videoludica. game culture 

Can you introduce yourself and give us some background information? My name is Aram Bartholl. I was born in 1972 in Bremen West Germany. I moved in '95 to Berlin to study architecture at the University of Arts Berlin. With my thesis "Bits on location" I finished my studies and won the Browserday competition in 2001. Since then I work beside my artwork as a freelancer as interaction designer and a mobile application concept designer for several companies. In Berlin I am affiliated with the Urban Media Salon/Interactionfield.de, the Chaos Communication Club Berlin (CCC) and the Games Stammtisch Berlin among others.

What is your relationship with video games? Are you a gamer? If so, what are your favorite genres/titles? I grew up with computers and I did spend a lot of time in front of a Commodore 64, an Atari ST, and several generations of personal computer since I was 12 years old. Video games played a crucial role in my adolescence. So, yes, I consider myself a real gamer although, nowadays I barely have enough time to play. After becoming a father, I have other playmates to take care of... Also, becoming a freelance in 2001 did not help, either. But I keep abreast of new developments relating to the world of games, thanks to the Internet and the specialized press. I am also still upgrading my machine in order to be able to play the latest titles. Among my favorite videogames are: Thrust, H.E.R.O., Elite, Bards' Tale, Wasteland, Rally Speedway, Maniac Mansion, Dungeon Master, System Shock, Duke Nukem, Half Life, Counter Strike, Half Life 2.

Since 2004, you have been creating performances themed around the unexpected consequences of inserting a specific game component into real life, constructing "authentic" situations that inexplicably feature game elements. In your "Computer Game Objects" series you specifically address the notion of game conventions. What were your goals? What was the reaction of the viewers/spectator/critics to your works? Do you feel you have accomplished your objectives, so to speak?

The common denominator of all my works - not only the "Computer Game Object" series - is the idea of importing into the physical, analog world behaviors and principles that belong to the digital, data space. I must confess that I have a love/hate relationship with computer technology. On the one hand, it is a wonderful universal machine that I can use to design whatever I want in the digital space. It gives me the opportunity to create unlimited copies of digital artifacts. It also allows me to connect me to all the places in the world, no matter where I am, in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, the computer devours my time, forcing me to do things that I could not care less. I find myself easily distracted by the endless amount of possibilities that the computer offers right before my eyes. It distracts me when all I want is to focus on my work. Gosh, I cannot remember how much time I spent staring at a computer screen in the last few years. CDs that I have burnt five years ago do not work any more on my machine. So many projects that I created in school vanished in the digital nirvana. A lot of work that I have created on my computer, especially 3D stuff, becomes obsolete in less than six months. These are just some of the reasons why I feel that I have to constantly reinvent the wheel every time I want to do something new. With my "Computer Game Object" series I am trying to investigate the many planes of realities we live in. I am trying to find new ways to link together these different realms. For instance, I am transferring elements, behaviors or objects with special properties from the worlds of video games into the 'real' world. I originally envisioned a series of interactive game-like objects in real life, but then I discovered to my great surprise that by simply importing these objects into the ordinary world you can create unexpected, unintended effects. This is what happened, for instance, when I put a series of crates from Counter-Strike on the sidewalks or onto the platforms of subway stations of German cities. These crates are very familiar to a fan of Counter-Strike. Try to imagine how many people have been sitting behind these objects... How many players have jumped on top these crates... And one day, you walk around your neighborhood and you happen to encounter one of these crates on the sidewalk... This unexpected intrusion of the virtual into the 'real' screws up your understanding of the world. Suddenly, different realities are merging... We take for granted that these realities are somehow intermingled in our mind, but in real life, their coexistence is problematic. As for the feedback to my installations, it is crucial to make a distinction between gamers and non gamers. My parents for example might understand the idea, the rationale behind my works, but they cannot really relate since they do not play videogames. But when a gamer happens to stop by the exhibition in a public space and recognizes the objects from his loved games, his reaction is often times very enthusiastic.

One of the most abused terms in gaming circles is 'realism'. Designers, players, and reviewers love to emphasize the 'realistic' nature of digital games, stressing that the boundaries between the real and the virtual are blurring, as the cliché goes. However, in most cases, game 'realism' is simply a synonymous of cinematic and televised photorealism. A game is deemed 'realistic' when it approaches the aesthetics standards established by a popular cultural artifact, such as a movie. Many of your works stress the dichotomy between diverging, often antithetical notions of realism. What is your personal definition of "realism"?

We spend a significant part of our everyday in the digitized world. We do not really realize the extent of this. I am not talking only about videogames, but computer and digital technologies tout court. They are deeply woven into our everyday life. But, at the same time, where are these digital spaces exactly? You can't see them, feel them or touch them anywhere in the world. Everybody is just looking at screens of any size all the day. The digital world seems to be totally integrated in our lives, but in fact there is very little tangible connection between our physical world, our body and the net data spaces. The emotional connection to these digital spaces, on the other hand, is very intense. There is a whole generation of people that now shares a collective memory on games, software, and computer developments. Do you remember your first email, chat or website? What was the first game you played on a video screen? With whom did you share these moments? Was he or she sitting next to you or connected on the net? What was your first nickname? These are all very strong memories and they are an integral part of our reality and life experience. Clearly, all the other traditional media like - television, print and cinema - inform our perception and understanding of the world: digital media did not replace them, they simply complemented them. But the point is that it seems to me that there is not much left of the so called 'real world' we inhabit. Try to observer people on subways or buses: almost everybody is wearing white headphones and us constantly fixated onto some small screen. As you said before, the notion of realism in games is crucial. And yet, the rhetoric on realism focuses on technical details like physics engines, realistic water animations or high-end polygon modeling. Sometimes it is funny how people talk about realism in games. Once I heard two guys arguing about the weapon models available in the game Halo. They were discussing if they are realistic or not! It is all relative, of course, always a matter of points of view, but in this case, the notion of realism is always confused with naturalism, a different concept. Thus, instead of remodeling the whole world within the machine space, I am more interested in understanding how to get "digitalism" - the idea/ideology of the digital - into our analog world. Let's get things out of the computer! We are just moving 'things' in all the time on a screen. What happens when the digital thinking enters the analog world? How does it affect our body and our sensorial apparatus?

You once said that "Although computer games always try to imitate the physical world there are always elements, objects, and behaviors which only exist in the virtual world", like the crates that you only find in first-person shooters - they often times exists only to be smashed. Can you elaborate on this? How do you make sense of this "impermeability" between different planes of reality?

Most of the computer game worlds try to imitate our physical world but, on the other hand, there are certain functions, aspects, and behaviors that are puzzling when you look a them very closely. A gamer would never question why he has unlimited lives, respawn areas, health packages scattered all over dark dungeons. He would never wonder why there is a floating 3D objects above his character's head. I am especially interested in these phenomena. The wooden crate from the map ""de_dust": of Counter Strike was originally created by a game developer. It is a familiar object form our 'real' world which has been digitized and photo shopped into the game. But in the game this crate functions as a space defining object. Players use these objects in the game as a hiding device, or they climb them. Their real life function - that is, being a container - is no longer valid in the virtual world. These objects migrated from the real to the virtual realm, but in this passage, their function changed. I want to share a story about the project "de_dust": . About a month ago I received an email from Chris Ashton, a game developer of Turtle Rock Studios, who told me that he really liked my work. The funny thing is that he was the artist who created all the textures for the map "de_dust" back in the days when the mod was developed. Isn't that amazing? The guy who digitized and photo-shopped some wood pictures into a game which became a staple for an entire generation contacts me, the person who brought these wood pixels back to the real world. In other words, the circle is now complete. There's more: the red glowing animated arrows in the game Need for Speed Underground have been adapted from real world traffic sign library but in the game they possess special properties which wouldn't make any sense within our daily city traffic. In the virtual city they separate an "illegal" race track from the other streets and operate as a barrier for the players' cars. The simulated cars in the game, on the other hand, can cross these semi-permeable arrows as if they were virtual objects in an anyway virtual world. Paradoxes abound. I am really interested on how our world is influenced by the arbitrary conventions of the digital spaces. I am not the only one: there is a community of users that are bringing stuff back from digital space into real world. Think about all the gamers that have started printing characters and objects in 3D from Second Live and other games. More prosaically, gamers have been imitating the moves and appearances of their favorite game characters for ages. They document their stories with photo tools, movie tools, fan fiction... Online games are now spawning real economies.... This might sound far-fetched now, but I wonder if in a few years, a question mark will be flashing above our heads if we have some questions while shopping at Safeway.

In your "DIY" (2004) performance - which uses EA's The Sims (2000) as inspiration - you had real human beings walking around the city with a green three dimensional rhombus above their heads. Did pedestrians understand what you were trying to do? What was their reaction?

The Sims is very fascinating because it tries hard to simulate our everyday life. To transfer the whole game into physical world is very simple. You just need to build this green crystal which is floating above the selected character and hold it above your head. Every gamer familiar with The Sims will start thinking about control and needs. Am I doing this myself? Do I want to do that? What do I want? Who controls me? The coolest part of the project is the workshop where people can build their own green crystal from cardboard and then see how it feels to be a Sim. When a gamer sees somebody with this object walking down the street it is pretty clear to him where this strange behavior comes from. Other people - the non-gamers - might simply think that, once again, one of those crazy Berlin artists is doing strange things.

With "First Person Shooter" (2006) you warn the possible users of your custom-made FPS glasses that "Extensive use might cause unpredictable behavior". Is this a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer, or are you suggesting that playing violent video games can lead to real-life violent behavior? Or, are you highlighting the offensive nature of the gaze, especially the male gaze?

"First Person Shooter" has been quite popular on the net over the last two months. It is clearly a provocation and a commentary on computer game violence. But again, the main focus is on the collusion of different planes of reality. A gamer does not question the conventions of the FPS. The fact that his own virtual arm is attached to his head movements is taken for granted, even though it does not make any common sense. In an FPS, you move the mouse around the screen and the arm moves with you, always in the foreground. You cannot lower your arm. The same logic is at work with my FPS glasses. The arm is there all the time, right before your eyes. It follows your head movements. It is supposed to be your own arm which reaches into the virtual reality but is not attached to your body. Ditto for the glasses. The arm in front of your eyes is not influenced by your real arm. Again, it's all connected and yet disconnected... There is more. With this project I am trying to emphasize the notion of gaming as a private/public activity. Playing computer games is a mostly private activity although, in many games, including FPS, you are playing on public servers. So, in a sense, an FPS could be a statement for public space. Basically, you are saying: "Yes, I am a gamer!". However, when you're are playing online, most of the times you are physically situated in a private space, e.g. your bedroom. It's you, your eyes and the gun. The violence happens in your head, which is mostly the case in our society. In other words, I don't think that playing violent video games can lead to real-life anti-social behavior. I mean, these two worlds are so different that nobody would confuse them by accident. The disclaimer is an ironic comment on the whole issue. Playing violent games does not lead to violence but sitting too much in front of a screen can make us forget about ourselves and our environment.

Need for Speed has inspired other Game Artists before, consider for instance, Brody Condon("Need for Speed, - Cargo Cult", 2005). With "Speed" (2006), you are investigating another form of virtual spillover, this time using a racing game as a point of departure. As racing games strive to virtually recreate realistic-looking urban environments, the real world itself appear to have inherited some game-like elements. More and more cars, for instance, are equipped with GPS trackers with game graphics, not to mention the proliferation of vehicles that feature video games consoles on the back of the front seats. Do you believe that our driving skills have changed after the introduction of video games?

The funny thing is that the computers in the cars nowadays are trying to even out our bad driving skills. All these new technologies like ABS ESP AAS etc. Cars are technological spaces. They always feature the latest gizmos and gadgets. They are mobile laboratories for new hi-tech toys. The new windshield projections for cockpit controls resemble the typical HUD displays in computer games. Infrared cams that warn the drivers about the location of pedestrians in situations of limited lighting are typical features of games. Often, these features come from military research: after all, cars, games and the military are all connected. It could be interesting to expand the small screened navigations systems into public space. Floating arrows in the city could show your personal "race track" or projected power-up items on the streets might interact with your car. When you have a real life version of Need for Speed Underground who needs a console in the backseat?

Aram Bartholl is one of the Game Artists featured in GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames

Images courtesy of Aram Bartholl.

Link: Aram Bartholl

Link: GameScenes