Creative Time Launches MetaPet 1.0
New & Improved!!!

MetaPet, the World?s First Transgenic Virtual Pet Game

May 1, 2003: Creative Time is pleased to launch MetaPet 1.0
(www.metapet.net/www.creativetime.org/metapet), the new and improved online
virtual pet game by artist Natalie Bookchin. MetaPet 1.0 further explores
the complex social and political issues surrounding genetic engineering and
corporate behavior. Introduced a year ago and since then evolving, MetaPet
is part of DNAid, Creative Time?s ongoing series of commissions addressing
themes and issues related to genetics. Version 1.0 allows for multiple
players, cross-platform compatibility, and now features enhanced character
capabilities. MetaPet was produced in association with Hamaca.

MetaPet

MetaPet playfully takes on three cultural behemoths: the biotechnology
industry, the electronic gaming industry, and corporate culture at large. In
MetaPet, the uncooperative worker is replaced with a genetically engineered
human ?worker-pet? and you, the player, are the manager. As a worker-pet
manager, your challenge is to discover the right balance between a firm hand
and a gentle coax without ever losing site of the fiscal bottom line. You
are responsible for manipulating the physical and psychological
characteristics of your worker-pet by offering promotions or vacations and
in turn motivating it to work harder and more efficiently. By the same
token, you can punish or determine the fate of your worker-pet by
withholding benefits or even firing him or her. As managers, MetaPet
players are complicit participants in Bookchin?s elaborate corporate
infrastructure.

MetaPet also features mini-games by guest artists including: Plagiarist,
a.k.a. Amy Alexander, Davis & Davis, Carmin Karasic, Jeff Knowlton,
Anne-Marie Schleiner, Naomi Spellman, Karl Mihail and Tran, T. Kim-Trang of
the Gene Genies, and Paul Vanouse.

Games allow for free play and discovery within the formal structure of a
pre-determined set of rules. From the Surrealists to Fluxus, during the last
century artists have been developing various sorts of games. However, with
the recent surge of electronic gaming as pastime and the subsequent
establishment of the gaming industry as a major cultural force, there is now
a niche to be carved between the individual pursuits of artists and the
mainstream electronic gaming industry. As the primary sponsor and producer
of MetaPet, Creative Time supports the continued development of artist-made
computer games, a rapidly expanding territory for independent, creative
practitioners.

MetaPet 1.0 can be played at www.metapet.net and
www.creativetime.org/metapet. MetaPet 1.0 is the May 2003 Gate Page on the
Whitney Museum of American Art?s ARTPORT at www.whitney.org.

Natalie Bookchin

Natalie Bookchin is an artist who works with the Internet, computer, games,
and other popular media. Her previous game project, The Intruder, was
featured in Game Show at Mass MOCA and Animations at P.S.1, and can be
played at www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder. During 1999 - 2000 Bookchin
organized <net.net.net>, an eight month series of lectures and workshops on
art, activism, and the Internet at CalArts, MOCA in LA and Laboratorio
Cinematek in Tijuana. From 1998 to 2000 she was a member of the collective