Breaking
the Game panel
On June 21, 2006 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, Workspace
Unlimited in collaboration with the SAT will host a public panel looking
back at phase one of Breaking the Game, a series of interdisciplinary
workshops and online symposium that brought together competing theorists and
practitioners to build, debate and reflect on virtual worlds, computer gaming,
immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience.
Taking place both online and offline, the workshops opened up the art of game
modification to the contingencies of everyday life, where virtual technologies
increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements in very complex and
dynamic ways.
During the event at the SAT we will invite three participants
of Breaking the Game who will engage further these topics together with Thomas
Soetens, Kora Van den Bulcke and curator Wayne
Ashley remotely through iChat. The event will be streamed live
to the SAT as well as to an online audience.
The evening will be divided into two sessions. In the first
session we will talk more generally about the format, goals, objectives, and
challenges of producing Breaking the Game. In the second phase of the evening
we will engage a remote panel to discuss a specific topic proposed by the participants
during the symposium.
More information about Breaking the Game can be found here
About Workspace Unlimited
Workspace Unlimited, founded in 2002 by Thomas Soetens (artist)
and Kora Van den Bulcke (architect), explores the creative potential of multiplayer
game technology in relation to digital art and architecture. The collective
focuses mainly on immersive environments, experience design, hybrid space, information
architecture and networks. Their main project, Virtual World of Art (VWA), is
a series of networked virtual environments connected to different new media
centers in Europe and North America: the Society for Art & Technology in
Montreal, the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam and the Vooruit
Kunstencentrum in Ghent.
Workspace Unlimited has invited New York curator Wayne Ashley
to collaborate on and help organize Breaking the Game. Previously he was the
Programs Director and Curator at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and from
1999 to 2001 was Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) first Manager of New Media
and Director of Arts in Multimedia, a research, art, and technology initiative
in collaboration with Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs.
To find out more about the ongoing work of Workspace Unlimited
please visit: http://www.workspace-unlimited.org
About Breaking the Game:
Workspace Unlimited has organized Breaking the Game, a series
of interdisciplinary workshops and online symposium that broutht together competing
theorists and practitioners to build, debate and reflect on virtual worlds,
computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic
practice and experience. Taking place both online and offline, the workshops
will open up the art of game modification to the contingencies of everyday life,
where virtual technologies increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements
in very complex and dynamic ways.
Breaking the Game consisted of three related parts:
1) Researching, designing and building a 2D interface and database for the symposium
2) Conceptualizing and creating a networked dynamic 3D virtual world that will
be linked to and driven by the database
3) The symposium
The symposium was organized around three core themes: “Hybridity”,
“Overclocking the City” and “The Virtual as Interface to Self
and Society.” Participants will consider gaming and other virtual technologies
in relationship to building and designing cities, navigating and experiencing
urban life, constructing identities, and creating and maintaining social interaction.
Architects, visual artists, filmmakers, choreographers, anthropologists
and curators will consider how these technologies and associated audio/visual
cultures impact the work and ideas of their disciplines. For example, how might
anthropological fieldwork and ethnography change if its practitioners had to
create a 3D virtual world rather than an essay or a book; if anthropology’s
disciplinary object was an updatable, media-rich, networked, and navigable space,
rather than a text? How might online gaming and modification continue to challenge
and expand the boundaries of filmmaking and public performance? How could the
design and implementation of a “real” building have an ongoing relationship
to its networked and virtual double? Can a public’s social interactions, exchanges,
and modifications inside a virtual building impact the meaning, form, and function
of the same building in real space? Breaking the Game hopes to inform and newly
challenge the efforts of a growing community of artists and designers who mine
the resources, code, and aesthetics of video games.
Finally, Breaking the Game asked: How might the symposium itself become re-mediated
as a 3D networked virtual world? How can we play with, think about, and continue
to debate the workshops’ themes inside this space, using the language, tools,
protocols, software, and interactive possibilities of gaming culture and technology?
In order to accomplish this, select participants will be encouraged to explore
their ideas in other media (a webpage, movie, animation, performance, a piece
of software, or a series of digitally recorded interviews). Workspace Unlimited
will integrate these digital artifacts into a new virtual world, created in
collaboration with a core team of students and practitioners. The virtual world
will be publicly presented in September 2006.