Bluring the Boundary Between Gaming and Reality

"At the same time as people are diving into game worlds, the games are starting to invade the real world. You're moving through the streets of Melbourne stalking your quarry. A phone call on your GPS mobile phone tells you your target is only a few streets away. A direct kill means boosting your team's score. And in this game, winning is everything. Welcome to the world of "real-life" games that blur the boundary between gaming and reality.

Last year the classic arcade game Pacman came to life on the streets of New York. A player dressed as Pacman ran around Manhattan collecting virtual "dots" while trying to evade four players dressed as ghosts. Each player had a human controller back at base who monitored their progress online and phoned through strategy and advice.

A few months later, a lab at Singapore National University had developed a version of the same game using GPS and motion sensors to track players through the city's streets. This time, players could see the game overlaid on the real world through special goggles called augmented-reality headsets." Continue reading Street games by Fran Molloy, The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Recently arrived back in the UK after a successful week of max/msp programming and general audio visual mayhem Oslo Style. 'Making Sense' was a week long project hosted by Peter Votava AKA DJ PURE and Erich Berger. I was part of a group of artists and musicians who had travelled from as far as Paris, Canada, Austria, Berlin and beyond to participate in the event.
Each artist had arrived with the intention to solve at least some of their intended project, ranging in content from a web activated dildo by audio acoustic duo Decker and Reiter, to an alcohol breathaliser kit / sound manipulator from pile artist
Ian Campbell



Everyday was spent in the muted grey windowless confines of ATELIER NORD sliding around in our socks whilst the minus eight degrees and blue skies saturated Oslo with health given ions. Each night with a numb head from too much on screen activity we checked out the nightlife. Our first stop for a drink at spasibar. where DJ Pure, Erich Berger, Decker and Reiter presented some live audiovisual manipulation.



This was enough to put a halt to the that disco loving friday feeling and left some of the locals with their fingers in their ears, especially to the nosebleeding shell sounds coming from Erich, who'd of thought it? too look at Erich appears quite a nice man really.

One more night out amongst similarly pleasant looking folk at an independantly run artschool that turned out to be infact a Death Metal Rocker Festival, had me ducking and diving from the pints of gozz the flying bottles and dead animals, under the pretense that there was going to be some interesting electronic wifi-beatery and visuals. Bands with names like 'the Darkside of the Force' 'Lydia laska' and 'Diary of a lustful Turkey' continued to insult the crowd, who apparently just couldn't get enough.

Went to a few art openings, all the work is pretty messed up, its no wonder really what with all that death rock.

Pong returns!!. A year has passed since I created this seminal videopiece and now what at first started out as a joke has become an everyday obsession! Festivals and events are very fond of it, fortunately this provides me with the occasional opportunity to visit alternative media spaces throughout Europe and meet other far more interesting makers

Next on its list is the Computergame Museum of Berlin. They are planning on including it within their exhibition PONG:Mythos The show that tells the story of Pong by spanning a bridge from the area of game history over game/pong art and through to science.



I owe this break to a whizzkid low tech enthusiast who goes by the name of CyberNIKLAS
Check out his Pongmechanik a fantastic remake of the analogue game converted into wires pullys and levers!

During my stay in Liverpool I happened to meet Josh Nimoy through mutual connections at FACT The Foundation for Arts and Creative Technology. His work balldroppings has been chosen for the show too. Its so addictive, likewise are his interestingly addictive workshops and seminars.



Connectivity -
Work that gives me that same feeling of 'connectedness' as I get through surfing the internet, yet through a completely physical act.
I guess this is similar to the butterfly concept or like making waves in the bottom of a teacup.

- How I lost two cell phones in one week.



The Internet was supposed to bring us all together. Just ten years ago, the world was awash in bold predictions: The Web would obliterate race, gender and nationality. It would break down social barriers. It would usher in a new era of classless communication and interpersonal understanding.

well then? what happened?

"The Net is still a confused social space," says Andrew Shoben, founder of British artist collective Greyworld "and for most of us, it's still a very private experience."

In the meantime, however, diverse artists and engineers have been hard at work implementing networked technology into real world form and function. Incorporating the use of cell phones, GPS Systems, Stamp Technology. C++ with more mundane everyday objects. These artists seek to subvert technology and embed it into a more physical future.

'What can I do other than sit you in front of a computer and show you art?' - Where does it begin? How can I translate the actions and feelings of 'connectivity' associated with the world wide web, into real space, out on the street, in my own backyard?

What starts off as a disruption of the everyday with creative pranks, or simply the investigation of meaning in messages from nowhere. Usually results in interesting and unexpected outcomes.



Take the artist Thorsten Knaub, his latest project GPSdiary is an online archive in which the artist recorded his daily movements over the course of a year by carrying a Global Positioning System(GPS) receiver on him.

To get technical for a minute -
GPS utilises special satellites in the earths’ orbit to record the change of a tracked position on the surface of the earth. Therefore any kind of movement will be charted according to the latitude and longitude grid system, e.g. a walk to the local shop results in a small 'drawing', a day spent at home will be recorded as a dot only but a journey on the London Underground results in a straight line between the tube station where he is out of range of the GPS satellites.

Check his site out, it's a fascinating linear pictograph of the artists day to day movements.

Ironically, lost within this ever expanding multiverse of rapidly increasing networks are two mobiles belonging to JAYGOBLOOM Two phones in as many weeks! it's a bit of a pain but hey, I am enjoying the thought of being constantly engaged.

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Just got back from FACT the foundation for creative technology, situated in the heart of buzzing Liverpool! Aside from scouting around the city centre distracted at wanting to form a band and checking out the many KARAOKE bars that seemed to be alive with the sound of tone deaf scousers, I did in fact have an objective. I was to participate in a fantastic masterclass run by the Troika Ranch dance group. Dawn and Marc the companies directors had flown in from Canada especially for the showcase and we received excellent firsthand experience in the uses and application of ISADORA, their unique physical computing software / tool that enables its user to shift activity away from the desktop and into a more organic form. Expect some examples soon and if you can check out one of their performances.

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