Yet another project i liked at the exhibition Banquete_nodos y redes which is currently running at LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón, Spain.

Vacuum Virtual Machine nevertheless required me to sit down and read carefully (twice, at least twice) what it is about.

This graphic software explores and visualizes the changing reticular self-organization of atoms and molecules. The graphics are the external expression of a virtual machine. Approaching the concept of artificial intelligence, this artefact works tirelessly to develop codes in order to change himself.

Image courtesy of LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial

The software is a generative model for the visualisation of complex behaviours through a simple interface. Adopting the appearance of membranes and tissues, the user finds a three-dimensional and synthetic understanding of the self-organization of living systems.

The developed of the project is Álvaro Castro. Based in Madrid, this young researcher and architect is interested in the wider spectrum field of architecture and in the generation of visual solutions for urban environments and non-linear systems. I asked him to give us the lowdown on his project:

Program screenshot

Could you guide us through the development process that lead to Vacuum Virtual Machine? What was the biggest challenge you encountered while developing it? How does it relate to or build on your previous programming and visualizing projects?

It started one year and a half ago as a continuation of a small research paper I prepared about self-organized maps applied to urban design, and went through the interaction with some institutions and people, which I believe strongly affected this project. At that time, the research was more scientifically oriented, although I was not convinced of the usefulness of that way of development for the ideas I was working with. Mostly, because I had some experience showing ideas that are scientifically rooted in very different areas in which I'm not an expert. That doesn't mean that the ideas were imprecise or incorrect, but that the amount of work and personal effort for transmitting an idea in each one of the specific doctrines involved in such a widely scoped research is much bigger than the actual research possibilities. I didn't want that to stop the investigation, where I think that even in the case of a small noise in the original concepts could eventually be very beneficial -although that is another topic-. So after writing that paper and presenting it in a computer and mathematics congress in Bulgaria, I decided to focus on possible generalizations and incorporations of what I learnt there, which lead to newer topics, closely related to what I was doing. So I began investigating some experimental computation systems. I think it was more or less at this time when it was furthest to the previous work on AI visualization IC_ Emergent processes particle projector, which was exclusively a perception system, since I had no visualization intentions at all. I wanted to develop something purely virtual and capable of gluing together all informational living systems I was studying: neural networks, evolutionary computation, cellular systems, membrane computation...

Through the conceptual development of the project, many new interests raised, that somehow shaped new ideas, like loop quantum gravity theory or particle physics. However, it was more the opportunity of contrasting some ideas and working directly with Luis Rico and Alfonso Valencia, from Instituto Nacional de Bioinformatica in Spain what finally fed Vacuum Virtual Machine with some key concepts from what is called epigenetics. Then the project could begin a more practical exploration.

At that time I was also doing my last design course in the architecture school so I started developing sketch visualizations of how this could look like and trying to apply it as conceptual tool for the architectural design. Roughly, it ended up being a set of interrelated and human-aware creatures sustained on an information system which, at its core was this virtual machine. From that moment on, the last months of the development of Vacuum Virtual Machine v1.0 are mostly about solving technical issues and building the program. From the process, this project seems to be a continuation of the previous works on computation, but as programming requirements for this project are far more severe it required stronger technical development and hidden machinery for the end user.


Program screenshot

VVM is an extremely complex artefact with some kind of artificial brain and without any physical existence. Do you nevertheless foresee some application of the programme in other context(s) such as physical architecture or any other discipline?

Although it aims to be a virtual entity, its ultimate motivation is a potential -although not close in time- application to IA paradigm development. In other words, it could be used as a framework for programming other -more specific- intelligent or self-organized systems. Currently it has all the elements necessary for such purpose, but it is computationally inefficient and very immature. Indeed, currently any computer could be simulated using this virtual machine, but is so costly that it would take years to do what current hardware is doing in real time. In this sense, applications are only theoretical, not practical at all. But on the other hand, all said shouldn't be misunderstood as that the only purpose of this project is this research framework, but there is another important motivation on machine dynamics and computational perception. These are not an applications, but as I said, motivations.

Anyway, referring to applications in architecture -considered as designing and constructing buildings- is not as far is it may seem. But the most important thing to point out regarding this is related to the notion of space and visualization: while I suggest applications are not so distant in architecture they are not related to current spatialization of the internal behavior of the program -what we can actually see when we look at VMM-. These possibilities are precisely tied to previously mentioned notions of AI, and, by no means, the visualized spatial network taken as spatial operations. It wants to be a thinking machine that we can inspect; which could be specialized for architecture but whose visualization can be architectural only in a metaphorical way.

VVM seemed to me like an autonomous creature trapped on a screen and evolving without any concern for the public watching it. Do you feel something similar to that, even if you are the creator of the software? Or do you think that you still have total control over it? How can the public relate to what they observe on the screen? What makes VVM closer to our human daily existence?

I feel as part of the public. I want it to be autonomous because I want it to surprise me and let me feel like I haven't seen it before. That might be why I do software, as getting unexpected results is something relatively common. For artificial intelligence researchers the ultimate goal is that their system is completely independent once finished, but there is always some tweaking -also in this case- to have some degree of control over it. While VMM is autonomous, it can suddenly self-destroy or saturate its connectivity, also can grow bigger than its physical host's memory or make it function too slow, or even enter a loop. For all this cases there are safety checks that keep an eye on this constrains and take pre-programmed actions. These actions are completely controlled by me, so I can stay confident that it can run for days without intervention.

On the other hand, I really think the work is somehow obscure for the public, since its dealing with different and technical concepts simultaneously; however, it can work as a visual intuition of how a real machine like this could work at its core. Public can be related to what they see if they feel the same fascination I do feel for the workings of complex systems: living, informational, physical, musical or architectural. But probably, understanding VVM closer to our human daily existence is something that is rapidly becoming evident with the naturalization of technological systems. In other words, systems like those described by this software are extremely common in nature, and eventually we seek for that on artificial devices so we can use our brain potential for what it was evolved. Either VVM or modify our brain.

Thanks Álvaro!

Previous entries about Banquete_nodos y redes: Sightseeing telescope reveals open wifi networks in urban space and The Bank of Common Knowledge.

The Barcelona-based group Platoniq (aka Susana Noguero, Oliver Schulbaum, Ignacio García and Joan Villa Puig) gained world fame a few years ago when they launched Burn Station, a mobile self-service system for searching, listening to and copying music and audio files with no charge. Legally and under a Copyleft Licence.

Burn Station

With the motto "taking the Internet to the streets" and inspired by the way the web works, Platoniq explores new models to distribute, shape and share information, knowledge and cultures.

At the Banquete_nodos y redes, an exhibition that recently opened at LABoral, Platoniq was presenting Banco común de Conocimientos[BCC] (Bank of Common Knowledge), a kind of lab platform that engages with new ways of enhancing the distribution channels for practical and informal knowledge.

BCC in Barcelona

Inspired by an Internet shaped by the collective effort of thousands of distributed agents who publicly shared their knowledge to achieve a common goal, the BCK project is based on the firm belief that creating, sharing, transmitting and exchanging knowledge in the public sphere is a key element to the growth and development of our societies.

The Bank of Common Knowledge exports the dynamics of Free Culture and the Copyleft philosophy to general processes of knowledge generation and transmission among citizens. Work processes and methodologies are researched while the production of content, mutual education and citizen participation is carried out for the purpose of giving free access to the knowledge generated by the communities in which the Common Knowledge Bank is installed.

For more details, check the video presentation:

After having seen the Bank of Common Knowledge project at the Banquete_nodos y redes exhibition, i thought "hey, look! here's a fantastic opportunity to ask these guys a few questions!" And here i am:

You set up a BCK-2008: Free Knowledge Market last March in Barcelona. How
did the whole experience go?

Actually, we've already set up 4 free knowledge markets (this was the second one in Barcelona) during the last two years of the Bank of Common Knowledge development. Previously we also had built BCK's active nodes in Cambridge UK (Wysing Arts Centre) and in Lisbon, both ending up with the open organisation of a market.

The last Bank of Common Knowledge happened in Barcelona in April. Exchanges of knowledge took place in 3 spaces with the help of 80 volunteers.

The Bank of Common Knowledge Markets are made possible through the offers and requests that BCK receives from citizens: How does a consumer cooperative function?, How can i share wifi with my neighbours?, Is it possible to earn money through collaboration instead of competition?, Is it possible to unfreeze patent-protected scientific knowledge? What can we learn from traditional cultures in the economic context? How can we regularize immigration documents in Spain? How can we set up a wiki without computer?

BCC Lisbon

The Market of the Bank of Common Knowledge attempts to cover a wide range of topics and materialize them through free workshops and manuals for urban survival. A gathering of transgressive and generous experiences by individuals and communities who put into practice various forms of autonomy in daily life.

Those exchanges are recorded and published online under a copyleft license in order to guarantee that knowledge keep on circulating.

Besides, experimenting with new forms of participation and organization is fundamental for BCK. The BCK organization is always open and follows dynamics made of cooperation, documentation of the whole process and a responsability distributed among all the persons involved. Anyone interested can participate to BCK, either by joining the internal organization, or by offering or requesting knowledge or even by helping us produce contents to be distributed online.

BCC in Cambridge

The first days of exchange took place in November 2006 in Barcelona's CCCB cultural center. Then in 2007 in Cambridge and more recently in Lisbon.

The main topics we focus on are:

EDUCATION (P2Pedagogy)
Experiments in the transmission of knowledge.
Generating educational methodologies and systems which augment the possibility to turn each moment of one's life into an opportunity to learn.

ECONOMY
Models of auto-management of cultural projects. Exploration of economic systems sustainable for free culture.

ECOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
Going beyond the creation of free contents to engage also in strategies of exchange and recycling of knowledge in danger of disappearing.

PUBLIC SPACE
Investigating the various use of public space related to the transmission of knowledge. Exploring the existing possibilities to use public space for collective activities of exchange (guide of places and actions required to be able to use them).

CITIZEN RIGHTS
What are our rights, what can we do in case of abuse, experiences of communities who work to improve life in common.

Video of the Cambridge's market:

Video of Lisbon's:

How receptive is the general public to the concept and opportunities offered by BCK? Or is it mostly the "creative commons" crowd who is enthusiastic about the project?

The copyleft and the free culture crowd is naturally more receptive to the BCK project and to horizontal dynamics of knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, in order to make the free culture not only free, but public, the main objective of BCK is to apply the positive effects and strategies of the free software movement and p2p systems to the areas of education and citizen participation, setting free the full potential of individuals and collectives through self-determination, autonomy and infinite networking.

BCK is organized as an open source model of knowledge transfer, a laboratory for inventing and trying out new forms of production, education, organization and distribution, involving new roles for producers and receivers, experts and amateurs, teachers and students...

Again, anyone interested in taking part in the BCK's internal organization structure (teams) is welcome to do so.

Right now we are working on several strategies to lay the foundations of this mutual education network, offering every individual the chance to share their current interests with other, similarly motivated peers in the fields of ecology, technology and communication, alternative economies, civil and human rights, public space use or any knowledge to make life easier and more autonomous.

We are currently testing various knowledge transmission and communication formats, such as games, demos, workshops, first person experiences, challenges, first aid kits or take away theory. These activities are documented in a set of video manuals or knowledge capsules currently being produced for inclusion in the Bank of Common Knowledge.

However, the main goal of the project is not to build an online video archive, even if that would end up being one of the consequences. The real challenge for the Bank of Common Knowledge is to build a model of transmission and free exchange whose social organization and self-training strategies can be easily replicated.

What makes you think that you are on the right path and that the quest for a free exchange of knowledge is more than an utopia (that's my pessimistic and cynical side speaking here)?

BCK is one of the many projects that has emerged of a society where peer production and peer governance present new opportunities for individuals and groups to create value together. We try to place these new developments in both a historical context and a future oriented context. This is no utopia anymore, copyleft and the sharing of knowledge is a functional revolution.

Regarding feedback, after a long year of development, traveling, meeting people, giving workshops about BCK in different countries during the last year (lastly in Shanghai, México City and Casablanca where a node is under construction) made us realize it would be more than useful to produce a BCK manual focusing on how to build/organize/sustain local Banks of Common Knowledge, or any collective production/trading community on the basis of our experience and the experience of others. This is actually the most frequent demand to the Bank of Common Knowledge.

To fulfill that demand, we're actually developing a set of exercises/manuals which explain and apply methodologies and ethics of social and free software to social community building, looking at "atomization" of knowledge and civic participation on the basis of P2P networks and protocols. So this is clearly about P2Pedagogy.

All these games/exercises are performed offline, although they are inspired in social software and social open networks functionalities, their aim is clearly to help people to understand, practice, decide, find their own protocols of networking and encourage civic engagement and community building/sustaining. An example of it is the social tagging game we presented at LABoral, which is about applying folksonomy to offline social networks using post it notes.

The main questions the games and BCK itself try to resolve are:
Suggestion or main questions to resolve:

Atomization on a large scale (such as in the Debian APT package manager or the CVS version control system) has allowed large software projects to employ an amazing degree of decentralized, collaborative and incremental development. But what other kinds of knowledge apart from software can be atomized, and how?

Does atomization kill community?

How can we formally translate Ubuntu's like project governance in social and public space? How can we explain notions such as decentralized budget, decentralized trust etc and other human protocols that sharing and peer production involves?

Among the first public actions that BCK undertook over the years 2006 and 2007, the Platoniq group launched a research project that looked for new perspectives which would enable, on the one hand, broaden the network of BCK collaborators and, on the other hand, improve and stimulate the development of its structure, content, strategies of dynamization or the economical sustainability of the initiative, the same way one would do during the beta testing process of a software project.

To achieve this objective we entrusted several experts with a series of exercises/games that allowed the simplification of ideas, strategies and concepts related with the various technological protocols and philosophies that form the basis of the Bank of Common Knowledge, in an attempt to communicate it to a non-initiated public. Among this group of experts are the researcher Ismael Peña Lopez, Juan Freire (biologist and hyper-active blogger who explores the interaction between urban space, social networks and digital spaces), Michael Linton (creator of the mythical LETSystem in the '80s), Gregor Gimme, one of the initiators of the online community for video learning Sclipo, Enric Senabre (technological coordinator of the Observatorio para la CiberSociedad), Dmytri Kleiner (polemical leader of Dialstation, a project of "venture Communism"), or the sociologist, biologist, economist and expert in barter networks in Latin America Heloísa Primavera.

The S.O.S. project

Now a question about a project which was not exhibited at LABoral but which
i nevertheless find intriguing. The S.O.S. project is a kit to communicate
and exchange knowledge in public and private space inspired by the Speaker's
Corner. How did you use this kit and how did people react to it? Which kind
of situation did it give rise to?

Actually The S.O.S (stands for Science of Sharing) project is still under heavy development. It hasn't been tested on the streets yet. We plan to release both a software and a mobile unit which are the core of the project during a set of actions due to be held next autumn in various middle sized cities of Catalunya.

The kit contains a battery-powered sound system with microphones, a computer and an FM radio transmitter, mounted on a scooter that will serve as a 'knowledge delivery / recovery service' to facilitate temporary knowledge-exchange actions.

In a few words, and to maintain suspense till the autumn, the S.O.S project seeks to adapt the techniques of peer-to-peer media sharing to collaborative, peer-to-peer education, allowing discrete chunks of information to be broken down and passed on via a network of volunteers, this is about atomisation of knowledge and atomisation of the city. S.O.S is an analog tracker, connecting peers and seeds, reclaiming public space 2.0 of the knowledge city

S.O.S will be the result of the lessons learnt with the BCK project, as well as four years of public domain research and development, working on the burn station project, a free software-based open source project, that seeks to generate an alternative model of production and distribution of copyleft music in the public space.

Burn Station

In the case of Burn Station, the objective was to put in practice a 100% collaborative system based on three interacting communities: net labels and artists that feed the database, software developers and groups administrating local Burn Stations. An attempt to strategically combine the experience of peer-to-peer networks with the Jamaican sound system culture. (P2P on a Face 2 Face basis)

An important lesson learnt from the BURN STATION software development: test, share and further develop software in the streets before publishing it on the net. It is the best and the most rigourous software testing model imaginable. Definitely inspiring...

Nevertheless, the most interesting thing about Burn Station for us is that it has been autonomously reproduced in schools, social centers, libraries and universities in Europe and South America, demonstrating its value as an educational tool. That's exactly what we expect to happen with the S.O.S project altough the challenge is more complicated this time because there is no consumerism involved here (free distribution is not enough!), no music involved, just raw production of collective knowledge from scratch. We need to build and drive our own networks! Back to the future of commons!

Video documentation of Burn Station

Other work participating to Banquete_nodos y redes: Sightseeing telescope reveals open wifi networks in urban space.
Banquete_nodos y redes runs at LABoral in Gijón, Spain until November 3, 2008.

I'm back from Asturias which was as lovely as ever. We even had real vegetable to eat this time. The LAboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón was opening Banquete_nodos y redes, Interactions Between Art, Science, Technology and Society in Spain's Digital Culture, an exhibition initiated by Karin Ohlenschläger and Luis Rico.

View of the LABoral shop and of the inauguration party right above it

The press conference started with a string of surprising figures listed by LABoral's Director Rosina Gómez-Baeza Tinturé. In its 14 months of activity, the centre -which has given itself the mission to foster the interaction between art, society and technology- has hosted the work of 261 creators (45 of them come from the region of Asturias), 54 workshops given by some 90 teachers to more than 3000 participants. Add to that many concerts, conferences, debates and other activities. Amazing, even for a space that covers more than 14.000 m². Which reminds me that it would be good to come back one day on the design and architecture of the centre. The public bathrooms only are worth the visit, i feel like stepping inside 2001: A Space Odyssey each time i enter there.

LABoral bathroom and a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Banquete_nodos y redes presents more than 30 digital and interactive works that critically and creatively explore the notion of Network as a shared matrix, not just from a technological perspective but also from a socio-cultural perspective. I'll be back with a lengthier overview of the exhibition and a small interview with its curator, the art critic Karin Ohlenschläger, later on but right now i wanted to share with you one of the best projects i saw in Gijón last week.

You've probably read about Clara Boj and Diego Diaz before, either in some media art catalog or on this blog, i interviewed them a few months ago about their project AR Magic System, their Lalalab studio and their interest for the visualization of wifi networks.

For the LABoral exhibition, the Valencia-based duo developed a sightseeing telescope named Observatorio (Observatory).

Observatorio builds upon Boj and DIaz' 2004 project Red Libre Red Visible (Free Network, Visible Network) which was born in an optimistic time when it seemed possible to achieve an utopia made of wireless, open communication networks managed by social groups offering services to the local community. At that (not so distant) time, several city governments offered free access to the WiFi network, sometimes in the entire city. The CMT (Telecommunications Market Commission) denounced those city governments for unfair competition with telecom companies, the free wifi municipal projects were canceled, and grassroot groups started installing, maintaining and extending open WiFi networks throughout Spain.

Today, some companies have adopted new tactics based on the deceptive slogan "Share your WiFi". Companies like FON, and commercial projects such as Whisher and Wefi exploit the current infrastructure of access nodes to the Internet in urban space to provide coverage to the whole city if it were an open, shared structure.

Obervatorio reflects on this scenario by informing viewers about the current state of wireless networks located in the area where the device is installed. The sightseeing telescope, installed on the Laboral tower, tracks and shows where Gijon's wifi networks are located in real time. You can visualize them on the screen of the telescope, swing it around and see which areas have a denser wifi coverage, and get additional data such as which ones among these networks are open or private. Because Observatorio is programmed to try and connect to any open network available in the area, it can send the information from the observation tower to the exhibition hall, where it is displayed on a big screen. If there is no open networks detected in the area, Observatorio remains separated from the main exhibition space, located in another building. A modification of these networks is also offered, showing an ideal configuration in which the local residents of large areas in the city could gain or share access to it.

Image courtesy LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial

After having installed Observatorio, the artists discovered many more open nodes than they expected. While testing the project at their studio in Valencia, they couldn't find more than 5% of open networks. In Gijón the percentage is higher, around 30% in the LABoral area.

From the tower Observatorio can reach theoretically almost the whole city of Gijón. The device comprises a high power uni-directional WiFi antenna with a 30º aperture, able to detect wireless networks within 1 to 4 kilometers depending on the number of obstacles encountered; a video surveillance camera with a telephoto lens with the same aperture as the WiFi antenna; and a viewer which, like a periscope, offers a real time image taken by the camera, with the WiFi networks detected by the antenna placed geographically on it.

Banquete_nodos y redes runs at LAboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón, Spain, until November, 03, 2008. The exhibition will then travel to the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Kartlruhe, March-July 2009.

More sightseeing telescope: The timetravel telescope, the Jurascope and the Elastic time and space telescope.

Also related: Wifi Camera Obscura.

LABoral (inside) mural by Mark Titchner. Image courtesy of LABoral

Together with Erich Berger and Laura Baigorri, Daphne Dragona curated Homo Ludens Ludens, an exhibition about play in contemporary culture and society which runs until September 22 at LABoral, Spain. I've been blogging the exhibition over the past few days but i wanted to end the coverage with a couple of questions to Daphne.

Daphne Dragona is an independent new media arts curator and organiser, based in Athens with a special interest in the game arts field. She was the Programme Curator of Gaming Realities (Medi@terra, International Art and Technology Festival) which took place in Athens in 2006, and the Associate Curator of Gameworld which was hosted in Laboral in 2007. She has been involved as an organiser or as a participant in different new media events and since 2004 she is also collaborating with the International New Media Collective Personal Cinema.

Molle Industria, Faith Fighter

Following Gameworld and Playware, Homo Ludens Ludens is the last episode of a trilogy dedicated to the world of game. How different is HLL's take on the theme of games and play?

We wanted Homo Ludens Ludens to embrace the previous concepts and summarize them somehow. To do this we needed to take in a way a step back, to look into play rather than games, to locate play's role and significance into the different sections of our society and culture. The two previous exhibitions, Gameworld and Playware focused respectively on the creativity of gaming art and on the playfulness of interactive art. Homo Ludens Ludens tried to locate and present play as a power and a medium that is embodied in different sections of our lives, that can ask questions, reveal facts and bring changes.

PainStation. Image credit: LABoral/Enrique G. Cárdenas

HLL presented 4 different themes: previous art movements which incorporated play in their discourse, play in everyday life, contents which invite to reflect on political and social issues and finally an introspective look on games and video games. Why did you decide to adopt such a broad approach?

Well, truth is that there are much more themes being discussed. We referred to these 4 categories at some point because the need appeared, as it happens for all exhibitions, to speak of a particular kind of structure. But in reality we were against the idea of grouping and categorising. Works can be categorised according to this scheme or some other schemes. The form of the exhibition is quite fluid actually, with no rigid clusters and units. To come back to your question, yes the theme is broad, but the issue of play in our digital times is huge anyway. Naming the event Homo Ludens Ludens was in a way an intro for a broad approach. Huizinga was already talking about the diffusion of play within culture back in the late 30s. We wanted to explore and present how things have changed, flourished and altered since then; to bring in as many aspects as possible through our exhibition and our conference. There have been a lot of misunderstandings regarding play nowadays: for instance, you speak about play and everyone things you refer to videogames, you refer to play and the issue is considered merely joyful, entertaining and lacking content. We wanted to escape from this, to present play's multifaceted character and raise consciousness about it. So, the approach could have been even broader, but maybe then the risk of its good presentation and perception would be higher.

Image courtesy of LABoral/Enrique G. Cárdenas

Which strategies did you adopt to have works which have very different backgrounds and characteristics (the interview with Muciunas, the installation levelHead, the Objects of Desire chase, etc.) cohabit and dialog with each other? You and your fellow curators Erich Berger and Laura Baigorri must have met with many challenges when preparing such a big and multi-faceted show. How did you manage to keep your head(s) above the water?

I would not really speak of strategies. Let's say that we located the areas of our interest on one hand, and works we consider interesting and inspiring on the other. We knew that we wanted to have a show that would be playful and critical at the same time. The criterion for all cases of works was not their form, for instance to be game applications as it happens in most game art shows, but rather their playfulness, their ludic mode and the ability to express different situations and notions through it. There were no constraints regarding any types of works - the exhibition was to be explored as a territory, a playground of various contemporary magic circles. This is maybe where the challenge and the difficulty was: trying to avoid usual paths and groupings that exhibitions tend to follow and still aiming to have a perceivable context and content. This is how we came up with dialogues and adjoining of certain works that were implied but not explained or framed. I believe that this kept the flow much smoother and more open.

So this way, for example, Wegman's dogs could go next to Stockburger's Tokyo gamers to show play's omnipresence and utter seriousness; Ludic Society's chase based on the desires of particular objects and Savicic's wifi map of gijon as read by his special corset could be adjoined by a magnified copy of Debord's psychogeographical map of Paris; Klima's pink elephant on the war of Afghanistan could sit next to Sanchez's Atari modification for the civil war of Peru.

Regarding the references to the old movements of the fluxus and the situationists we felt like we ought to include them, not only as a "tribute" to them but also as an additional element for the audience to perceive the contemporary works we present. For instance, it is important to see that certain notions that are presented in this show such as those of the transdisciplinarity, the appropriation, the detournement, the idea of highlighting the importance of everyday life as opposed to art, they all have their roots way back, in important modern movements.

Axel Stockburger, Tokyo Arcade Warriors - Shibuya (2005)

Many of the works on show at HLL demonstrate a keen observation of the rules and mechanisms of commercial games but do you think that the opposite is true? Have you ever noticed any interest from the commercial scene for what artists are doing with the game medium?

My understanding is that they do follow what happens in terms of creativity. The innovations and the approaches that are often introduced by artists and independent creators are of their interest either in terms of design, content or programming. And they do tend to hire artists often as part of their team, which makes sense of course. But on the other hand, judging from my experience, game companies still hesitate to support game art exhibitions, festivals and conferences. The commercial and the independent/artistic scene have not really merged yet. Probably they are not meant to merge, if we take what happened with cinema as an example. Different works and productions attract different audiences. Not a lot of gamers go to game art exhibitions for instance. The audience for these shows is mainly people interested in the arts and the technology. But at the end, it all works perfectly well for the industry as games are assigned new roles and are being accredited new values. This is the tricky point. As Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn had said, how about if the artistic / independent gaming scene at the end becomes the alibi for the commercial one to keep its character intact?

France Cadet, SweetPad

If i'm not wrong, you distinguish play from game. Can you explain us what makes them different from each other?

Yes, we tried to make this distinction visible in Homo Ludens Ludens, although there is no "formal" differentiation between the two terms and there is of course a lot of overlapping. In reality, it is easy to describe games but rather difficult to frame play.

I would say play reflects more the idea, the notion, the vivid and spontaneous basis for the action as well as its relation to fantasy, whereas games are closed systems and environments governed by rules which demand discipline and a constraint space and time. Play is in a way the presupposition for the games that are its expressions and forms.

Play as a notion is much more open and therefore it may even embrace elements that come in opposition with a game's structure. For instance play has no death or end; but games do, otherwise there s no meaning into it. Or think of cheating. While it can destroy a game by breaking its rules, it is still a part, an act of play. On the same line, while any game forms hierarchies, play creates interrelations between them.

MIT Lab - Drew Harry, Dietmar Offenhuber, Orkan Telhan Stiff People's League

It is all up to the play instinct I guess. We can be playful anytime anyplace, not only through games. Games are basically a construction which is made possible because of this playfulness that already exists in any aspect of life.

Nowadays, with the explosion of the videogame industry games have also become a product, a commodity and a subject of control. Accordingly, play became work and life itself started looking more like a complicated game environment. So the question is what happens with the notion of play at such times? This is really interesting: how we have been led from the total invasion of play that the situationists were dreaming of to the gamespace phenomenon Wark describes.

Martin Pichlmair & Fares Kayali Bagatelle Concrete

What is your personal relationship with video games? Are you a gamer yourself?

I mostly enjoy following what s happening in the online virtual worlds and trying out practices and applications by the independent and artistic scene. I also do try to keep up with the commercial games popping up but sometimes this is not so easy in terms of time and energy. Generally, however, if you ask me about the last months, I must say that -maybe influenced by homo ludens ludens- I also got carried away and inspired by other types of play; from children's make believe play to play being approached by philosophy as a tool for political change... This practically means that I really liked playing a lot with my 2 year old niece on one hand and reading Agamben and Vaneigem on the other. It was quite a weird combination now that I think about it...

Thanks Daphne!

The documentary i was dying to see at the Homo Ludens Ludens exhibition at LABoral in Gijon was Gold Farmers, by Ge Jin.

Image courtesy of Ge Jin

Gold Farmers are young people who earn their living by playing MMORPG games. They acquire ("farm") items of value within a game, usually by carrying out in-game actions repeatedly to maximize gains, sometimes by using a program such as a bot or automatic clicker.

They sell the artificial gold coins and other virtual goods they've harvested to players and/or farming organizations and get "real" money in return. Players from around the world will then use the golden coins to buy better armor, magic spells and other equipments to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters.

World of Warcraft, image gameslander

Many companies have attempted to block the use of gold-farming services by specifically stating in their End User License Agreements and Terms of Service that any and all game assets (from the player's characters themselves, to any items that they may be carrying) remain the sole property of the company itself, and taking aggressive action to close the accounts of any that are found to be using gold-farming (or similar) services.

Although there are gold farmers or gold farms in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Mexico, Chinese are by far the most dynamic. There, young players typically work twelve hour shifts, with just a lunch break somewhere in the middle.

There are gold farmers or gold farms in other countries as well, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Mexico. However, they do not approach the scope and scale of the Chinese farm industry.

Image courtesy of Ge Jin

Ge Jin, a 30-year-old Shanghai native and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego, has shot a Gold Farmers, a documentary that delve into the background and lives of Chinese gold farmers.

Gold farming puts down the mechanisms that govern a universe in which everyone starts at the same level, no matter how rich their parents are, no matter how many degrees they've collected at the university. Players trying to work their way up according to the rules and in all fairness are the ones who get hit hardest by the practice of gold farming.

Watching the documentary, you can't help but feel some compassion for the gold farmers: they have very little free time, they are paid quite poorly to feed the whims of the Western consumer, they have to deal with the ire of a family who doesn't approve of what they do for a living, they must face the hostility of other players as soon as these realize that gold farmers are on their turf, their english is not good enough to enable them to communicate with other players, and they work hard. Don't be fooled, they don't sit there for hours just for the fun, most of their activity is extremely repetitive. In fact they would sometimes end their day at the "factory" by playing a real game in WoW. Just for the fun.

Chinese Gold Farmers Preview video (Ge Jin has uploaded more video previews):

I asked Ge Jin to discuss his documentary for the blog:

First of all, is the video on show at laboral only part of the documentary you are making or is it the full version of it?

I have another 40 min. long version, but this one is complete in itself as a short version.

Gold farmers have the challenging task of constantly navigating between clandestinity and the need to advertise their service. i suspect that finding and getting the "gold farmers" to talk must have been difficult. how did you locate the players and how did you gain their trust?

It is indeed difficult to get into the exclusive "gold farming" circle. But I was lucky to have an old friend in Shanghai who was running gold farms from 2003 to 2005. This friend introduced me to some gold farm owners. But the reason that the gaming workers/gold farmers trusted me was mainly because I treated them with respect. They face discriminations from non-gamers who see them as game addicts who are losers in real life as well as discriminations from gamers who think they care about more about money than gaming itself. I tried to be a good listener for them and they can see I didn't approach them with many assumptions.

Image courtesy of Ge Jin

How much has the phenomenon evolved since you started working on this documentary in 2005 (it think)?

Yes I started following this phenomenon since 2005. I think the market become much more competitive and the profit margin for gold farmers are much smaller now. Meanwhile, more sophisticated services like power-leveling have become the mainstream of real money trade. Also, the domestic demand for in-game goods in China has risen so much that Chinese gold farmers no longer just work in foreign games.

In your documentary, you are neither pointing the fingers to gold farmers and saying "look this is evil!", neither are you saying that this is kind of labor embodied in play is the best thing that happened to the gaming scene. I had the feeling that you are not taking a stand. Am i right?

You are right that I'm not taking a stand. And I try to let the people involved in real money trade to tell their own stories in my documentary. But I think some of my "biases" do make their way into the documentary. For example, I don't really care if real money trade changes the regular gaming experience, I'm more concerned with how people's virtual life and real life affect each other, so you don't hardly hear the game industry's point of view in my documentary.

Image courtesy of Ge Jin

Is gold farming regarded differently in China than it is in the USA, Europe or Japan for example? Is the practice seen as more acceptable by the public and the government? How much does China try to tax and regulate the business?

Culturally, real money trade is indeed more accepted in China than in other countries. For example, the successful game Legend from Giant. Ltc thrives on incorporating real money trade in game design. Western game companies dare not do so blatantly because many gamers may think the game is not a level playing ground that way. But the Chinese gamers seem to accept this inherent unfairness, as if they see so much injustice in real life that they don't expect the virtual world to be better. The government doesn't seem to have any problem with the gold farming business. It has not figure out a good way to tax virtual trade yet, in some rare cases, some gold farms pay a fixed amount of tax based on very rough estimation of trade volume. There is currently no policy directly regulating this industry. Though there are regulations generally aiming to purify content of games and limit how long people can play online games.

Did your research on gold farming sparkle the interest of Western commercial gaming companies? Asking your help to crack down on farmers? Or asking for your opinion on how to make the most of this new form of economy?

To my surprise, I was contacted by gold selling websites who want to use my website to advertise themselves, by gold buyers who are looking for a steady supplier, and by market researchers who want to measure the supply and demand of gold trade. I wish I could seize such opportunities to make some money for myself. But unfortunately I was occupied by exploring the social implications of this economy.

Thanks Ge Jin!

Another documentary part of Homo Ludens Ludens is the fantastic 8 bit movie.

More WoW stories: The Avatar Machine, Joichi Ito on WoW, Life at the gamers' farm.

While i was at LABoral visiting the Homo Ludens Ludens exhibition, i got to live the uncanny experience of being bossed around by wooden boxes that deliver Situation(ist) quotes, order me to bring them to their friends (which were also boxy and made of wood), carry them upstairs within 30 seconds, and treat them like princesses. I felt like a puppet in the hands of Objects of Desire, the latest game of Ludic Society. This international association of artists, game practitioners and theorists seek to provoke a new artistic re/search discipline, best addressed as 'ludics' (cf. some of their previous works: Tagged City Play for Real Players in Real Cities and The Pong Dress).

Objects of Desire is a Neo-Situationist's walk in the company of capricious spimes through an invisible city of electromagnetic waves. The play-map constitutes of real names of wireless access points, found during a "WIFI-Sniff" through the city of Gijon. Names of actual urban WIFI zones (my favourite was called Familia Alvarez) are mapped and tagged like street-names in the exhibition space while aether waves with the same subjective names are also superimposed on the arts space, as playground.

Instead of writing down what the game is about, i'll just send you to the video of the game . It clearly explains the developments, mechanics and rules of the game. And because the plot unfolds in sunny Gijon and LABoral, you'll also get an idea of what both the city and the art center are like.

I asked Ludite Margarete Jahrmann (who developed the game together with Fleshgordo, imonym, Rene Bauer,
and MosMaxHax) to give us more details about their game:

How does the game work technically? Does it use rfid?

Yes, each object is tagged with a RFID tag. Our self-built LS-Gerät can sniff each box and based on the RFID number and cabbalistic numerology rules the object's desire will be appointed.

On the other side, we hide a couple of WIFI network clouds (some openWRT hacked linksys routers) in the exhibition space by which each player is located through the built-in WIFI function of Nintendo DS. The clouds are named and geographically located like access points in Gijon-city.

Basically, it is a very speculative motion tracking, like a triangulation with cell phones, virtual and real. Anyhow we used them as an inverse surveillance for each player. Each move is logged ;)

The Ludic extensions of SM (standard model) game consoles are extremely beautiful. How exactly do you craft them? Does each shape correspond to a particular function?

They were all DIY self-built and designed in our LSCV (Ludic Society Chapter Vienna). The design is conceptually connected to our ideas of a PCB - 'Pata Circuit Boards - which are standing for Imaginary Machines and Devices of Wonder (read more about in issue#1 of LS magazine).

Each LS-Reader is equipped with a voltage booster, a Wunschmaschine, not only referring to our concept but also in Real by literally lifting the supply voltage up from 3 to 5 Volts. Each shape corresponds to a different conceptual starting point. The little tree refreshes the EM (electromagnetic) aether while the "Blitz" refers to our notion of BlitzPlay (Urban Guerrilla Street Play Tactics - TAZ). The circular shaped PCB is a sequel of our LudicWheel, a living machine, built for playing the game- and the reality engine either-way.

What is the story or motivation behind the objects' stories and desires?

Playtarget: inverse surveillance by mobile toy-gadgetry...walks between WIFI and RFID waves-.. the city waves in Gijon - site specific metaphors...
Some parables between the electromagnetic waves of a city and the waves of the sea...

Then about the inverse control of objects by subjects - a domination and surveillance PlaySurVeillance ;) by "Subjectivated" objects... with eeach RFID tag, the internet of
things gains more power. The boxes are just placeholder for any commodity or tagged object...

Based on what you could observe while you were in Gijon, how did people react to the uncanny experience of being bossed around by wooden boxes?

It was funny to watch people how exciting they became by obeying some very simple instructions, just for the sake of getting some points on a virtual screen. Some were lying on the floor (even the curator Erich Berger), standing against the wall for a minute or shouting out loud.

But with each game, it depends on the *player's obedience* to the rules.

The readers are new bachelor machines to extend the Standard model game
console.

Originally we (in that case me and 3 more Ludic Society members - PM ONG, Fleshgordo and imonym in conjunction with marguerite charmante) thought about making a game through the whole exhibition- with objects tagged - which have certain behaviours -- the visitors shall bring them to their "natural born home" of the Objects (OOH) which is stored in the RFID tag of the object...), we wanted to further develop Ludic Society's urban games into a white cube test area.

Thanks Margarete!

Previous posts about the exhibition in LABoral: Homo Ludens Ludens - Play in contemporary culture and society, the Art of War.