Erwin Redl's Matrix at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art
Have you ever had a conversation with someone who plays so many video games that they sometimes fool you into thinking that they're talking about a real world with real goals and real people?
Now, playing video games or watching television do not always a pathetic escapist make. But like a dog that gnaws on furniture, sometimes their boredom and anxiety about having to make choices in the real world them to substitute real-world choices with the video-game's predictable epithets and strategies. After all, the fake-world consequences are easier to deal with.
Anyway, that's what I thought of when I walked through Erwin Redl's Matrix XII, a piece of installation art currently on display at the Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg. Funny what a bunch of LED's hanging from copper wire can do for ya. Here's a brief description:
Redl mobilizes thousands of LEDs (light source emanating from a semiconductor crystal) which he delicately suspends from thin copper wires. Hanging in individual strands, usually in a grid formation, and installed in darkened, sometimes vast architectural spaces (i.e. Matrix IV used 10,000 red and blue LED lights in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage), space is transformed with a subtle, but sublime technological touch. As the wires virtually disappear from sight and colour patterns undulate with shifts in air flow and visitor traffic, Redl's veils of light (or "skins" as he calls them) generate an unparalleled phenomenological experience. Speaking about the ensuing encounter and the interactions there within, Redl states "space is experienced as a second skin, our social skin, which is transformed through my artistic intervention." To create his magic, Redl employs methods of "reverse engineering" that is, complexities of reprogramming software – to make a digital experience into a social and emotional experience. (more at www.plugin.org)
So go see it. It's neat.
3 Comments:
I am not an avid video game player myself by any means (I own a Playstation 2, but only 1 game for the console – Madden 2005, a football game, which I have played a grand total of 5 times since buying it last December). However, I must defend the exploits of the video-game-loving crowd, even those who replace their "real life" with this "fake life" on a ridiculously regular basis.
What, really, is the difference between someone who spends 5 hours a day playing a "character" in an interactive video game, interacting with other "characters" (who are also real people behind their keyboards somewhere else) and someone who engulfs themselves in a novel – or better yet, a series of a novels – for days, weeks, or months at a time? Both are living lives vicariously through other individuals, and while the benefits of reading extensively are well-documented, I would also say that the added positive to playing a video game is that at least one is making choices and creating something of substance (even if it is a "character" in a "game").
Many people I know play these games more for their existence as a venue to speak with other people, some who they may already know in "real life" and some who they have never met before in their lives. I would imagine (just because of its ridiculous popularity, and the fact that it seems to be all many of my friends do on weeknights) that the game your couch delivery cohort is playing is "World of Warcraft", about which I recently had to sit through many hours of discussion over the weekend on a road trip to Milwaukee. And it drove me nuts. But I can also understand how myself talking about the difficulties of coming up with a 3rd verse to a song I wrote 6 years ago and recently decided needed another verse could drive someone else nuts. I understand how my talking about the latest stats in the CFL and the frustrationg I genuinely feel about the Blue Bombers' disappointing season can get on someone else's nerves.
Basically, who's to say that his interaction with "characters" or even other "not real" friends he may encounter while playing the game, isn't healthy human interaction? If he is expanding his knowledge, forging new friendships, and pleasing himself, then I don't see a problem with it at all. One cannot expect everyone to be socially comfortable or even socially aware. While I'm sure these individuals could "work at it" and become more socially confident, however should they really have to? Should the shy become confident? Should the slender and weak start working out? Should the Ashlee Simpson fan learn to enjoy good music?
I realize how ridiculously annoying and frustrating these conversations may be to you, but perhaps the best thing to do would be to just enforce your stance that you are definitely not the least bit interested in what this fellow does in the virtual world. His lack of interest in the grades you got on various papers or in various classes is just as valid as your lack of interest in his game. It seems that he just doesn't understand his selfishness in blindly discussing his own interests without listening in on your own, but that is not a fault of his lifestyle, but rather his individual nature.
Wow... that was far too long considering the time of day and the fact I need to sleep. I apologize. Hope you read this, and hope you can make it to my place on Sept. 4th! :)
Point taken. It's ironic how all my studies right now have to do with facts (as presented by empirical evidence, which I don't consider wholly true or the "holy" truth) that games can be an addiction the same way drugs can, and that, when it becomes an addiction to the point where the lines blurr between real life and a game... which is what, dare I say, it is, a game... it can be destructive in one's own "real" life. God knows I've played or been addicted to many a game in past, but I'm also thankful that that stage of my life is over so that I can now study how it impacts one's actual social behaviour.
As far as the difference between a novel an a video game, well, that discussion could very well lead us to one of the deepest problems of modern times... beginning with the argument that the novel (not every novel, mind you) tends to develop a literate, contextualized mind, whereas video entertainment tends to foster a decontextualized, oral mind.
Which is better? I'll hold off on that for now, but suffice it to say that the last fifty years of e-media have bred a decontextualized, oral-based American population where the decontextualized comments of George Dubyah actually make sense!
This is true... although with the last comment, I'd say the people most affected by the last 50 years of e-media (television, video games, etc.) are decidedly not the people who "understand" and agree with what Mr. Bush says. :)
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