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'Pay a visit to Eddo Stern's office at UCLA and you'll get a sense of why he's become the poster child for one of the art world's heated debates: should video games be considered an art form? The floor-to-ceiling shelves and the long tables that cut across his large studio are piled high with the stuff of many a working artist: paper, glue, cardboard, museum catalogs and art books. But you'll also find boxes upon boxes of computing manuals, monitors, routers, and all kinds of electronics equipment. Here is an artist with an obsession for technology who spends much of his time making games.
'Much of Stern's work is about the tensions that exist around technology as a form of simulation that lies in contrast to realism, authenticity, and objectivity. In his early work, Stern was a pioneer of what became known as machinima, short form videos created from real-time footage captured from video games. Today the company Machinima.com in West Hollywood has the second most popular channel on YouTube, but when Stern was doing machinima the term had barely even been coined. In "Sheik Attack" (1999/2000), he used footage from computer games created in the mid-to-late 90s to recreate and critique his experience serving for the military in Israel where he grew up. He used military simulation games created in the U.S. -- Command and Conquer, Soldier of Fortune -- to make what amounts to both a documentary piece and a piece of appropriation art. In "Sheik Attack" he seems to critique Israeli ideology on the one hand, while exposing the games industry on the other. "A real problem for games and the games industry is that they want to capitalize on political tension and fantasies of war while never being held accountable for a specific point of view since everything is abstracted into fantastical versions of reality," he says.
'A central theme that wraps the entirety of Stern's work is the paradox between people's desire for technological mediation and a yearning for real, direct experience as well. "People want technology to do more and more things for them," he says. "They increasingly want to spend time in mediated realities, yet they also yearn for unmediated experiences that are more real, more direct, more true, more honest." For Stern, the central claims of technology -- the very fantasy of technology -- is that it will make things more real. One of his chief obsessions is the paradox that this can be achieved through more and more mediation and more layers of artifice.
'Stern's project in an on-going stage of development is a sensory deprivation game called "Darkgame" (2009/13), which is about to go into its fourth iteration. Projected onto a wall, the game requires players to wear physical headsets that provide haptic feedback allowing them to sense where they are in the game at any given time. The whole game design is premised on subverting the idea of role playing; the notion that you leave yourself behind when you enter into the framework of a game. What's innovative here is that the attributes in the game that usually belong to your avatar are split between you as a human player and the avatar that you play. There are six resources in the game and three of them directly affect the player's physical experience of the game. The players vision, hearing, and tactile senses can be dialed up or down. If you enhance your abilities as a player, your avatar's abilities will be severely diminished and it can become fickle and unreliable. Or, vice versa, you can play the game by hardly being able to see, hear, or feel what you're doing and your avatar will become a very powerful, almost autonomous super character. A year and half ago Stern started working with the Braille Institute in L.A. to develop a version of the game in which visually impaired players can play together in a network environment with non-visually impaired players. Stern is interested in using immersive technology to probe its own possibilities and limitations.'-- KCET
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Further
Eddo Stern Website
Eddo Stern @ Cargo Collective
Eddo Stern @ Postmasters Gallery
Eddo Stern @ Facebook
Eddo Stern @ The Influencers
'Eddo Stern turns viewers into players'
'Eddo Stern makes art-games about game-life.'
'Games Without Frontiers'
Video: Vernissage TV: Eddo Stern
Eddo Stern interviewed @ Unedit my heart
Eddo Stern reviewed @ Artforum
'Machinima By Eddo Stern'
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Darkgame
'Around 2005, Eddo Stern began work on Darkgame, a virtual-reality game that uses haptic technology, which incorporates players' sense of feel. Players wear a headset with small motors embedded into pressure points, giving them tactile feedback, allowing them to sense, for instance, that someone is following them. As you play, you can either gain or lose sense of sight, hearing and touch. The first headset Stern designed included a black head-covering, because images of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" who was famously transported with a hood over his head, had seared their way into his memory (though the new headset includes no such covering).
'Players who are already hard of hearing or unable to see can opt to give up hearing or sight from the start, in exchange for other heightened senses. The latest version of the game debuts in his Young Projects exhibition, and Stern has been testing this version at the Braille Institute in L.A., where few of the sight-impaired volunteers have ever played multiplayer games that involve a joystick. Games like that, which dissolve the differences between the senses, just don't exist. But this game has a life outside the screen.'-- LA Weekly
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c-level
C-level is a cooperative public and private lab formed to share physical, social and technological resources. Its members are artists,programmers, writers, designers, agit-propers, filmmakers and reverse-engineers. Part studio, part club, part stage and part screen; C-Level islocated in a basement in Chinatown Los Angeles and plays host to various media events such as screenings, performances, classes, lectures, debates, dances, readings and tournaments.
Who's in c-level: Karen Lofgren, Christina Ulke, Cyril Kuhn, Eddo Stern, Jason Brown, Jessica Hutchins, Mark Allen, Michael Wilson, Marc Herbst, Peter Brinson
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Interview
from Game Scenes
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What is your relationship to videogames?
Eddo Stern: I started playing and making computer games on an Apple II+ in the early 1980s. I was a member of the Be'er Sheva computer club, cracking games and doublesiding floppies with a round hole punch till someone built a square floppy disk nibbler. Some of my more memorable game playing experiences were with Autoduel, Timezone, Castle Wolfenstein, Aztec, Ruski Duck, Utlima, Zork, Drol, and Karateka. I've been interested in and studied math, philosophy and then art. In trying to combine all three, games eventually became the solution, a new “gesamtkunstwerk”. My earliest art work was installation focused. After that I worked with pretty high end VR for a few years - but VR seemed so stale compared to gaming culture, and I really like low tech tinkerering. I am very interested in total immersion but not in a strictly visual or haptic way - and I think my approach to gaming reflects this.
Were you a member of the now legendary collective C-level? What was the artsitgic fulcrum behind this highly influential group? And how did it start?
Eddo Stern: C-Level was both a group or people and an artist run space. I started with a few friends right after graduate school. The initial idea behind C-level was to create a space and working environment outside of school that mirrored the Integrated Media Lab at CalArts which most of us had shared. C-level was supposed to be a workspace that broke from the tradition of the segregated artist studio. In the beginning C-level was just that - a space where we worked and shared equipment, an artist co-op. Eventually things shifted and C-level became a public space which produced and hosted events, and soon after become more well known as gaming lab and often miscatagorized as an "artist group" as a few of the gaming projects become well known (Tekken Torture Tournament, Cockfight Arena and Waco Resurrection), but there was plenty going on at C-level that had nothing to do with gaming.
Do you see any difference working with machinima and a more traditional style of video art?
Eddo Stern: I think it depends on the context of the video and what you are trying to say or do. Many Machinima works are self referential - in the sense that they exist in the same cultural context as the game(s) they are using. My choice of specific games for my Machinima are determined by something else I want to say. My subject matter is not much concerned with self references to game culture (you'll notice that most Machinima is comic in nature) as it is to a wider cultural context for the intersection of history, violence and simulation. So to answer your question I do think that presenting work as Machinima assumes a context of game culture (and a more mainstream / lighthearted expectation from the work). Whereas presenting the same work as videoart in a museum / gallery brings a noter set of expectations and another set of viewers, likely not familiar with the game culture context and likely used to a shorter non-linear viewing experience. Showing the same work in a film festival brings with it yet a noter set of expectations and viewing practices. For my Machinima films I find that film festivals have often offered the best viewing context - not unexpectedly in terms of migrating the visual experience away from the computer screen which is something that is important to me when showing my Machinima. I was inspired to make video by a piece called "Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y" by Johan Grimonprez. Unlike many works of video art which document a performance or offer footage of repetitive goings-on, Dial was an intensely entrancing immersive experience, and yet did not rely on conventional narrative to achieve its immersiveness.
As an artist experimenting with videogames, what is your relationship with the art market?
Eddo Stern: My work exists in various art/economic contexts. Some of my works are free, some are editioned, some are one of a kind objects, some are distributed, some are self published, some are sold, bought and shown by galleries and museums.
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Show
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Level Sounds like Devil / Baby in Christ vs. His Father (2007)
'In June 2006 BabyInChrist, a Taiwanese teenager, living with an adoptive American Christian family posts the question to the online Christian forums: “Is World of Warcraft Evil ?” The Community helps him reckon with the moral and spiritual dilemmas of reconciling his life in World of Warcraft, with the strict edits of his father and the challenges of following his faith. As a synthetic fantasy world begins to encroach on the territory of established religion, the inner workings of faith, truth and the boundaries of reality begin to unravel and intertwine.'-- ES
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Fort Paladin (2003)
'Keywords: Tolkien, Christ, Your Empire and Your Desktop
'Fort Paladin is a medieval computer castle automaton trained to kill and master the American army 's recruitment training game "America's Army" using elecro-mechanics and a custom written expert system.
'GodsEye is borrowed from the computer gaming term God's eye perspective which positions the player as a God/General/Wizard floating above the world - awarded total control over cities, armies and minions. GodsEyecosists of several computer sculptures that make up a techno-/neo-medieval landscape built around the functional hardware elements of a computer desktop environment: keyboard, mouse, monitor, tower, etc. Formally, it draws from the subcultures of custom computer case modifications, hardware hacking, computer game modification and sampling.'-- ES
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Landlord Vigilante (w/ Jessica Hutchins, 2006)
'Landlord Vigilante tells the story of a Los Angeles cab-driver-turned-landlady, who has nothing in life except for her fierce belief in individual freedoms and the marketplace.'-- ES
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Enter the Lotus (with Steven Seagal) (2007)
'[Stern's] ... kinetic shadow sculpture uses a mash-up of documentary material from online forums, clip art, youtube videos, midi music, electronics and hand made puppets. It mines the online gaming world at its paradoxical extremes: on one hand, an untenable perversion of everyday life spent slaying an endless stream of virtual monsters, on the other, an ultimate mirroring of the most familiar social dynamics. The struggles with masculinity, honor, aggression, faith, love and self worth are embroiled with the game world’s vernacular aesthetics.'-- Postmasters
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Crusade (2002)
'Keywords: Tolkien, Christ, Your Empire and Your Desktop
'Crusade - a mechanical windmill desktop spins on its axis looping a posse of medieval avengers and a MIDI sample of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".
'GodsEye is borrowed from the computer gaming term God's eye perspective which positions the player as a God/General/Wizard floating above the world - awarded total control over cities, armies and minions. GodsEyecosists of several computer sculptures that make up a techno-/neo-medieval landscape built around the functional hardware elements of a computer desktop environment: keyboard, mouse, monitor, tower, etc. Formally, it draws from the subcultures of custom computer case modifications, hardware hacking, computer game modification and sampling.'-- ES
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Money Making Workshop (2012)
'Money Making Workshop is a role playing game for 2 to 4 players. One player plays as Genius and the others play as Pistons. The game lasts 13 rounds, about 25 minutes. Genius plays against the Pistons. Be aware that completing the game is going to be a challenge, but be assured that all of your hard work will pay off in the end.'-- ES
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Hatewave (2004)
'A clan of templar, farmers and champions gather to greet the future
'A mechanical crowd does the wave
'Their giant prays'-- ES
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Fake Portal #4 (2012)
'Wood. Electronics. Video Loop.'-- ES
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*
p.s. Hey. An early-ish heads up that I'm going out of town and will be blog-impaired on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week, so there'll be reruns plus brief, non-interactive p.s.es on those days. ** Gary gray, Hi. Very beautifully written and put. You're a sharp cookie, as my mom and I guess many moms used to say. Yeah, if you get really down to it, there's some level of denial in everything we think and/or say, sometimes because what we're denying is too huge or abstract to understand, so to deny denial is unnatural or something. Anyway, that sentence of mine was the opposite of beautifully written and put, so hats off. ** Thomas Moronic, Congrats to your friend! I got kind of achy with wishing that I could have seen it due to your lustrous description. Sure, it's super scary and daunting. Are those adjectives not the definition of importance? Or something? I'm very good, thank you. Enjoy everything ongoingly. (Spellcheck keeps insisting on changing 'ongoingly' to 'longingly', which I guess works too.) ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, I want to see 'Nebraska'. I like Payne's films. How is Bruce Dern in it? This late-in-the-game celebration of his crazy talent is such a sweet thing. I'll pass along your 'must-see' tip and give it my all when I get done here. Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein thinks you really should see this, and if you need more incentive than his seal of approval, know that it's entitled 'Orgasm Wars In Japan Features Gay Man Trying To Make Straight Man Climax (NSFW VIDEO)' ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill! Oh, great, I'm so happy that workshop experience was a really good one. These are some very good, sharp, generous people around here, you majorly included, and it was great to have a situation where that was forefronted. Plus, your story rules, man. Thank you again! ** Steevee, Wow, that's such a good story. I need to see that doc. I'm working on these rewrites of HC Anderson's fairytales, re-situating them in amusement parks and making the rides sentient, etc. for Zac's and my Scandinavia book project, and that story is like a premise useable for the stories, and I might just swipe/change yours a bit. So, thank you! Death Grips for the porno soundtrack, now that's a thought. Huh. That's too bad about 'Faust' but good to know when I get my chance at it. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant. 'Prisoners' ... I've seen or saw posters for that in the metro here, and the posters had a decent je ne sais quoi, but that's extent of my knowledge. Hm. ** Cap'm, Hi, Cap! That was a great, lush, luscious response to Bill's thing, man. Totally stood on its own. Thanks as ever, sir, buddy. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. That Fourier observation is incredibly beautiful, wow. It made my brain glide. Thanks a lot. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! That's so great about the M&P collaboration post! I'm very excited, thank you! Not to mention getting to gaze at the cover. How's Tokyo? ** Kyler, Hi, K. Thanks a lot for your very thoughtful words to Bill. I hope you're doing great. ** Bill, Howdy. Where are you until Wednesday? NYC? Cool that the doing of the piece was fun. Obviously, if you ever make any evidence of it, I'm all ears, eyes, jangling nerves, etc. Thanks so much, Bill. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, man. Yes, the porno might get made. I think I'll have a better sense of its future or not after the out-of-town trip I mentioned up above because it's being undertaken largely to see if the project might actually have the means to happen. We -- I'm making it with my friend Zac, who will direct and who co-rewrote the script with me -- haven't thought too far about the soundtrack yet. I think we want to see how realistic its chances of being made are first. We have an idea of a band that we would love to do its theme song. We have an idea of a band that we would love to appear in it in a scene that involves a band playing a gig. But those remain daydreams, and that's as far as the sound/score has been thought out, so far. Thanks for asking, sir. How the heck are you? ** Etc etc etc, Thanks a whole bunch for the great response to Bill's story, Casey. Much appreciated. How's your writing going? What are you working on? ** _Black_Acrylic, Low-key and enjoyable are so often married or engaged to be married. Nice. I'll have a look at Lauren's show, thanks! Everyone, _B_A, like me, has an art show to entertain you with today, if you like. Here he is in his own words: 'To the Generator last night for Here Bianca, a solo show of work by the sculptor Lauren Gault. I took a few photos and here they are.' ** Dennis Cooper, Did you really hug Minnie Mouse, or was that Photoshop magic? ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Oh, yeah, I actually saw that Zach German video on Neato Mosquito and promptly grabbed and posted it on my Facebook wall. Yeah, it's great. Really exciting to hear new work by him. I think he's such a fantastic writer. So thank you for making all of that possible. Ditto re: your various projects! ** Misanthrope, Oh, I don't know. Dave Grohl ... I really have no feeling about him one way or another. No interest in Foo Fighters. They just seem like mediocrity and standard fare rock central. His Nirvana drumming was effective enough. Seems like maybe he's a nice guy maybe or maybe not and maybe he just smiles a lot which makes him seem nice or something, I don't know. I think trying too get famous by singing other people's songs is completely acceptable. A singer's voice and interpretive gifts can be easily as great as the song he/she sings, and even much better. The problem is when the singer just sings acceptably or slightly better than acceptably in a style that people who are already famous sing with, and I assume that's the X Factor problem. Familiarity gets mistaken for talent. I don't know. Nice stove at least? ** Okay. We start the week with a galerie show featuring the video game-influenced art of the very awesome Eddo Stern, a fave of mine. See if you get where I'm coming from when I say that. See you tomorrow.