videoludica. game culture 

We have previously discussed Damiano Colacito's works on videoludica. Colacito is one of the most interesting artists on the Italian Game Art scenes. His latest work, "Face of Doom" focuses on game interfaces and HUDs ("Heads-Up Display"). Once again, the young artist used a first-person shooter as a means of expression: id Software's Doom. The FPS genre is a peculiar form of gaming that "can evoke powerful emotions, that kind of emotions that one experiences after many hours of playing - when you take a break and go to the kitchen to get a glass of water, all of a sudden you find yourself almost awakened, as if you very day-dreaming", wrote Colacito in 2006.

"Face of Doom" is an outdoor installation that consists in projecting the game interfaces of Doom onto the ruins of the Hotel Europa in Sarajevo (Branilaca Sarajeva Zelenih Beretki). "Face of Doom" opened the XXIII International Festival of Sarajevo. The once majestic hotel was heavily damaged during the war. The "Face of Doom" video shows the changing states of Taggart Flynn, also known as "The DoomGuy". As the energy level decreases from 100% to 14%, Flyn's expression becomes increasingly tormented and anguished, a metaphor for a city that suffered so much destruction during the war. Luckily for Flynn, the video ends with the energy level restored to 100%. The 'game'face', like Sarajevo itself, is the proverbial phoenix that rises from its ashes.

The game interface is one of the peculiar elements of the videogame language. In a sense, HUDs are for games what montage is for cinema: an essential, defyining aspect. It comes as no surprise that many game designers, including David Jaffe (God of War) have often been very critical of the idea of eliminating the HUD, making it transparent or invisible (as it happens, for instance, in Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie). For more information about the role of interfaces in videogames, see this excellent article published on GamaSutra. Colacito is currently investigating the artistic implications of the game interface, so expect to see more projects in the next few months.
What follows is an online conversation with Colacito.

Matteo Bittanti: Why are you using game interfaces and HUDs?
Damiano Colacito: For many decades, entire generations grew up using the language of mechanics to describe their physical and mental states. I am especially referring to the car and its components, as they resemble so closely the structure and the functions of the human body. "My batteries ran out", my faithful mechanic Gosetti - who lives in Brescia - told me not too long ago. However, videogames introduced a completely different scenario, a scenario that could not have existed without gameplay. Recently I was talking to a friend of mine on Skype and when I asked him how he was doing, so he replied with: "I've the life on foot", referring to the health-bar of a game he was playing online. Originally intended as simple informational signs to help the player navigating the digital space, HUDs have become symbols of an existential state. As a two dimensional diaphragm, situated between the real self who is handling the controller and the virtual self immersed in the increasingly tangible and solid three dimensional space, HUDs are organized hallucinations, both concrete and private, just like the game experience that is designed to allocate one man to each controller.

Why Doom?
As you know, Doom is one of the first FPS and it is one of the first games in which the HUD - which was located under the main game area - featured an evolving portrait of the protagonist, Flynn Taggart, controlled by the player. The visualization of the HUD was justified by the translation of the data that Flynn was visualizing in his helmet - or in Gordon Freeman's miniature in Half-Life. That animated face functioned as a live recording of something that could not have been possibly represented otherwise: it was the evidence of the concrete existence of a man in such inhospitable gamespace. That small animation showed Taggart's cautiousness and vigor, joy and desperation. In a game of reference - between the subject of representation and the represented object - one could easily understand that the live recording made possible a complete identification between the avatar and the player on the other side of the screen. In other words, the portrait of Flynn Taggart was the mirrored portrait of the player himself - this thesis is supported by the fact that Bill Gates used the "DoomGuy" effect to promote the launch of DirectX: Gates's face becomes the new HUD. The personified "DoomGuy" is an example of a contemporary portrait.

What is the inner logic of "Face of Doom"?
Unlike three dimensional elements that construct the navigable spaces of videogames, HUDs are not percevived as objects, but as on-display projections of a game being that acquires full conscience. "Face of Doom" is a recording of a Doom II game. I recorded my own experience, frame by frame, and then edited in a looped video that focuses on Flynn's face. His face - extrapolated from the HUD - appears to exist independently of the game. Similar to an icon or a car odometer, the image still works as a display of a lived experience. Therefore, "Face of Doom" could not exist on a computer monitor. It had to invade reality: it was necessary to how it as a giant totem, in a public space, through a video.

Why Sarajevo?
I was invited to present this project at the XXIII edition of the International Festival of Sarajevo "Some Other City". To make this project work in an urban space, the video had to be projected onto a surface that could host this new HUD. The walls of Europa Hotel - which is currently being reconstructed - it is the symbol of a renovating city. The walls seemed to be a perfect match for the idea of a sinusoidal existence that characterizes both "Face of Doom" and the city itself. My persistence and the will of the organizers made this project happen. I have to thank them warmly for giving me all the technical equipment that I asked. As I wrote in my initial proposal, "The projection of an health-bar in a public space of Sarajevo transforms the simple display of an energy level of the player immersed in a videogame into the symbol of a collective health status. The citizen symbolically becomes a conscious protagonist of the cyclical movement of the Game of Life. Like a public meter that tells the atmospheric temperature, this peculiar gauge alludes to other possible metaphysical resources that are metaphorically available to us".


Link: Damiano Colacito, interview

Link: "Doom. Giocare in prima persona" a cura di Matteo Bittanti & Sue Morris

Link: Doom II: Hell on Earth (id Software, 1994)

Link: "Doom Guy" by Richard Horsman

Link: XXIII International Festival of Sarajevo