RHIZOME DIGEST: 3.23.02

discussion

Posted March 22 2002 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 3.23.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: March 23, 2002 Content: +editor's note+ 1. beverly tang: Rhizome.LA–Sunday March 24 +work+ 2. Lucia Leao: 25 Sao Paulo Biennial–Net Art 3. KOGO: *candy factory @ EDINBURGH +interview+ 4. Jon Ippolito: Code As Creative Writing–An Interview with John Simon +review+ 5. anne-marie: Untitled Game and Ego Image Shooter + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 3.12.2002 From: beverly tang (beverly@rhizome.org) Subject: Rhizome.LA–Sunday March 24 Keywords: virtual reality, interact, installation Rhizome.LA: Dinner with George Legrady, Bill Seaman, and Tamiko Thiel Please join George Legrady, Bill Seaman, and Tamiko Thiel at the next Rhizome.LA. They will each give a talk about their recent and upcoming interactive environment/installation projects. Please come early and enjoy some dinner before the presentations start. Date: March 24, 2002 Time: 6pm - catered dinner 7pm - presentations Location: Rocco 6320 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, California 323.462.8500 No need to RSVP, but a $5-10 sliding-scale cover will be charged at the door. Dinner will be $10 per person (charged separately). Questions? Email Beverly Tang at beverly@rhizome.org Website: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/LA">http://rhizome.org/LA</a> Tamiko Thiel <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mission.base.com/tamiko/">http://mission.base.com/tamiko/</a> Bill Seaman <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cda.ucla.edu/faculty/seaman/">http://www.cda.ucla.edu/faculty/seaman/</a> George Legrady <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/">http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/LA">http://rhizome.org/LA</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mission.base.com/tamiko/">http://mission.base.com/tamiko/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cda.ucla.edu/faculty/seaman/">http://www.cda.ucla.edu/faculty/seaman/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/">http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE NEW ISSUE** Coco Fusco/Ricardo Dominguez on activism and art; JJ King on the US military's response to asymmetry and Gregor Claude on the digital commons. Matthew Hyland on David Blunkett, Flint Michigan and Brandon Labelle on musique concrete and 'Very Cyberfeminist International'. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm">http://www.metamute.com/mutemagazine/issue23/index.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 3.22.02 From: Lucia Leao (lucleao@yahoo.com) Subject: 25 Sao Paulo Biennial–Net Art <a rel="nofollow" href="http://bienalsaopaulo.terra.com.br/">http://bienalsaopaulo.terra.com.br/</a> INTERNACIONAL Curador: Rudolf Frieling Artistas: 1) Bunting & Lialina (Inglaterra, Rússia) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.teleportacia.org/swap">http://www.teleportacia.org/swap</a> 2) Carol Flax & Trebor Scholz (USA) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.arts.arizona.edu/cflax">http://www.arts.arizona.edu/cflax</a> 3) CALC & Johannes Gees (Espanha, Suiça) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.communimage.ch">http://www.communimage.ch</a> 4) Francesca da Rimini (Itália) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thing.net/~dollyoko/title.htm">http://www.thing.net/~dollyoko/title.htm</a> 5) Gruppo A12, Udo Noll & Peter Scupelli (Alemanha, Itália, USA) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://parole.aporee.org//work/">http://parole.aporee.org//work/</a> 6) Jody Zellen (USA) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ghostcity.com">http://www.ghostcity.com</a> 7) Kristin Lucas (USA) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.diacenter.org/lucas/">http://www.diacenter.org/lucas/</a> 8) Marina Grzinic & Aina Smid (Eslovênia) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ljudmila.org/quantum.east">http://www.ljudmila.org/quantum.east</a> 9) Shi Yong (China) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.shanghart.com/artists/shiyong/syw/index.htm">http://www.shanghart.com/artists/shiyong/syw/index.htm</a> 10) Stanza (Inglaterra) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.thecentralcity.co.uk/">http://www.thecentralcity.co.uk/</a> 11) Roberto Cabot (França/Brasil/Alemanha) www.mediamorphose.org + + + BRASIL Curadora: Cristine Mello artistas: 1) Kiko Goifman & Jurandir Muller <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.paleotv.com.br/cronofagia">http://www.paleotv.com.br/cronofagia</a> 2) Lucia Leao <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lucialeao.pro.br/pluralmaps">http://www.lucialeao.pro.br/pluralmaps</a> 3) Lucas Bambozzi <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.comum.com/diphusa/meta">http://www.comum.com/diphusa/meta</a> 4) Diana Domingues e Grupo Artecno/Universidade Caxias do Sul <a rel="nofollow" href="http://artecno.ucs.br/ouroboros">http://artecno.ucs.br/ouroboros</a> 5) Gilbertto Prado <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.itaucultural.org.br/desertesejo">http://www.itaucultural.org.br/desertesejo</a> 6) Giselle Beiguelman <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.desvirtual.com/nike">http://www.desvirtual.com/nike</a> 7) Artur Matuck <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.teksto.com.br">http://www.teksto.com.br</a> 8) Enrica Bernardelli <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.paralelosclandestinos.net">http://www.paralelosclandestinos.net</a> 9) Ricardo Barreto <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.satmundi.com">http://www.satmundi.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ STATE OF THE ARTS SYMPOSIUM * UCLA APRIL 4-6, 2002 * RHIZOME DISCOUNT * <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eliterature.org/state">http://www.eliterature.org/state</a>> ELO invites Rhizome subscribers to join leading web artists, writers, critics, theorists for the seminal e-lit event of 2002. Rhizome subscribers who register before FEB 15 2002 may register at ELO member rates ($25 discount). + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 3.20.02 From: KOGO (ga2750@i.bekkoame.ne.jp) Subject: *candy factory @ EDINBURGH *candy factory @ EDINBURGH <a rel="nofollow" href="http://host.mediascot.org">http://host.mediascot.org</a> 21st March 2002 Dear all *candy factory projects is taking a place here at new media Scotland from 21st March 2002 through one cultural exchange project for Japan and Scotland, part 2 of art works in domestic spaces titled "Art in The Home." But our works will be shown at the street from Collective Gallery in 21-24,29-31 MARCH 2001- 7:00-0:00 even for homeless people broadcasting non broad casting time of a TV studio in Yamaguchi Japan titled DO Also an old department store here in Edinburgh now on CLEARANCE SALE. For more Art in your home, here you can check more non-broad casting view from EBC program "WHY" from Seoul Korea. Re-installed WIN.EXE with OLA PEHRSON, he took old icon of windows folder, Also re mixed domestic boredom in UK about one TV program MY DAD SEDUCED MY FIANCEE More web project will be soon here <a rel="nofollow" href="http://host.mediascot.org">http://host.mediascot.org</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ IT IS necessary to buy "Not Necessarily 'English Music,'" Leonardo Music Journal Volume 11. Not only is it curated by David Toop, but it includes a double CD. Tune in and turn on to the LMJ website at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/Leonardo/lmj/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 3.12.2002 From: Jon Ippolito (JIppolito@guggenheim.org) Subject: Code As Creative Writing–An Interview with John Simon Keywords: software, programming, design This interview took place in January 2002, on the occasion of the Guggenheim's acquisition of John Simon's Unfolding Object. More info at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart">http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart</a>. + + + Jon Ippolito: You've been working on or near the cutting edge of digital art since the mid-1980s, when you were programming image-processing routines for CCD [charge-coupled device] photography. Yet you often cite sources of inspiration from the world of pen and brush rather than the world of pixel and browser, and I see some of these influences of Modernism-for example, the influence of Paul Klee in your plotter drawings [1994-95] and Sol LeWitt in Combinations [1995]. What is it about those artists that speaks to you? John F. Simon, Jr.: I am interested in analytical approaches to creativity. A new technology doesn't erase a life's work of thoughtful, creative production. The ideas are bigger than the medium. There are many examples in art history where artistic practice could be described as algorithmic-an approach to experimentation by rule making, including LeWitt and Conceptual artists in the 1970s also Paul Klee in the 1920's along with many other Bauhaus professors. An even older example would be Dominican priest-scholar Sebastien Truchet's 1722 work on the use of combinations in tile design. His study uses square tiles of two colors that are divided diagonally. He assigned a letter to each of the four possible orientations of this kind of tile. He then made lists of letters describing the sequence and orientation for laying out the tiles. The lists functioned like instructions or programs for constructing the design. Craftsmen would pick a pattern out of his book and use the lists of letters as assembly instructions. Another even older example would be the analytical techniques used in the design of the Alhambra and in much Islamic art. JI: Is there a single artist or movement you can point to as an influence on Unfolding Object? Where did the idea for this project come from? JS: The idea for Unfolding Object comes from many sources. Physicist David Bohm theorizes about a level of information below the quantum level where all matter is interconnected. In his terminology, the object unfolds information about itself. The outward expression of an object is the unfolding of this potential. I detected a similarity between Bohm's description of nature and software objects. The potential for the Unfolding Object is contained in the source code, which is not displayed on the screen but functions on a different level. The expression of the code, its unfolding, is decided by the interaction of the code with the person unfolding it. Another source was Klee, who wrote about how a drawing is defined by its "cosmogenic moment," when the symmetry of the blank page is broken by the first mark-the first decision of the creator. Gilles Deleuze also considers The Fold [1993] and its relationship to the process of formation. From my own thoughts about drawings as diagrammatic records of decisions, I wanted to create a software object that would reveal its history. I am also fascinated by the implicit potential that a software object has in its programming. JI: Virtual reality guru Jaron Lanier has described virtual reality as an experiment in alternative physics. You've created an object that appears to inhabit normal euclidean space yet has a mathematical extensibility beyond anything in our physical environment. When you envisioned this work, did you ever see yourself as bending the laws of nature in the service of art? JS: Which laws of nature? Newton's? I think that nowadays artistic conceptions of reality can hardly keep up with the non-local, non- euclidean, non-linear scientific theories of the natural world. My interest is in relativist mathematics that have no concept of infinity. I want Unfolding Object to exist in a relativist space where it defines, as much as possible, the shape of its space. I want to avoid the Cartesian picture plane, with a horizon and vanishing point. I don't want to conceptualize the whole space from the beginning-I want the object to create the space as it unfolds. Of course, this idea is limited when you have to use a computer screen and perspective projection to visualize the thing. JI: Are you inspired by particular gizmos that help you avoid these kinds of limitations? I'm thinking of the drawings executed with a pressure-sensitive stylus and ink plotter, or your wall-mounted sculptures made from exposed Powerbook innards, or your recent acrylic panels cut with an industrial laser. JS: I think it's the gizmos that create the limitations. All the works you mention are concerned with algorithmic possibilities. There are many technologies that can be used to explore possibilities especially if you can program them. I switch to a new technology when I feel like it can shed some light or offer a different perspective on a bigger idea. JI: Yet working online requires you to settle for the most abundant technology, like Netscape or Explorer, rather than the most specialized. JS: Actually, I think browsers are highly specialized and limited while Powerbooks seem abundant with a much less restricted development environment. JI: I guess I'm wondering whether you find it more challenging to make an alluring work for the Internet, given that its display hardware is mundane rather than precious. JS: Who can say what the next display hardware will be? Maybe someone will design a precious screen to view my online work. An undefined context is by far the biggest obstacle for designing and experiencing online art. Many qualities that define other artwork cannot be considered with online work. This can be liberating but also detract from the overall impression. There is no control of display with online work. The best that can be done is hope that whoever views it will focus only on the window in which your piece is displayed and not have too many other distractions on the desktop-or surrounding the computer. Making my LCD [liquid crystal display] panels was a reaction to this situation, an attempt to have more control of the display environment. What I try to do online is design an artwork that relies on a strong concept, whose qualities as an artwork don't depend on any specific colors or display speed or viewing environment. This takes away a lot of decisions but puts more emphasis on understanding the limits and refining the concept. JI: Your work has not obeyed a strict progression, from, say, pen-and- ink to animated paintings to Internet-based projects. Do you ever feel like you are jumping forwards and backwards, creating art to fill in gaps in art history? JS: I don't think the concept of progress applies to art the way it does to technology, so the idea of a "strict progression" may also be poorly applied or assume too much about how or why art is made. If you look at my art over a longer term, say the last fifteen years, I think what you see is a continued push to visualize and activate complex ideas. I choose whatever materials I think are appropriate to lock down an idea or get to what I want to see. JI: You were one of the first artists I know to have figured out new economic models for selling digital artworks. I'm thinking particularly of the low-cost multiples available at your "souvenir shop" , which offers art in everyone's price range, or the edition of Unfolding Object you've contemplated for collectors' desktops. Last year you even published a brochure about your art that emulated the look and function of a corporation's annual report. This approach seems at odds with the attitude of many online artists of your generation, for whom the Internet offered a space outside of the profit-driven art market. Do you think every artist should have a business plan? JS: I think every artist should have a plan for paying their expenses so they can devote their full energies to their art. JI: You've adapted your work Every Icon [1996] for the Web, for a Powerbook screen, and for a Palm Pilot. The way you've re-created the same work in different platforms has encouraged me to think that translations from one medium to another may be the best preservation strategy for digital art [as outlined in the Variable Media Initiative<www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia>;]. Does the fact that you've already sold these different formats as different artworks make it easier or harder to imagine preserving them via a protocol like variable media? JS: Easier, because what was sold in each case was a software license. Every Icon is the simplest example because it is primarily carried by the concept. There are no issues of processor speed/timing, color, display size. It works most everywhere so many of the translation issues are already solved by example. Of all my pieces, it is easiest to imagine this piece being preserved by porting the code to whatever is the "system du jour." It is also, by far, the simplest piece of code. JI: Many of your works are, in fact, primarily programming code. How do you think this work relates to the "artist software" genre, works like the Web Stalker, FloodNet, or Auto-Illustrator ? JS: I think what I am programming is quite different but I like those projects and think they are important. For me, what's important is that a piece of software can be considered an artwork, and that writing software is as creative as it is technical, and the choices made for language, data structure, methods, etc., are significant creative choices. JI: In most online artworks, the code can be separated from the visual result. I am thinking of the difference between the Web page Netscape or Explorer shows you and the HTML or scripting that View Source shows you. This separation doesn't normally exist with other artworks-LeWitt being the obvious exception. An elegant page written with a simple JavaScript "for" loop and document.write could generate the same visual result as a messy HTML document with loose tags that's ten times as long. Do you see any aesthetic difference between a work elegantly coded by a programming perfectionist versus a kludge that happens to generate the same experience for the viewer? JS: How important do you consider craftsmanship in fine art? There is no right or wrong way to code. What you write and the way you write it reveal yourself. Whatever you see on screen and in View Source reflects the resources and choices of the person who put the page together. Some people care more about how the HTML and JavaScript source looks than others. I know some people embed messages as comments in their Web pages that are not visible in the browser. Some painters finish the sides of their canvases and others choose to leave them raw. There is a difference in the way each one looks. I usually only ask: is the choice appropriate to the work? Personally, I don't pay much attention to the way my HTML looks. Unless it is part of the project, I make the HTML as plain as possible or accept whatever the default is from an editing program. I usually only care about how the pages function in the browser. JI: Must an artist be a programmer to make truly original online art? JS: Truly original? You Modernist! Whether you make art or not, understanding programming is an amazing understanding. JI: You have said: "Once you write a piece of software and run it on the computer, then it is a very fluid language. Every variable that you choose in the software becomes subject to expansion, and you can make lookup tables to vary parameters or you can have functions that are varied by random numbers…Sometimes you get things that look the way you expected them to look, and sometimes they are completely different." [Interview by Tilman Baumgaertel on Nettime] I think you put your finger here on a common misunderstanding of both computer-based art and the analog "Conceptual art" that you point to as an influence on your work. Does it bother you that some people misread algorithmic art as simply the demonstration of some mathematical tautology, and hence a purely cerebral exercise? What, if anything, should artists do to counteract such a misreading? JS: I practice what I call a "creative writing" style, as opposed to a "problem solving" style, of writing software. I can say that I have only really been able to practice this style for a few years. I believe I am just finding out what it means to code with this awareness so I can't say how it should be read. There are a lot of misperceptions about code because it varies as much as the number of people writing it. The only way artists can improve people's understanding of software is to keep creating and understanding it ourselves. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart">http://www.guggenheim.org/internetart</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia">http://www.guggenheim.org/variablemedia</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.numeral.com">http://www.numeral.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 3.12.2002 From: anne-marie (amschle@cadre.sjsu.edu) Subject: 2 Reviews–Untitled Game and Ego Image Shooter Keywords: interface, indexicality, gender, gaming, design Untitled Game CD by JODI Review by Anne-Marie Schleiner Untitled Game is a CD (and web site) containing twelve modifications of Quake by artist ensemble JODI. The first modification, "Arena", is blinding white. All visible architecture has been eliminated. What remains is interface components and sound. The following mods range in interactivity and effect, from number stats flowing upscreen to ambient warm toned 3-D environments. Game Engine = Artist Tool Like other artists including Nullpointer and Retroyou, JODI have immersed themselves in exploring game engines as art generating tools. (Different artists have been staking out different commercial engines as their mediums–more recently the Australian web site, "Select Parks," has collected artist-made mods.) JODI have become intimately familiar with the file structure of Quake 1, its code structure and algorithms, and its loopholes and glitches. Time++ has been logged "playing" with the system, just as Nato addicts and V.J.s spend hours tweaking sound and 3-D/2-D visuals, happening sometimes on interesting accidental effects. Unlike ID Software, the original designers of Quake, JODI search for beautiful bugs in the system, to make glitches happen that werent supposed to, to tweak the game, even to demolish it. When I push the spacebar to jump in E1M1AP instead the world rotates uncontrollably. In G-R the screen refreshes non-stop with bright RGB colors, (no navigation at all). In Ctrl-9 and Ctrl-Space, navigation and looking about generate undulating black and white moire patterns. Hacker Art Aesthetic Despite the different ways that JODI "break" Quake, their work remains in dialogue with the original game. Hacker art tweaks a system yet retains ontological aspects of the system from which it mutated. In their earlier SOD mod, a mod of the classic shooter Castle Wolfenstein, JODI replaced Wolfenstein's Nazi castle with black and white Miro-like panels. Yet they still chose to retain the original sound bytes of dogs barking and soldiers yelling. Similarly, in the game mods included in Untitled Game, many of the original macho Quake grunts are still included. These original audio samples recall indexically in the player's minds eye the original Quake levels and characters. A ghost image of the original flickers behind the alteration, evoked by sound and interface artifacts. Created not only for art aficionados but also for rabid Quake fans, habitual Quake players can even navigate "blind" through some of the levels included in Untitled Game. In Slipgate, (slipgates are an original feature of Quake), small blue cubes are formidable growling opponents. Revealing Algorithms One aesthetic maneuver repeated in the Untitled Game collection, reminiscent of JODI's net art, is to strip the environment of "realistic" graphics, to reduce anti-aliased pixels and color palettes to primary minimalist colors and shapes. Stripped of all pretense of photorealism, game play is reduced to algorithms normally cloaked as "representational" actions. ("Rez", a Japanese Playstation2 game, is the only commercial 3-D game I have seen which emphasizes movement algorithms and "cyber-representation" over "photorealistic" representation.) And these bare algorithms can be quite stunning. My most favorite mod on Untitled Game is "Spawn". In Spawn, shooting is transformed into spraying showers of gray pixels over an inky black background. Shooting becomes pixel painting, which in turn creates environment. Semi-automatic Another primary component of JODI's mods is tension between user control and program control. The relationship between user input and program output has been tweaked. The time it takes for the program to execute a command seems to have been elongated and refracted, so my smallest actions become triggers of algorithms that then unfold semi-autonomously from my input. Q-L is the most semi-automatic mod on Untitled. Once the player views the preset level demo and actually starts to play the game, the players movements trigger kaleidoscopic effects which accelerate fast and taper off slowly. Similarly, in E1M1AP, when I hit the space bar to jump, I summersault into an extended disorienting twirl. Output far exceeds input. Or the program becomes the performer, I am no longer player god in control–I must concede some of my agency to the code. Untitled Game is an exploration of the Quake system and some variable, funny, playful, beautiful Jodiesque things it can be made to do. Untitled Game also participates in a dialogue about 3-D gaming environments and what they can possibly become. (Unlike recent game inspired paintings or sculptures that speak exclusively to art audiences.) Although singularly not every mod on Untitled Game stands up on its own, when viewed as a complete package, (pak file ;) ), the UG archive is impressive. Untitled Game Site + + + + + + Ego Image Shooter by Marion Strunk and Deanna Herst Review by Anne-Marie Schleiner Ego Image Shooter is a new game by Marion Strunk and Deanna Herst (concept/design) created for Gender Games, an Swiss research initiative for exploring gender in relation to computer games. Of the five "games" created for Gender Games, which are available from their web site, Ego Image Shooter is certainly the most entertaining and the most "game- like". (Others severely stretch the definition of computer game and are more akin to hypertext net art.) Ego Image Shooter critiques the genre of shooter games in a number of playful ways. At game start-up, a blond American avatar with a strong hick accent announces that he will be your guide. Reminiscent of white trash backwoods characters in shooter games like Duke Nukem, this boyish avatar is relatively less macho, sporting a pasty smile permanently glued to his face. The game consists of five levels, which the player selects by rotating the bullet chamber of a gun-like interface. Alternately the player can click on the weapon in the bottom left of the screen to choose a level–each level has a different weapon identified with it, ranging from shot gun to automatic. Clearly, from the outset, the game draws the player's conscious attention to shooters and their weapons. Each of the five levels is an entirely new environment. In one level the player faces a bleak hallway recalling the tunneling architecture of shooter games. However, as s/he shoots, instead of bullets, frogs stream out of her weapon. Eventually a frog prince appears and morphs into a giant pair of kissing lip. In another level, in a burning apocolyptic blaze, a hoard of translucent cybernetic mummies slowly advance toward the player. They are truly frightening. But when they reach the player two of the mummies turn their heads towards each other and lock themselves into a mind altering homoerotic kiss which even melts the environment behind them. (Very dreamy!) My favorite level is an imitation Quake level, replete with the deep grunts and echoes common in violent network shooter Quake. The level also uses the typical warm desert sienna color palette common in the Quake Series. But when the player shoots his gun, purple flowers come out instead of bullets, covering the screen and obliterating the Quake-like environment. Although Ego Image Shooter is created with Macromedia Director as a Shockwave Movie, it implements the "find and replace" subversive logic of game modifications. (game-programming: Alex Schaub). Game mods allow players to selectively replace elements in a pre-existing game, from architecture, to textures, weapons, characters, sounds and so on. By consistently replacing bullets with unexpected frogs, flowers and kisses, Ego Image Shooter seems to be critiquing the testosterone-laden world of shooter games by inserting "feminine" signifiers which substitute for the spray of "semen-like" weapon discharge. (An interesting comparison is a "Sailor Moon" modification of Doom. The Sailor Moon "wad" recolored the walls and floors in pink, replaced the gun with a magic boomerang, and replaced the ammo littering the environment with cupcakes and bunnies.) But it is also undeniably fun to spray frogs and, in a different level, soccer balls out of a gun. Shooting is painting the environment. Perhaps another intent of Ego Image Shooter is too stretch the boundaries of the often too rigid shooter genre–not only to critique but to mutate into a new kind of shooter game. Often the game engine takes control away from the player–after shooting off a few rounds of frogs, a movie of a morphing frog prince appears. It is as if the game demands us to be aware of the conventions of game play by working against them. It wrests control away from the player just at the moment she is warming up to a shooting frenzy. The remaining levels in the game are less open to interpretation, departing even further from the conventions of shooter game play. (They also seem to require more development and beta-testing in terms of game play.) In one level, the player watches passively as a pair of men kick a soccer ball back and forth and a woman sits working alone at a computer workstation. In another level, a string of laundry displays T- shirts that say pride, fear, happy, shame and other emotions. The laundry is quite an uncommon domestic signifier in computer games. In this level a male and female jogger compete with one another and it seems the T-shirts are intended to effect their relationship. Ego Image Shooter is an interesting experiment. In pushing the boundaries of a game genre it thereby assumes the risks of experimenting with new forms of game play. If I were to view it as a beta test I would recommend it focus in more on the effects of subverting the shooter genre, which are quite successful in terms of game play and genderplay, and let some of the other experimental game play interfaces go. Its main shortcomings are what all independently funded games lack, a development team of at least fifteen or so 3-D modelers and programmers, to push the production value higher. Nevertheless, it simulates 3-D space efficiently enough to get the idea across and employs some very nice interface tricks. The use of sound and music is effective. (sound- design: Alex Schaub) I would like to see it developed further. 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