Page 74 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

74re ects on contemporary society using footage from a tennis simulation videogame but performing a linear audiovisual exercise in which the game does not exist beyond the graphic allusion.Another type of artistic intervention on games is the censorship or repression of commercial designs in the form of authorisation to carry on playing but only in the way the artist allows. This aesthetic of deprival is found in various forms: graphic modi cations, modi cations of the game rules or modi cation of the game engine.Another type of artistic intervention on games is the censorship or repressionof commercial designs so that it is only possible to carry on playing in the way the artist allows.As for graphics, we nd mods where theartist adds new level maps and creates a new graphic design or new character model, among other tactics (Galloway 2007). For example, in [Domestic] (2003), Mary Flanagan eliminates the original game but uses the three-dimensional space of the engine of the commercial game Unreal Tournament 2003. Flanagan employs family photographs and fragments of conceptual texts as textures of the architecture we navigate. The work tells of childhood memories of a re in the family home.We also nd modi cations of the game rules in which the artist devises new ways of developing the game or new play experiences or rede nes who wins and who loses, and the repercussions of the actions on the original design thus vary. Other interventions are more respectful of the original materials and even trigger dilemmasby allowing relationships between players and characters that are not playable in the game. Julian Oliver’s Deathjam (2001) is a modi cation of the rst-person shooting game Half Life which features 32 intelligent robots; players can usethe viewpoint of any of them to move around the space – both the living ones and those they progressively kill.The artists belonging to the Eastwood-Real Time Strategy Group have produced di erent projects by modifying the historic Civilization series (1991–2014). Highly critical of technocapitalism, the group focuses on the real-time strategies of online communities. Taking as a basis the design of the game mechanics of this commercial series, they explore the competitiveness of web 2.0. companies such as Facebook or YouTube, as well as massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft and the creation of collective content and the economy it drives – in which the providers of the content receive no pro ts.Another type of modi cation directly altersthe game engine, changing its physics, how the characters behave and the lighting, among other aspects.The Catalan artist Joan Leandre gives a new twist to the physics algorithms of a well-known car racing game of the late 1990s in RetroyouRC Fck the Gravity Code (Fig. 4), creating a somewhat disturbing experience. Moments into the game we lose all logical spatial references. An example of extreme modi cations that destroy not only the game but its navigation space is Ctrl-space (1998) by the pair of artists JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans),who hack the videogame Quake. The degreeof intervention is so great that the system of spatial navigation is barely recognisable. Another unique mod is 2nd Person Shooter (2006–7) by Julian Oliver, in which the player of a rst-person shooting game sees through the opponent’s avatar, while controlling his own avatar (viewed by the other player); this poses a major di culty when it comes to handling the game and forces players to wander around the space rather than play at hunting each other down.These and other projects clearly show that mods are one of the most speci c ways of producing game art. Modifying a game by altering its characters, developing new levels, creating abstract or narrative machinimas, or generating instruments for audiovisual reproduction in realVIDEOGAME DESIGN AND DISRUPTIVE PRAXIS · LARA SÁNCHEZ COTERÓNSmart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation