videoludica. game culture 

Gallery

There is a growing interest in capturing the essence of gameplay as a performance, gameplay as it is manifested on the faces and bodies of "those who play", the Others, the gamers. It comes as no surprise that, in the last few years, the number of photographic documentations on the "player of games", to borrow the title of a brilliant novel by Iain Banks, has simply skyrocketed.

Part of this fascination comes from the desire to investigate a particular subculture that is often portrayed by mass media as dangerous, alienated, or even disturbed. The photographers' accounts provide a stark contrast to the "images" of the gamer that are being circulated in the public sphere - not because they aspire to be "authentic" (most of them are staged), but because they illustrate the diversity of gamers' practices and stances in relation to the medium.

There is something vaguely sacrilegious in capturing the images of gamers: the photographer breaks the magic circle and enters (violates?) a sacred space. You cannot but ask yourself if the camera is going to steal the players' soul, or, at least, one of their lives. The gamer - somebody whose joy comes from manipulating images on a screen - is subjected to an iconographic manipulation for the pleasure of others.

Gameplay as a spiritual activity recurs in the photo essay by Shauna Frischkorn, an associate professor of art at Pennsylvania's Millersville University. Her portraits - recently published by Mother Jones magazine - elevate the gamer to a saint-like figure, at least aesthetically. The gamers, mostly males, appear to be ecstatically captured by the images on the screen. Gameplay becomes an intense, almost transcendental experience that can only be understood by those who already practice this rather esoteric activity. You too can see the light and be blessed by a Big Fucking Gun.

On the other end of the spectrum is "Faces of Guitar Hero" by Ari Pescoviz which portrays gamers playing Guitar Hero. Here, gameplay appears to be a much more mundane activity, and yet still closely associated to ecstasy and pleasure, climaxes and orgasms. Pescoviz seems to suggest that human beings could only be themselves while playing or having sex. Freud would probably argue that all forms of playing are sublimated sex anyway.

According to Philip Toledano, individuals can reveal their true selves through videogames: "When people are playing games they totally forget to how look normal and start showing their real emotions", he wrote in Wired magazine not too long ago. While playing games, players lose their inhibitions and act "spontaneously", thus, the role of the photographer is to catch, capture, and document this technologically-induced naturalness.

With "Avatar", British photojournalist Robbie Cooper invites the viewers to play a game of compare-and-contrast, by juxtaposing the image of human players and their correspondent virtual surrogates. First and second lives lie next to each other. We are facing a peculiar identity play: basically, these pairs ask us which "character" is more "real", as in "significant" (if not for the viewer, at least for the player).

In "Tokyo Arcade Warriors - Shibuya" by Axel Stockburger - the emphasis is not on the avatar, but rather on the gamer's face: "The faces of the players are the only visible evidence of the game being played. Their facial reactions are synced with the sounds emerging from the game consoles": audience studies through images, if you will.

Stockburger's intent and practice are shared by the German artists Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann, who, between 2000 and 2001 documented a series of LAN (Local Area Network) parties that they set up in their studio. They expressly invited fans of first-person shooters and took pictures of them - the fans, not the FPSs. The resulting series, "shooters" has inspired a legion of photographers around the world.

One of them is Sibylle Fendt who portrayed LAN party gamers in Berlin in 2005. Fendt's project is more ethnographic than Sann and Geissler's as she decided to attend a real LAN party instead of staging one in an "artificial setting" (i.e. a studio). The result can be seen in the series "No sleep before I die".

Similarly, American photographer Todd Deutsch has been investigating embodied gameplay in his celebrated series "Todd Deutsch, which documents various LAN parties in suburban Minneapolis and St. Paul. "Avid gamers take over empty storefronts and set up temporary networks for head- to- head gaming. Players bring their computers, sleeping bags, and enough caffeine to survive two days of nonstop video combat" he wrote. Here, gaming is an indoor activity that happens outside of domestic domains.

At the same time, for Deutsch, gamers do not belong to an exotic species. They do not live in a fantasy world entirely disconnected from everyday life even though they have to navigate a perilous jungle of cables and wires. They are not necessarily virtual soldiers who fight furious battles in foreign lands even if they wear camouflage pants. On the contrary, gaming is depicted as an inherent social activity.

Deutsch's kids and close relatives appears to be avid gamers themselves, or so the pictures tell us. Gameplay happens in bed and while camping in the woods, in the kitchen - with the aid of a magnifying lens if necessary - and in the car, to reinforce the idea that gaming is a pervasive yet "normal" activity that appeals to different demographics.

Ultimately, Deutsch and his colleagues show us that gaming is not a crime.

Update: Todd Deutsch's Gamers gets its own book (in Italian)

Link: Shauna Frischkorn photo essay on Mother Jones

Link: Tokyo Arcade Warriors - Shibuya" by Axel Stockburger

Link: Philip Toledano's "Videogamers"

Link: "Shooter" by Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann

Link: "Faces of Guitar Hero" by Ari Pescoviz

Link: Todd Deutsch's "Gamers"

Link: GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames"

Additional thanks to: we make money not art and VVORK.