’s views on the database as a new symbolic form (Manovich, 1998). According to Manovich, the linear mindset that rose as a result of the spread of printing and cinema technology is giving way to a non-linear mindset focussed on separate elements. Of course, each individual tweet is still a linear block of text, but if you look at an entire feed they’re clearly all little separate elements that don’t necessarily have to be read in any particular order.

If Twitter really is just another outing of a broader shift in the human mindset, than more examples of a similar nature should be out there, right? And what about cultural expression using Twitter itself? Though short form content isn’t entirely new – think of the haiku – there’s a fair bit of it to be found on the Web. Take for example One Sentence. This site is dedicated to posting short one sentence stories submitted by readers/writers. The size limit not only provides bite sized content, but it also stimulates creativity. There’s also the hilarious Texts From Last Night. A website completely dedicated to posting cellphone text messages full of drunken midnight ramblings and commentary on equally drunk sexual escapades. More examples of similar short form content can be found at FMyLife and Dear Old Love. Another site that I find fairly entertaining is Translation Party. This website uses the inaccuracy of Google Translate’s algorithms for English to Japanse translations and vice-versa. The goals is to enter an English sentence and hit the button. The site will then proceed to query Google Translate and keep translating your sentence from English to Japanse and back, heavily mutilating the sentence in the process. The back and forth translating often results in an equilibrium that looks very little like the original sentence.

No shortage of short form content on the Web it seems, but what about creative usage of Twitter itself? I’ve managed to find only a couple of examples. There’s this story as reported by Techcrunch about somebody reenacting the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off using Twitter and Forsquare. While thinking about what to write for this post I was toying with the idea on how to implement an old fashioned text adventure game on Twitter. It seems someone is already doing this, however. User Txtadventure is running a game where followers post actions and the account holder replies with a description of how the game responds. (The users involved are probably just making everything up as they go along, but it might be interesting to have a bot come up with the respones. Also, I’m hoping people use old school commands such as: ‘open door’, ‘look at statue’, 'use rubber chicken on ceiling fan’)

All in all, it seems people are making strides towards using Twitter as a platform for cultural expression. Though I’ve only been able to find a few things, I’m sure there’s avid Twitterers (Twits?) out there who know a lot more. If any of you know any good examples, please share them in the comments.

To conclude, I’d like to pose a question. What are your thoughts on Twitter and its effects on the human mind? Is it making us less focussed and more easily distracted? Does it make us better multi-taskers in every day life? Is it making us dumber or just different?


References
Carr, Nicholas. ‘The Shallows - What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains’. W.W. Norton & Company. 2007

Marwick, Alice and boyd, d. "I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience." (Forthcoming) New Media and Society. [Draft PDF]

Java et al. ‘Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities’. Procedings of the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop 2007. University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 2007.

Manovich, Lev. ‘Database as a Symbolic Form’. 1998

The Future is... When Exactly?

Computing interfaces have come a long way over the years. I think we can all agree that the mouse and keyboard of our current day pc’s is highly preferable to the tape spools and cable jacks of the WOII era beasts like the Colossus. With the fairly recent integration of practical touchscreen interfaces into devices such as the iPhone, a long dreamed of vision of advanced haptic interfaces seemed one step closer to reality.



With this in mind, I’d like to direct your attention to the following video created by The Astonishing Tribe. I came across this clip recently and it got me thinking. Is all this really going to happen? There is little doubt in my mind that the envisioned interfaces will be technologically possible in the future - if not in 2014, then some time in the next few decades. If anything, mankind has proven to be ridiculously resourceful when presented with a practical challenge.


Technological feasibility and practical applicability are not the same thing however. Watching videos like this one or hearing talk along similar lines often seem like displays of unfettered optimism as to what the future will bring. Though I’m all for optimism, it begs the question whether or not all this is really going to happen. Is it really practical to have a display built into your bathroom mirror where it’ll be prone to fogging up completely? What about mirror displays in general? The idea seems to detract from what mirrors are actually for, seeing your reflection. Also, functions like transferring files by literally shunting an icon onto someone else’s device seem gimmicky and clunky, especially for a handheld mobile device that is supposed to be usable independent of location. And finally, the see through display desktop screens just seem impractical, fairly distracting and a NSFW nightmare waiting to happen.

Now, I don’t want to get too negative. Despite some impracticality, all this technological optimism can serve as inspiration for actual innovations. In a lot of ways videos like the one embedded here remind me of that particular brand of optimism that was so prevalent in the USA in the 1950s and 60s. Of course, some did advocate caution and a certain level of social responsibility towards the consequences of technological developments. Take for example Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics. Wiener was acutely aware of the potential social consequences of cybernetic technology and the pragmatic nature of the US military with regard to its appropriation of technology in order to create ever deadlier weapons. With the after-glow of the nuclear detonations over Japan still radiating on the western horizon, the overall zeitgeist was possessed by a grand sense of technological optimism. Mankind could master any challenge that came on its path. It is this attitude that eventually led to mankind’s first steps on the moon (of course, the ‘friendly competition’ with Sovjet Russia also played a major role in this and there are still conspiracy nuts out there that deny the whole thing happend). This same technological optimism is also present in cartoons like The Jetsons and the video embedded below, showing the future of the USA’s highway system.



Though the overall visions of these two examples have proven to be overly optimistic, elements of them have proven viable. More importantly, they are both clearly products of their time. The Jetsons are just a depiction of the classic, nuclear family transplanted into a world full of pervasive technology – kind of the chronological opposite to The Flintstones. The Magic Highway USA video is inspired by that same technological optimism crossbred with the importance of the automobile to the suburban family and ideas of individual freedom. Another example I’m dying to bring up is the one thing I hope little boys everywhere still dream about while they’re fumbling with their Lego’s or playing around in a sandbox (showing my age here, aren’t I?). I’m talking about the jetpack. In some ways, the jetpack is the most amazing concept ever. It allows personal flight in a small package, it grants more individual freedom than a Harley ever could, it goes really fast and it looks awesome. Why doesn’t everyone have at least one of these? Well, because jetpacks are also dangerous, impractical and a technology that doesn’t really solve any particular problem. An idea that sounds good in theory can prove to be difficult to build, unable to meet expectations or just plain dangerous. More importantly, the jetpack was also clearly a product of its time. The first jetpack concepts arose in 1920s science fiction and actual attempts to build them were made in Germany during WOII. At the time, Germany led the way in the development of rocket technology and as always, the war effort required advances in applied creativity and ingenuity. Later, the idea gained in popularity during the 1960s, undoubtedly as a result of the space-race between the USA and the Sovjet Union. Regardless, strapping a rocket engine to the back of a human being has proven to be a bad idea in general. A boy can still dream, though.

Of course, not all predictions end up stranded along the wayside of time’s tireless advance. Some have proven to be downright prophetic. Take for example D.W. Griffith’s statements made in 1923:

“Motion picture libraries will be as common as private libraries - more so. (...) For the world will have become picture trained so that words are not as important as they are now.” (link)

Griffith is often considered to be the finest director of the early American movie industry. His focus on moving images was clearly inspired by his own profession but also by the general buzz that still surrounded cinematic technology at the time. Despite Griffith’s partiality to the topic, he wasn’t wrong.

Or how about Neil Ardley’s 1981 writings on the home of tomorrow:

“The computer will be able to take the images you record and assemble and treat them in all kinds of ways to produce a whole range of special effects of your very own. And you will also be able to use the computer to produce unusual moving designs and patterns, rather like making video cartoons or electronic paintings that move. Then you can put your video shows together with your own electronic music, and create the most stunning experiences -- perhaps even a totally new art form of the future!” (link)

Ardley was a couple years ahead of Apple’s introduction of the revolutionary Macintosh personal computer in 1984. I’m not saying that Ardley directly inspired Apple. What I’m saying is that idea of the computer as a user friendly media machine clearly resonated with the computer science community of the time and that it was merely a matter of time before someone attempted to combine a similar vision with the available technologies.

Right, where am I going with all this? Well, for one thing, it seems that technological optimism is a thing of all ages. Whether we’re talking about cinema technology in the 1920s, rocket technology in the 1960s or touch screen interface technology in the 2010s, the phenomenon is basically the same. Also, as Cory Doctorow implies in his essay Radical Presentism, a prediction says more about the time in which it was made than it actually does about the future. Seen in this light, the interface predictions made by The Astonishing Tribe gain an entirely new dimension. Suddenly they’re an attempt to come to terms with a society that’s becoming increasingly saturated with pervasive information technology. Browsing a handheld device seconds after waking up and brushing your teeth in front of a mirror-screen support this idea. The needs to share information and to carry your information around with you are seemingly represented by the transparent screens and the handheld devices that can share information at the flip of a wrist. I guess my earlier attempt at critiquing the visions presented in the video as improbable and unrealistic is beside the point. The video is not so much about what the future might look like, as it is about what technological issues occupy today’s society.

Special thanks to The Astonishing Tribe, Disney and Paleo-Future for the videos and quotes.


References
Doctorow, Cory. 'Radical Presentism'. Tin House Blog. 6 October 2009. Retrieved on: 5 October 2010. http://tinhousebooks.com/blog/?p=410

Wiener, Norbert. 'Men, Machines, and the World About'. In: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Nick Montfort, ed. New Media Reader. Cambridge & London: MIT Press, 2003: p. 65-72

Introducing: A Wiki Debut

In order to gain some more insight in the inner workings of Wikipedia, I’ve created a new entry about the book Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay. A highly recommended history book about some of the worlds most amazing circus and sideshow entertainers and… Well, just read the entry. Let’s see how long it lasts before the tireless falcons of Wikipedia swoop down on my entry. Keep an eye on this post for updates!

Edit1: Hmm, received a “Proposed for Deletion” notification straight away. Apparently, some wiki bot with a distinct lack of insight into what constitutes entertainment value and cultural heritage labelled this book as “lacking notability.” Naturally, I removed the label from my entry and sent a message back extolling the virtues of this book. Does it pay to argue with a bot? Who knows. Lets hope its human overlords prove receptive.

Edit2: I now seem to have the attention of Fæ, a mighty botsmaster and somewhat of a cruel mistress. Fæ added the following:

"Searching Google News, Google Books and generally there appears to be little chance that the criteria for notability will be addressed in the near future."

My entry is now listed as AfD: Articles for Deletion. This is going well!

Edit3: I've caught the attention of another wiki admin called Racklever. Unfortunately, my article is now listed as an orphan. This makes me sad. It seems my entry will have to live out the last days of its short life in isolation, clinging desperately to that one thread that is its link to the author's page.

Also, more importantly, I just discovered this discussion page. There seems to be some discussion going on amongst the guardians of Wikipedia. Apparently Google Books does give some good hits and the book was named a notable book of the year. My entry may yet live!

Final Edit: My entry is saved! Deliberation amongst the Wikipedia admins has yielded enough support to maintain the page. I've added some more details and references and proudly removed the "Articles for Deletion" tag. Unfortunately, Wikipedia seems to be having some server issues so I can't save my update. I'll keep trying, though.

It's interesting to gain some insight into the inner workings of Wikipedia like this. My first reaction to this entire deletion discussion led me to think that all the admins were a bunch of hard liners who enjoy exercising their power over the lowly newbies. Also, claiming that a book is not notable enough because you can't find much information on it using Google seems short sighted and a nice starting point for an entire discussion on what constitutes notability and how to measure the relevance of a work. It's also a sure fire way to ensure the book remains under represented on the Web. A classic Catch-22. Obviously this book isn't Shakespeare, but is it fair to expect a heavy Web presence of a book that was published before the Web existed as viable platform?

All in all, I'm happy with how things turned out. I gained some insight into the activities of a wiki admin and was pleasantly surprised by the discussion that took place. To be fair, I knew this book was fairly obscure and that was exactly why I thought it deserved its own entry. Knowledge of its existence should be spread. For my next entry I'll be taking suggestions. Anybody know any other obscure books about peculiar topics that might trigger some admins?

Don’t Feed the Trolls

Back in 2006 when Ze Frank was still running The Show, he asked his viewers to help him find the creator of this funny audio clip that had been floating round on the Web. Frank’s community, his Sportsracers as he likes to call them, had been playing around with the song for months already and had produced many remixes, videos and album covers based on the original clip. Frank’s plan was to present the mysterious singer known only as Ray with their finished works. But how do you find someone if all you know is a first name and the sound of their voice? Apparently, it’s not that hard. Frank’s community managed to find and identify Ray within two days, which, Frank admits, is kind of creepy. In this case, Frank’s mobilization of his community was based on good intentions and fun was had by all, including Ray. But what happens if things turn a little more serious?

With this in mind, I’d like to discuss the 4chan community. The 4chan website is a collection of image boards that is as famous as it is infamous. The site houses boards on a variety of topics including the notorious Random board, also known as /b/. The boards are well known for their particular brand of humor and are the source of many of the Web’s memes. Though memes can be fun by themselves - the famous lolcats or rickrolling, for example - the 4chan community overall is often seen as abusive and at the same time very tight knit. One very peculiar aspect of the boards is that they allow anonymous posting. No user names are required, which leads to long meandering threads populated by apparently only one slightly unhinged poster known as Anonymous. As you can imagine, the anonymity is where a lot of the abuse comes from.

Though 4chan is the home of all things NSFW and the natural habitat of the troll, elements of the community sometimes band together in order to crusade against perceived injustices. For example, the /b/rothers of the Random board recently lashed out against the perpetrator of a videotaped piece of animal cruelty. They almost instantly found out everything they could about the woman in the video - including her address, phone number, work place and Facebook profile - and proceeded to bombard her with threats and insults, which eventually led to the local police placing the woman under their protection. All it took to unleash all of this was a single video of a cat. As whimsical as it may sound, /b/ loves cats (and even deifies them). Another recent example is the DDoS attacks on the MPAA website instigated by the anonymous masses of 4chan in response to anti-piracy measures undertaken by the organization. The most well known example of 4chan-crusading is probably the case of Anonymous vs. Scientology, also known as Project Chanology. This crusade kicked off with a video message to the Church of Scientology after they had taken steps to remove from the Web a leaked, non-public propaganda video featuring Tom Cruise. What is fascinating about Project Chanology is that it was not just a Web phenomenon; it also manifested itself in the physical world in the form of world wide protests outside of Scientology offices and as pranks with an attitude typical of the 4chan troll.

The 4chan community as whole and the regulars on /b/ in particular seem to fit the profile of the insular community with its own peculiar customs as described by Sunstein quite nicely (Sunstein, 2001). Also, the examples of 4chan vigilantism mentioned earlier seem to match with Sunstein’s theories on group polarization on the Web. I can’t back up the following claim, but the 4chan community seems to be highly integrated into the fabric of the Web. Even though Barabási describes the fragmentation of the Web’s communities into continents and islands as an inevitability of its directed link nature (Barabási, 2002), the highly diverse backgrounds of the 4chan members and their general Web savvy seemingly allow them to get their tendrils into all of the Web’s divided continents. Nothing seems to escape their watchful eyes. Though Web enabled social activism can be considered a good thing, the particular brand of activism served by 4chan’s members seems to unpredictable, erratic and in some cases downright harmful.

4chan’s ad hoc distributed approach to retribution ties in nicely to Haggerty & Ericson’s concept of the surveillant assemblage (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000). According to Haggerty & Ericson, surveillance is no longer the domain of the panopticon guard once described by Foucault, but is now distributed throughout society. Not only is everyone observing everyone else, but it also allows individuals to band together and focus their gaze on the once privileged institutions. The difficulty with 4chan however is that it is next to impossible to predict what will draw their wrath, as well as how extreme their reaction is going to be. The vigilante-detective antics of 4chan therefore make an excellent case study on online activism as well as why it is important to keep track of what traces of yourself you leave behind on the Web. Though the actions of the Anonymous legion are of course extreme, they do illustrate that any and all traces you leave behind can be used to either target you directly or an organization you are affiliated with. With the tendency of 4chan’s crusades to spill over into the physical world, they are also a reminder of how the Web is not an isolated dimension separate from our own. In this case a particular piece of Web wisdom seems appropriate: Don’t feed the trolls. I know it can be difficult to not have a Web presence nowadays, but that doesn’t mean you have to make it easy for the trolls.


Sources:
Barabási, Albert-László. 2002. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 123-142; 161-178.

Haggerty, Kevin and Richard Ericson. ‘The Surveillant Assemblage.’ British Journal of Sociology, 51(4), 2000: p. 605-622.

Sunstein, Cass. 2001. Republic.com. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 51-88.

The Good, the Bad & the Downright Crazy

A Collection of Many Problems by Garnet Hertz - A review.

Mail-by-rocket, cat pianos, astrolabes, Inca quipu knots and musical fingers. Seems like a fairly random collection of things, doesn’t it? They do have one thing in common, though. They’re all dead forms of media; either because they’re downright silly or impractical - like the mail-by-rocket and cat pianos - or they’ve outlived their time and usefulness - like the astrolabe and the quipu knots. All these objects and more can be found in a wonderful little book called A Collection of Many Problems.

Meticulously collected and assembled by Garnet Hertz, A Collection of Many Problems contains a staggering variety of media. Presented without words or commentary, the reader can leisurely browse through one form of media after the other. For those well versed in the history of media, it’ll provide a well crafted, compact overview of media throughout the ages and will possibly contain some old favorites. For those less involved with media and its developments, the book can provide a fascinating eyeopener into mankind’s almost primeval need for representation and its struggle with how to get a message across. At the very least it should illustrate to the reader that ‘the media’ didn’t start with the invention of the newspaper, cinema, radio, and television.



Garnet Hertz, the curator of this catalogue, is a California based scholar and artist who is affiliated with a wide number of research and teaching institutes, as well as a contributor to festivals such as DEAF and SIGGRAPH. A Collection of Many Problems was featured in an exhibition titled “In Memory of the Dead Media Handbook” in Milan, Italy in October 2009. The title of this exhibition refers to Bruce Sterling’s Dead Media Project and its call for a Dead Media Handbook. The goal of Sterling’s project was to chronicle the history of media with a particular focus on long forgotten and obsolete technologies. The project ran as a mailing list and managed to collect over 600 notes in total. In his Dead Media Manifesto, Sterling proposed that this collection take the form of a Dead Media Handbook. According to Sterling, there existed a clear need for:

"...a book about the failures of media, the collapses of media, the supercessions of media, the strangulations of media, a book detailing all the freakish and hideous media mistakes that we should know enough now not to repeat, a book about media that have died on the barbed wire of technological advance, media that didn't make it, martyred media, dead media."

A Collection of Many Problems is Hertz’s attempt to address this need. The end result is an accessible, bite sized book and a strong attempt at media archaeology at that. In a time where media are developing and evolving at an increasing pace, it seems all the more relevant to keep an eye on the past, either to be inspired or just to make sure the same mistakes aren’t repeated. Even though the book provides little detail on any of the featured media, it does manage to illustrate the highly relative nature of the term ‘new media’. What does it mean to be new? If anything, it demonstrates that there have always been new media and that more will undoubtedly follow long after our current ‘new media’ have faded away and become old, dead media themselves. To me the book is a lovely collection that allows me to wander throughout the ages and be amazed at the wonderfully creative solutions - failed or otherwise - mankind has developed in order to cope with its need for representation. It reminds me of the originally Renaissance era phenomenon of the cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammer. Rooms where well-to-do individuals would collect and display curious objects from all corners of the world that seemed to defy classification. If the idea of a media Wunderkammer appeals to you, you should definitely pick up a copy of A Collection of Many Problems. I doubt you’ll find a collection as accessible as this one anywhere else.



Full details:
A Collection of Many Problems
by Garnet Hertz, 2009
Available for sale here.

Eskil Steenberg's Labour of Love

In a media landscape dominated by online collaboration, DIY content and crowdsourcing, it may seem like the notion of the Renaissance artist-savant really does belong to an age long since passed. The idea that an artist must have a keen grasp of mathematical perspective, optics, geometry and anatomy can sometimes seem distant on a Web ruled by lolcats. What I would like to do is remind you of what a single individual can accomplish with enough skill, determination and the right tools. I would like to talk to you about Love.

 

Love is an online multiplayer game conceived, designed and built by Eskil Steenberg. The core concept of the game is to cooperatively build and maintain a settlement while gathering resources and defending against AI controlled settlements. Even though the gameplay warrants a proper discussion all of its own, I would like to focus on the amazing visual presentation of this game and the technology that lies at its base.



The image above is what the game actually looks like. Steenberg has managed to create a painterly visual style that leans heavily towards Impressionism. The official screenshot gallery is filled with dreamlike images that are quite literally out of this world. Seeing this game in motion is a whole other experience. I highly recommend you watch Steenberg’s demo video and see for yourself how wonderfully immersive and otherworldly Love can be.

Love isn’t just an artistic triumph, though. Technologically speaking it’s an amazing achievement as well. Steenberg has managed to create this game all by himself using an array of incredibly smart self designed tools. The technology relies heavily on procedural generation and adaptive AI routines. Not only does this provide a unique world filled with responsive and adaptable AI’s, it also elegantly circumvents Steenberg’s biggest handicap: he is only one man. Creating a multiplayer game (aimed at around 200 players per server) is a massive undertaking. World building, modelling, texturing and scripting usually consume large quantities of development time. Steenberg manages to avoid these hurdles by making the software do all the hard work. For more details on this I suggest watching the tools demo (the Verse application is particularly impressive).



To me Eskil Steenberg is a shining example of the artist-savant. The man possesses technical skill and artistic vision and manages to combine the two in a beautiful whole. Could one go so far as to say that Steenberg is an auteur in the grand sense of the Auteur Theory? Without a doubt, Love is the product of a man with a singular vision who purposefully twists conventions of style and technology. I don’t recall ever seeing a game that looks even remotely similar to Love and I dare to speculate that uniqueness was at least one of Steenberg’s goals. Technology wise Steenberg deliberately ignored existing tools in favour of creating his own. Does all this make him an auteur, though? In a way, I think it does. The fun part for me lies in what exactly he delivers as his product. Steenberg’s tools are all available as free open source downloads, opening up avenues for further use and development. If anything, Steenberg is not an auteur jealously guarding his secrets. And what about Love itself? The game is an open world, collaborative experience that thrives on players experimenting with the world. It’s a sandbox with endless potential. This is where Steenberg’s Love making is different from, say, Godard’s À Bout de Souffle. Where Godard had a singular vision that led to the unique viewing experience that is À Bout de Souffle, Steenberg had a singular vision that led to the creation of Love, an open world game that allows players to craft their own emergent experiences; it lets the narrative unfold based on the interaction between the players and the world.

So yes, Godard and Steenberg can both be considered auteurs in the classical sense, but they are very different in what they produce. Both are strikingly unique productions, but the difference lies in how the player/viewer engages with the material. The level of interaction allowed by their respective media is the key difference. If all this talk has gotten you in the mood for Love, please try out the free client first to see if it will run properly on your computer.