contact sponge |
![](../nav_images/spacer.gif)
![](../nav_images/hed_research.jpg)
m3 " the final word" 5/13/02
M3 History 01 02
03
notes
after december 1998
Game Machine: okay; then it really
must be a game. before I get to the juicy stuff, here's a brief 2 paragraph
game rap (please feel free to skip past; I'm probably way behind you two
in this sort of consideration):
1. Games (and Im thinking of
very young childrens games like hide & seek; ring-around-the-rosie;
london bridges etc) have a cycle of play (i.e. the game proceeds until
everyone is out or the loser replaces the winner replaces the loser until
everyone tires of the game (or it gets too dark to play).
2. In such games the players have inter-dependant
relationships which facilitate movement, sequence, and duration. Furthermore,
as the program progresses so does the anticipation, enthusiasm, suspensfulness,
and apprehension of the players with regard to each individuals
continuing ability to stay in rapport with the others that the group entity
may complete its task.
This, of course, is just one model of game but it made me
think what exactly is the relationship between Room 2 and Room 1;
what makes it significant as a game?
yesterday, i went up to sf to see laura, we talked about m3 actually
talked about m3 proper imagine that. she's cool to the idea of
explicitly dealing with play and game because
theyre terminally trendy right now. i agreed that they may be trendy
(is that true?) but i thought we have much deeper things to say about
these notions. laura also said that the ideas raised so far about m3 are
just revisiting ideas all the way back to m1. i said, so what?
i think we havent actually worked out the potential in a lot of
the past ideas, like system and exogenous. rule script improv play (in
matter and in human gesture). she agreed. but she also wanted to bring
in what i call more field-like or topological perceptual images: like
her MRI hallucinations, and also some fantastic images built out of aquatic
lifeforms.
i agreed that those forms have weird otherworldly (to us landlubber humans)
textures and dynamics that we could use to great effect in abstracted
form in dig video, etc., i thought that:
1. these are just at the level of perception
-- what are the big philosophical/ethical/affective themes at stake?
2. to advance the anti-object, anti-system
campaign (two of my personal projects), i suggested that it still makes
sense to START with a playroom with objects, ostensibly, apparently about
rules, and then undermine it by the notions/experiences. eg. by moving
to reconstructions of gestures by computer algortihm or by performer,
and to smooth/continuous fieldlike patterns like the aquatic stuff, fibreoptic
video, projections into water,sand, smoke, synthetic surface, etc.
The following is my Uncensored What If Scenario for GameMachine;
A small antechamber (which for convenience I call Warm-Up) opens into
Room 1 which opens into Room 2 which opens into another area I call Rest
Zone. Warm-Up is the place of preparation and meditation. Room 1 is the
place of learning and practice; Room 2 is the site of the Game; Rest Zone
is the place of reflection, conversation, and strategy.
- Group A waits in the Warm-Up.
- Group A enters Room 1. They encounter stuff and do whatever they
do. For a limited period of time, 10m say.
- Kids exit 1 and enter Room 2. The seating is elevated on all 4 sides
(think medical theater or stadium). They watch the kick-off so to
speak of the Game as our performers execute the first movement - I'm
thinking something simple and classic like KP to K4. Again,
a time limit, 5 m say.
- Meanwhile, at the commencement of 3, Group B enters Room 1; 10 m
etc.
- Group A exits and enters a Rest Zone. For the moment lets
not worry about practicalities, but assume that this cycle actually
functions. What I find interesting is the possibility of a Player
eventually replacing a Performer in the Game.
How one enters the game would need to be a formal action. For example,
there might be a designated point of entry on the perimeter of the "field.
Performers always enter the Game from this spot so that the schooled
Player by the time s/he is ready to play knows the routine.
To do this, we must invent a Game that has an objective, legitimate moves,
room for improvisation and invention within the rules of the Game, in
other words, individual technique can be developed.
Without further elaboration, what interests me ishiow this model fits
in with the currents of M1, M2, and M3 (in its initial germination). If
you recall, the goal of M1 was to find the Ideal Spectator who would learn
the rules of our event and enter into it with appropriate actions.
01.play. See me remarks in my followup
to my chat with Laura. Do you agree that play is terminally trendy? I
actually dont buy into the positive value attached to being un-trendy
because I dont buy the romantic occidental notion of originality.
Chinese artists flourished for
4500 years without such a notion of originality, and there's something
for westerners to learn from this, I believe. But this is wrapped up with
a long discussion of the occidental preoccupation with subject ego that
Id rather simply transmute directly into some sponge work that sidesteps
entirely such objects in favor of fields, topolgies and magmas.
02. What do you think are the big questions,
heuristics, themes we can use as blindmans canes in dreaming up
M3? Here are some, fusing from yours, that I like:
- How can we improvise atop an apparently rule-based system?
- How do we play in language? And how do we play in matter?
- Why do we play? (hmmm, no let's not do this
it's not a question)
- Whats play in the world? this is quite another notion
than game play, of give, elasticity, nonvoid gaps between things.
- What's the relation between play(4) and play(1,2,3)? See book by
Brian Smith The Origin of Objects.
04.constructing worlds. Yes this is
interesting does seems like a (boy-butch) gender thing? even I
suffer from this fascination but at a rather abstract level. but maybe
we can nuance it as more like a way to swim in mattermedia a way
to put hands into the stuff, sweep, displace, create ripples out of unstructured
matter. is topological toy an oxymoron? constructing a space is what i
still want to do with a certain unnamed survival research lab, but there
are some internal politics that may monkeywrench.
05. Explain me this, please: modular
construction systems like tinkertoys and erectorsets need the duration#
of imagination... operate on a different time structure than computer
games...
06. I distinguish between PERCEPTION
PLAYGROUND (Lauras MRI fits into this perceptualist domain) and
GESTURE SPACE or CREATION SPACE. Lets move away from perception
(merely epistemology) to becoming.
07. The Mattel camera that embeds you
into videospace is tip of iceberg. I witnessed some fascinating playspaces
last summer. I think that's a fantastic area to move toward, lets
jump ahead.
What does it take to cross over from the observed to the observed? How
are scripted behaviors noticed in the wild, when we lift the performers
out of the building or the stage and insert them into the patterns of
ordinary life? What is ordinary life? Are there intentional patterns in
ordinary life and if so, how are they correlated across multiple, human
and non-human bodies?
We view M1/M2 /M3 as a sequence of phenomenological experiments. The first,
M1, was an experiment in the threshold of perception from the perspectives
of the actors embedded in an everyday social setting. The second, M2,
everts the world by projecting narratives stylizing solitude and isolation
into screens embedded into a controlled space. The third, M3,
tries to merge these eversions via the paradox of open system. Rather
than an experiment following the norms of neurophysiology or psychology,
m3 is an experiment in mystery
and engagement written out in flesh and matter.
From Chris Dream of 3 spaces on 5/13/99
M3 prompts 3 states of experience conditioned through a post-industrial-technocratic
informatic society-state of being lost inside network-symbolic codes that
rule experience state of zero sense-phenomenal impressions reduced to
the threshold of experience state of continuous-post subjective play.
INFORMATIC-CONTINUOUS PUZZLE-T(opological) GARDEN
state 1: puzzle/state machine 10 x 10 box
must be a physical experience-light alone is already in the immaterial
realm modular box-sliding doors-some doors always fixed how to solve the
puzzle-get through it
what are the clues to help get through it
each group of participants re-arranges the game for the next group (depending
on the possible combinations of solutions) as people move the panels back
and forth-tiny ultrasonic sensors are triggered-the existence of the sensors
is unknown to the spectators Environment-closed world-post suburban
muzak lead military control paradiseif the RAND corporation could
have been built children's playgrounds or if they had designed game showsthis
is a vision of the world which we just soon forget do people have
a time limit to get through and solve the puzzleone at a timedo
they win something at the end?
Net portion of the puzzleexperience is to complicate the visual
(light) and aural atmosphere of the room from outside of the room (back
to endogenous and exogenous variables)
|
|
|