Found via Textually.org > Engadget Mobile > Make (nice trail):

Artist Jorge Colombo (Portugal) made a couple of cityscapes by drawing with his fingers in an application called Brushes on an iPhone. He also posted a short movie showing in speed-up how he created his drawings. You can see all of the drawings on his website. Not only do these drawing look really nice, they also come quite close ‘the urban experience’ of neon lights, big structures, and a blurry sense of movements and speed. The medium indeed perfectly fits the subjects depicted. It also possible to relate this to the theme of “urban computing”, as an artistic way to ‘write’ one’s experience of the city, as Greenfield and Shepard call it (though, granted, this experience doesn’t ’stick’ to the location as a kind of locative tag; that should be the artist’s next step!).

What I think is really interesting about is how the mobile device gradually becomes a platform for creative production and playfulness, like the (desktop) computer has been for much longer. A similar kind of creative production on mobile devices has existed for a while in the digital music scene. Here, the iPhone is used as an interface for music sequencing, tracking and beat creation. And in a related field called Chiptunes or 8Bit music, much older portable devices such as Gameboys have been given a brand new second life in being used to make electronic tunes. Also, as posted elsewhere on this blog, the mobile phone is increasingly being used to make (short) films. Last example: the mobile phone is used to not only read but also write texts and even entire novels. This has to do with the fact that many Japanese make long commutes by public transport.

It’s really nice to see how the mobile phone develops from a platform for consumption of services to a medium for creative production as well. Moreover, some of these examples clearly indicate that there is a relation between artistic creation on mobile platforms and the physical surroundings and urban experience, apparently much more so than with fixed computers.

The post consists of the usual little snippets of well-worn wisdom about play and game (play is informal and open-ended, games are formal and rule-based; game are competitive, play is more about spontaneity and shared fun). As also noted on another blog, this largely coincides with James P. Carse’s distinction between finite and infinite games (1986). Or even the paidia vs ludus distinction which we find with Roger Caillois (1958), and which has been extended and adapted by many contemporary game researchers. But what makes this useful, I guess, is that DeKoven connects the game/play distinction with ‘community’. Thus, games and play become prime organizing principles of technologically mediated communities:

It is no coincidence that the Internet, though it serves both kinds of community (play and game), is so easily characterized as a play community, dependent on openness and trust shared by its players, succeeding to the degree in which it can respond to their constantly evolving, individual and collective interests.

People are increasingly active on various online/mobile/hybrid social networks. See my earlier post on online social networking as a game, in particular this quote: “Social networks offer a revolutionary way for people to play with friends and communities that have meaningful value to them in their real life”. Such a communal view on identity-formation is a nice addition to the more individualistic view, in which identity as a project of choosing and building a self involves ‘playful’ experiments and (re)configurations on a personal level (‘playing oneself’).

The question remains: does sharing the same play experiences with other people logically lead to self-understanding in terms of ‘play’? Metaphors (play/game) become ‘real’ when they account for people’s sense of similarity and belonging. The metaphor then becomes a medium. It seems such a powerful line of reasoning in favor of the ‘playful identities’ thesis: when former fixed essences and circumscribed narratives of identity are debunked, unmasked, or simply no longer believable, playing together is a very powerful way of reconnecting (‘re-ligare’) to a larger body of people.

Here is a great case of mobile phones playing a role in mass media reports, and their ‘playful’ characteristics in story-telling:

Last Friday, December 19 2008, prime minister of Belgium Yves Leterme and his entire cabinet stepped down as an indirect result of the financial crisis. The mobile phone played a pivotal role in both the prelude, as well as in the media reports about this event. How did it all start? When Belgium bank Fortis was split up, many small-scale shareholders were left with virtually worthless shares. They went to court and successfully prevented the transfer to BP Paribas. However, in a 6-page report which became public on Friday afternoon, Belgium’s supreme court wrote that members of the government had tried to influence the outcome of the case. It appeared that Belgian prime minister Yves Leterme was in direct contact with the spouse of one of the judges who leaked information about the proceedings of the case through the mobile phone. With this information Leterme was able to brief the government lawyers on a defence strategy.

Now, this is already an interesting case of how the mobile phone is used to connect supposed separate worlds. But it gets better. The mobile phone also plays a crucial role in the way these events are being reported in mass media [1]. As soon as the report comes out, the government is summoned to the parliament. It does not take long before the minister of justice resigns. It remains uncertain what Leterme is going to do. In front of the camera of Belgium national television station VRT1, one of the members of opposition wonders why he hasn’t received an SMS yet announcing the resignation of Leterme himself. At 17:10 reporter Peter Vandermeersch from Belgium newspaper De Standaard breaks in on the live news report (see pictures). He has received an SMS from an “exceptionally dependable source” claiming that Leterme had proposed the resignation of the whole government. Another reporter is interviewing indignified members of the opposition. Just a few minutes later Vandermeersch is cut back into the broadcast. Glancing at the cellphone in his hand, he withdraws his earlier statement and instead says he hears “from sources near the prime minister” that the government still hasn’t fallen but only proposed to resign. The Dutch commentator’s voice says that different parties appear to send text messages with their own version of what is going on to VRT reporters. Again reporter Vandermeersch appears on screen, concluding with an ironic smile that the different parties are “spinning” this issue. He has received by SMS yet another version of the story, stating that the prime minister does not want to resign at all. Vandermeersch concludes “we are almost physically co-experiencing what is happening a few buildings further”, immediately followed by a remark of the other reporter “if it weren’t so dramatical, we might call it a soap”. Finally we see Vandermeersch for the fourth time. It is then 17:56. He is glaring at his cellphone, saying once more that from an “exceptionally dependable source” he has received the following text, and starts to read from his phone screen a message that seems to be written in very official language, stating the entire government has offered its resignation to the Belgium king. After the report is over, the presenter of Dutch actuality program Nova remarks on the item that “the Belgium government crisis unfolds by SMS”. A bit later she calls the affair of the minister of justice, who first stepped down, a “Shakespearian drama”. This term is later repeatedly used by the director of Belgium newspaper De Morgen in his reaction to the affair in Nova.

Why is this interesting? First, mobile phones are used to uncover and report backstage affairs from court and parliament directly to the outside world. Not only has a judge leaked inside information to the outside world, also members of the parliament leaked via SMS to the press what was being discussed inside. Second, because of this mode of reporting directly from the cellphone screen, the events are narrated as an ongoing sequence of events without much overall coherence. As a result, the whole affair is understood as being “like a soap” and a “Shakespearian drama”. Indeed this is a very apt description. The instant updates, the sequential way of ongoing story-telling (“and then.. and then..”), and the sudden and dramatic plot turns are all very soap-like. Moreover, the journalist at some point becomes acutely aware of the fact that he was being played (“spinned”) by the different political parties which all texted their own version of the events. Politics as theatre, mobile phones as tool for play and being played, great stuff for the ‘playful identities’ thesis.

[1] The following description is largely based on a television special on the issue by Dutch actuality program Nova on Friday December 19 2008, which in turn is largely compiled from live reports by Belgium national television VRT1.

The claim is made that online social networking is a type of game (not really a new idea). Impicitly it is suggested that gaming is the form of contemporary social bonding. Additionally, the relevance of online gaming for “real life” is underlined. This further undermines the old dichotomy between an isolated cyberspace versus real life as two separate domains. Interesting as well to me is the fact that there are reputation systems built into these social networking games. These become mechanisms to enforce reciprocity, which is an important term in theories about gift exchange (Mauss).

Some interesting quotes from the article:

Game design and social networks are merging into one of the most persuasive forces on the net. That assertion was made by a string of speakers at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

“Social networking is a game in and of itself,” explained Jennifer Pahlka, co-chair of the conference.

….

“Social networks offer a revolutionary way for people to play with friends and communities that have meaningful value to them in their real life,”

….

“Logging in and playing with strangers was exciting when the internet was new but the modern web is personal and social and it is clear that the internet is being used for social purposes to connect people rather than isolate them.”

….

“We build up these reputation systems with levels and rankings just as you would if it was a game and by applying these gaming principles it helps build these thriving successful communities.”

The film is a mixture of documentary following a number of ‘Rotterdammers’ an their mobile cam use as well and interviewing the, as well as a showcase of the mobile phone movies and photographs itself that are made by them. This is done quite ingeniously, by blending the two together in such a way that you get a good view both from the ‘real life’ perspective and the ‘virtual media-perspective.

So what kind of people are portrayed in the film? The first are Thom and Osama, two young guys (both 16) who film their daily movements in the city, go to weird places and shoot themselves fooling around a bit, and upload their material to Youtube. See the following Youtube accounts: Osama (osama015); Thom (jump266) ; and together they operate under the nick osamathom1991.

Then there is a young mother Annemarie (24 years old) and her daughter. The mother makes little clips of for instance her daughter and her singing and dancing together, and shares these with friends and family online.

There is Hans, a guy of about 30 years old who mainly takes photos of things he sees in the city in an artistic fashion.

And finally an older man, Cor Been, age 75, who has filmed the entire process of the construction of his new apartment building to which he is moving.

There are a couple of things I found really interesting about this film:

Different age, different use
First of all, the film shows how people from different ages do very different things with their mobile phone camera. Osama and Tom went for the kicks and sought out the ‘dangerous’ and exiting urban places they normally wouldn’t go or weren’t suppose to be. The young mother did it in a very social way to share her life with her daughter with other; the 30 year old guy made all kinds of photographs of the city in a very aesthetic way; the old man used film to get accustomed to his new habitat, as a kind of narrative medium to incorporate the new into his life.

Mobile film as an emerging genre
What kind of new pictorial language is emerging through the use of the mobile phone for photo and film? It is a radical first person perspective; a 3D view of the world, the camera does not only pan from left to right but also up and down (one’s feet!); movement while shooting instead of stills; no cuts; position of the filmer in his own film; enactment in front of camera: it’s is not acting as if it is real but made absolutely clear that it is acting in full awareness of the presence of a camera.

Experience of multiple places at the same time (moving in hybrid space)
The two young guys were making a film while sneaking into a building (hotel?) they clearly weren’t supposed to be. While prowling through the corridors and pushing elevator buttons in a seemingly spontaneous way, all of a sudden one of them yelled: “This is certainly going to be on Youtube!”. This seems to indicate that these kids are adding an extra dimension to their physical world, namely concurrently imagining a digital world. They interweave their here and now experience of what they are doing in physical space with an added dimension of presenting it later elsewhere on a digital platform.

Social aspects of sharing: niche vs. platform
The young mother was sharing films and photos of her and her daughter with friends via online platforms (Youtube, Hyves). There is something very social about creating content. A new sociality? Or sharing as age-old ritual (gifting)? Only within small circle? But interestingly she chooses a platform that is accesible to everyone. This raises questions about how people want to express themselves, either to small niches vs. sharing broadly.

Experiencing city space through the mobile phone camera
Filming the city while being on the move adds an extra reflexive dimension to this mobility. First it adds another lense in front of you, a layer of mediatrion in a (new) visual movie language. And second it enables you to look back almost immediately on what you have just experienced and how you have captured this. The experience of a city may change through this additional reflexive layer. It enables you to distrance yourself from your own immediate experience by viewing it again through the eyes of a bystander, like an being an audience to your own captured experience.

(thanks Bieke for the pictures, additional info, and small corrections!)

Sad as it is, the Joran van der Sloot and Natalee Holloway case has a funny side to it. And the mobile phone plays a big role in it. More than half of the Dutch population watched the program by Peter R. de Vries on Sunday the 3rd of Februari 2008 about the confessions Joran van der Sloot made in front of hidden cameras. Shortly after the broadcast, SMS messages started circulating:

‘Lig hier op het strand met een wijf te ketsen maar in één keer deed ze niks meer! Kan je ff komen met een boot, een echte vriend doet dat toch? Mag jij mijn nieuwe gympen!’

which translates into something like:

I am on the beach humping this chick, all of a sudden she stops moving! Can you come over with a boat, a real friend would do such a thing? You can have my new sneakers!

Free newspaper De Pers quotes this joke from a barkeeper from The Hague. Another free newspaper Metro quotes the exact same joke from young people in Amsterdam. In trying to come up with a snappy answer, people refer in a similar vein to the show everybody has seen:

Sorry, geen tijd, zit op Aruba. Bel anders Daury ff.

(Sorry, no time, I am on Aruba. Call Daury.)

According to De Pers, one of the largest operators in the Netherlands Vodafone reports a remarkable increase in text messages after the Peter R. de Vries show.

Interestingly, broadcast mass media content (which still is able to reach the largest number of people) seeps into ‘narrowcast’ communication media like the mobile phone. Yet the mobile phone too is used in a chain-like broadcast medium. People send a message like this on to multiple other people.

Also, the mobile phone has become part of the repertoire of media people have to express themselves in a joking way. It has typical connotations of being non-serious and playful (especially amongst young people).

[Interesting by the way that Wikipedia.org automatically forwards the entry "Joran van der Sloot" to "Natalee Holloway"... What politics are behind that choice?]

sources: depers.nl and metronieuws.nl (date: Feb. 7 2008)

picture: depers.nl

The general impression I got was that this festival was an experiment to create a setting in which new modern urban identities can be explored, partly influenced by global culture, partly localized and typically Indonesian. I enjoyed it a lot!

Many people used their cameras, DV cams, and handphones to capture a sense of ‘being there’.

Some interesting quotes from an article in Jakarta Post:

“As youth, we present something new, something different from the mainstream. That’s what people call the indie spirit. Now a group is considered indie, maybe later it’s not indie,” Jimmy, a member of The Upstairs [one of the bands playing], told a press conference Wednesday [that must have been August 22, 2007].
…
IKJ Rector [Jakarta Arts Institute, one of the organizing parties] and noted dance choreographer Sardono W. Kusumo said the festival was part of efforts to give young artists space to display urban cultures far removed from those found in the nation’s countryside.

“We are open to and ready for even “the craziest” ideas,” Sardono told the conference.

Sardono said there were no “genuine” Indonesian cultures, since the nation’s history has long been open to foreign influences.
…
Organizers said the festival, carrying the slogan “All You Can Act!!!”, are aimed at promoting freedom of expression in the face of rising conservatism in much of the country.

Some of the grafitti art at Urbanfest ‘07.

Guys doing motorbike stunts

East meets west when a hiphop group from Yogyakarta invites a dangdut singer on stage for a jam at Urbanfest ‘07.

Japanese cultural influences: harajuku & cosplay competition at Urbanfest ‘07.

Together with Lisa & Dini, two girls from my rumah kos, I went to Monas (national monument) in the morning. Under a blistering sun we walked to the Istana Negara (state palace), just north of Taman Merdeka (freedom square). Along the road we saw military units parading. At the palace, young people from all current 33 provinces were present, wearing regional ethnic costumes, featuring on pictures, and busy taking pictures themselves.





Ethnic and national identities at Istana Negara. Mobile devices all over the place to capture “unity in diversity” (Indonesia’s national motto). Tradition and modernity go hand in hand.

After that, Lisa and I went to kampung Melayu, one of the poorer areas in Jakarta. Some friends of her organize a three-day series of festivities in the neighborhood of bukit duri, as part of an effort to make freedom day a real people’s festival. All kinds of traditional games here, vaguely reminding me of the kind of ludic activities that take place on Dutch “koninginnedag” (queen’s day). These kids compete to run three slippery eels from one bucket into the other as quick as possible.



Eel race in kampung Melayu. In the background an activist painting claiming the rights of poor people in Indonesia. The proclamation in the painting reads “Children of poor families are the responsibility of the state. Children at the edge [referring also literally to bukit duri’s location near the Ciliwung riverside] are not sewer rats!”. The painting is part of a campaign in the neighborhood to voice social and economic awareness and identity, as the slums are planned to be cleared due to recurrent floodings.


Pre-paid card infrastructure has penetrated deep into the kampung!

Meanwhile, a bit further uphill, young guys try to climb the greasy pole, in the hope of getting one of the handphones dangling from the top as a reward! I somehow got the sense that in this image, some central notions in my research (identity, play and the mobile phone) come together and lose some of their slipperiness…



Play in front of the quarter’s main Mesjid (mosque) on national freedom day: who wins the mobile phone?

In talking about identity, I feel like adding a more personal note. Today has also been a day to consider my own history and relation to Indonesia. A week back or so I was in a book shop at Taman Ismael Marzuki, and picked up a Soekarno (Indonesia’s first president) biography by Bob Hering. Paging through the book, I noticed my great grandfather figures as one of the prime informants. He apparently was very well-acquainted with many of the key figures who founded Indonesia, and who are commemorated today. From the scarce stories, I know he spoke several indigenous languages fluently and was part of the so called ‘ethical’ movement which tried to reform colonial rule. Yet still part of Dutch colonial system… 62 Years after Indonesian independence, I cannot help but feel both continuity, by temporarily living here and becoming close to this country, as well as rupture, for I am here in a completely different situation and role, as the paths of Holland and Indonesia have split.

Taken at transit busway Dukuh Atas, Jakarta, August 15 2007.

(click to enlarge)

A brief look at their website tells me it’s an exhibition about leisure time in the 60s. What made me take a snapshot of this was that the picture shows a mobile phone being crushed by what appears a miller’s stone, or a giant tractor tire, I don’t know. So this advertisement basically says that freedom is to be without the mobile phone. It plays upon popular opinion that the mobile phone, handy is it may be, is also a burden and a restraint on freedom. Crush your phone and you’ll be free again .

What strikes me now as I am writing is the addition of the word “Even..” (briefly, or just a little moment) in the subtitle. It suggests the possibility of temporarily escaping modern day pressures (the obligations imposed by the mobile phone) when visiting this open air museum. Why would we want/need to do so? Why go to a museum for this? And what is good about a temporary solution? I mean, nobody is really going to crush his mobile? I think the ad tries to appeal to the possibility of imagining and actually visiting a time and place when things where not so complicated. The museum then creates a temporary playground for our imagination. We can actually undergo the experience of living an ideal simple life, albeit temporarily.

And here’s another advertisement I found on their website, burning a remote control:

Symposium Playing the Urban @Balie 31 maart 2007

http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?podiumid=media&articleid=102445

PROGRAM

13-14h Mobile Learning Game Kit

Speaker: Jan Simons (Associate Professor New Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)

14-15h PlastiCity: A Game for Urban Planning

Speakers: Mathias Fuchs (Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader in Creative Technology, University of Salford) and Steve Manthorp (Special Project Manager, Bradford)

15h30-16u30 Logo Parc (Jan van Eyck Academy)

Speakers: Logo Parc (Daniël van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli, Gon Zifroni)

This symposium was organized by fellow TKCers from Maastricht & Amsterdam “Transformations in Perception and Participation: Digital Games”.

———————– 

legenda: 

> = my remarks, thoughts, etc.

[Skipped presentation1]

PlastiCity is a game based on the Unreal Tournament engine (which is a first person shooter) and aims to be an aid in reconstructing/replan the awfully ugly city center of Bradford, UK. It is still in conceptual phase (read: no money yet). The aim is to put the game in public places like libraries, schools, etc.

Interesting quote: “the game is not designed to function as a designer tool for architects, but as a way of bringing planners, architects, local government officials and citizens together and be silly about redesigning the city.”

> Games may serve to bring people together in complex multi-party projects: games as a new kind of public sphere?

Another quote: “Every game has at some point a stage of chaos”.

> The rules are stretched, things are tried out, often deconstructed or even destroyed. Like identities that are being tried out and parts of it destroyed again.

Game should have ‘real life’ characters in it: not the usual beautiful yuppies you see in most architecture presentations. It should be more realistic. Also with rubbish and so on.

> Games as more realistic than other media in presenting or representing the world? What is realistic about programmed garbage?

One member of the audience experiences a kind of motion sickness while watching the demonstration of the game. She asks: what is the value of this game-speed to represent life-speed? The speakers explain the speed of the demo is set to slow: normal gamers would use at least 3x normal walking speed to move around… (which they briefly demonstrate). 

I brought up: this phenomenon is just like what the first train travelers experienced at 20 or 30 miles/hour: disorienting the senses. Every new technology brings its own experience of space & place & mobility. The train (and car) created a speeding up of travel, which made possible suburbs and the separation of home and work. The city was adapted to this new sense of the city. 

I asked: what then may be the influence of using games as tools for creating new cities for the way cities are actually build and experienced?

Answer: first person perspective of game may be an influence on perceiving the city; as well as the feeling of being in power, in control over your environment.

Another audience Q: what is actually game-like about this? There is no winning this game? There are few rules? Why play?

A: the attraction is the sense of empowerment & creativity players experience in playing the game, both in destroying and rebuilding the city.

> Could it be differentiated according to involvement? Game produces Erlebnissen, while (prolonged) play may produce Erfahrung.?

Game offers the idea of “unbuilding” the city, creating green environments again out of built space (land is cheap in Bradford, so not unrealistic).

> I like that idea of “unbuilding”, can it be applied to identity? “Unbuilding identity” as a way of undoing previous steps, deleting memories of these events in photos, video, text messages, phone numbers, etc. It is maybe a way of “unactualizing” identity, again extracting potentiality out of previous closures and actualizations.

> Such games are also used strategically and politically as part of ideas about the “creative city”. Games have become entangled in a larger discourse, they are being ’socially produced’ as young, modern, trendy, serious yet playful, appealing to people previously difficult to reach (young). If you want to be ‘now’ you have to do something with games.

Presentation 3 – LogoParc – was about the Amsterdam Zuidas and the way a kind of superficial ‘global architecture’ is created which is not related to the local (at least, that’s what I understood of the 2 very abstract talks). Designers at Jan van Eyk, Rietveld created a visual game-like critique on this environment. All facades of building and public space signage was removed, which created a sense of barren desolate landscape. Added were a number of large above-ground ’sewers’ connecting the Zuidas to other global places’ like Singapore, HongKong, Tokyo, New York, Paris, etc.

> I was a little annoyed by this whole talk: very highbrow theoretical critique on so-called placelessness of Zuidas, yet these offices and public spaces are filled with real people that drive their bikes back home at the end of a working day, people who make it a place, even if architecture has done little to embed it in local Amsterdam. 

Anybody can upload a short mobile phone clip to the website 15×15.org which is then displayed on the homepage for 15 seconds as one of 15 clips being shown simultaneously.

Interestingly, most people seem to film themselves and then put it online… Affirmation of the mobile phone as a tool for reflexive creation and expression of personal identity?

BTW: I am being eating by a purple Tyrannosaurus Rex…

(Thanks Tim for reminding me!)

- Young people don’t use their mobile phones ‘just for fun’ but also for serious matters: to say something about themselves and their relationships with other young people (self-expression).

- Branded goods play an important role in this self-expression.

- Texting is “a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you�?.”

- Many young people feel depressed after a whole day without SMS. Some young people even go to rehab clinics for being “text-addicts”!

- The mobile phone has taken over the former position of cigarettes in offering a private space for unsupervised private communication. (And some studies suggest young people are smoking less and less because their money now goes to phone bills – MdL)

- Texting is attractive because the language can be deformed so that no adult can understand it. (This is also pointed out by Mitzuko Ito in an article (in Ling & Pedersen: 2005) about how traditional institutions like family and the classroom are being challenged by the mobile phone – MdL).

- The phone itself allow for personalization (wallpapers, ringtones, etc.) and enables young people to express themselves and “advertise their identity as part of their peer group.” (> Interesting notion “advertizing identity” – we are all designing and branding ourselves to some extend).

- The basic social needs of young people are: “Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform.”

- Mobile operators realize too little of these characteristics of young people’s interaction with the mobile phone.

Read the whole interview here!

British site www.modyourmob.co.uk is dedicated to modding the phone. Modding the phone in moderate ways already happens quite often, I think, as a means of personalize your phone. But now telcom operator Orange has stepped into it and gives away prizes to the best mods.

Interestingly btw how the site at more than one place speaks about how this modding supposedly is “big in Japan and it’s going to be massive over here”. This sounds more like a strategy to encourage people to get into it, since we al now Japan is the furthest of al countries in mobile phone development, craze & hype, and we don’t want to stay behind, now don’t we..?

See http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?articleid=52781&podiumid=media for the program.

Came across the website of Ludicorp today, the business responsible for creating and developing social software like Flickr. I think their “corporate philosophy�? – which they take from Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores & Hubert Dreyfus (MIT Press 1997) – reflects quite a bit of what our research will be about:

Business owners do not normally work for money either. They work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill, in the context of a life where competing skillfully makes sense. The money they earn supports this way of life. The same is true of their businesses. One might think that they view their businesses as nothing more than machines to produce profits, since they do closely monitor their accounts to keep tabs on those profits.

But this way of thinking replaces the point of the machine’s activity with a diagnostic test of how well it is performing. Normally, one senses whether one is performing skillfully. A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow. Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent.

The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about. Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity.

Now, what are the parts that triggered me?

“work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill”

> This ‘work ethic’ is also called the ‘ProAm’ revolution (Leadbeater) where professional amateurs become numerous and deliver high quality products and services, because they are amateurs in the original sense of the word (“doing something for the love of it”).
> Points to the blurring of work and leisure. ‘Play’ is to feel free of necessity (of work).

A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow.

> ‘Flow’ is the state of experiencing only the present, of feeling in charge, of wanting to participate, of suspending disbelief, etc. (term by the guy with the impossible name: Csikszentmihalyi).

The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about.

> Points to the intrinsic quality and value of the product one is producing, of the ‘magic’ in the object one is creating, just as Marcel Mauss shows is the case with reciprocate gift exchange (1908). It is not simply about the transaction that has a purely economic value, but about giving away something that is infused with one’s own personality and identity.

Saturday, November 19, the 27th Dutch/Flemish Philosophy-day took place. The motto was “Thinking without Borders: challenges for philosophy in the 21st century” (Grenzeloos denken: uitdagingen voor de Filosofie in de 21ste eeuw). It was the first time I attended. The programme started at 10:00 in the morning, which I of course didn’t make quite on time… I’m not that much of a morning person, especially not on a weekend day .

After seeing the last part of the plenary session I attended the breakout session “Man & culture” chaired by Jos de Mul. The papers presented by both Flemish & Dutch PhD researchers were pretty technical in my opinion. As I lack serious background in philosophical thought – and probably even more troublesome: acquaintance with the discourse by which philosophers tend to express themselves – I had a hard time understanding what was said from time to time. Nevertheless, some speakers provoked thoughts in me, so I made a few scribbly notes which I have transcribed below. Here we go:

(paper 2 – Kristien Justaert about objectification of subject by scientific method)

The scientific method has lead to a professional stance towards humans, nature and material objects (“Gegenstand“) that can be described as instrumental and rational. One could argue that demystification or disenchantment (Entzauberung – Weber) has led to a certain lack of respect for the subject in the scientific object under study, or the ‘fetish’ in the material artefact. This disrespect can be seen in the attitude towards the objectified subject, illustrated by Kristien’s example of the large number of mistakes/accidents happening in the medical world.

In our attitude towards ICT’s, we experience again a certain awe caused by the inexplicable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. Art too shows us the ‘meaning’ and ‘value’ of the material object.

In play, the object becomes something that has more meaning and more value than the instrumental/rational. Play could be seen as the ritual search for & recognition/re-valuation of the subject that was turned into an object.

My final thought was: can the scientific subject-object impasse be overcome by the increase in lay-knowledge, – ‘democratisation of knowledge’ – and the availability through (new) media?

(paper 3 – Dik Derom about Heidegger and Humanism)

“Other” in narrative is a different “other” from the one in “play”: from an actor in a story (plot) that shapes his own Self with help from co-actors, to a player that shapes and shares with his co-players a communal (‘gemeenschappelijk’) ‘complot‘. (cf. Goffman’s audience, who are sometimes part of the performance, or at least helping out the performers).

The professional maintains much more a subject-object relation to his work. The professional keeps more distance from its subject by being involved in processes of knowledge protection, maintaining exclusivity, institutionalisation and legitimation, power plays with colleagues and clients and, consequently, possibly abuse.

The amateur (cf. Leadbeater’s “ProAm“) has a subject-subject relation to his work, with more attention, respect, love and appreciation. In a way, one could say the amateur has a more playful attitude towards his work.

(paper 4 – Michiel Besters, way too vague for me…)

reaction from the audience: humor is a way of penetrating the barriers we construct between ourselves and reality. Humor pierces through shielding mechanisms (amongst which: language, culture, institutions, social behaviour, media).

(paper 5 – Frank Maet about “the end of art” and beyond)

Art has become separated from the artist. It has become a work in itself, at least, that is what is being claimed of modern art. Distance to the production of the work (of art) can lead to the mystification of it.

Every medium is a mediation of a sensual experience: books – language – hearing; film – image – visual; ICT – immersive multimedia – multiple senses. ICT is not a passive mediation but requires an active outlook (apparently, here I started to drift away, judging from these trivialities . On second thought, mediation seems to have become a double mediation nowadays: a two-tier extension of older forms of mediation. Memory for instance mediates experiences, but now there are numerous technological extensions of memory (mobile photography, weblogs, calenders, etc.).

Heidegger: Identity & Differency: identity is thinking & being, Sein & Dasein. Intermediality is reflexivity about mediality by making a distinction between Sein & Dasein (zijn en zijnde).

Gadamer: in play we re-present ourselves by being involved in the game.

Wednesday evening, November 9, I was at the opening of the exhibition “Alter Ego” at Home Gallery. I was kinda late, supposed to meet my GF there at 21:30, but got stopped along the way by a police woman for cycling without light. She gave me a ticket, what a bummer… }:-(.
Anyway, the gallery is located in a nice old canal house between Leidsestraat & Spiegelstraat. About 25 large images are dangling from fish cords on the wall, each displaying a photograph of a ‘real’ person on the left hand side and a screenshot of his/her virtual personality on the right side. The split-images are accompanied by a text that tells the individual’s story: who he/she is in real life, who she/he is online in what game, and what motives he/she has for choosing this particular character.

The people portrayed are pretty diverse, considering that game culture appears to be mostly restricted to Asian and Western – American – cultures: there are pictures of physically disabled people, two black men, quite a lot of females (Asian & Western) and of course the (stereo)typical geek.

A lot of people make their online character into a ‘better self’: the men often create a sort of super-hero character and the women a strong, beautiful female warrior. Not everybody though: there is a portrait of this US redneck kinda guy who plays a beautiful heroine, and two good-looking Asian girls tell that they switched to playing ugly creatures after being harassed all the time by men in the game.

The stories can be roughly devided in stories that are about “becoming” in the sense of developing oneself: from being a bit shy at first to becoming more and more friendly and sociable, from being averagely handsome to being beautiful. Another theme is “escape”: escape from boredom (the trucker fantasising about playing a spaceship), escape from physical constraints (the handicapped people), escape from social/cultural pressure (the Chinese gay boy playing “guys he wanted to meet” & the US macho-guy playing a woman). The theme of “sameness” in the sense of “living one’s identity”, or simply “being” is apparent too: someone says he behaves the same way online as offline, and the Texan business woman tells she likes bossing around online just like in real life. Finally, attention is given to the economics of gaming culture: a few people explain that they make quite a bit of money from gaming, whether it’s by developing characters for other people, or by writing software that can upgrade players levels by playing for them at night, or a girl that has become popular through gaming and has become a professional model.

Some critical remarks: the split screen portayal of people & their online identity suggests that people have only one online identity instead of multiple. By choosing a form of presentation that juxtaposes offline and online identities, the artist stresses the devide between them in a visual way, although the artist probably intented otherwise. On the other hand, the split-screen portayal suggests that offline and online characters are equal in some way: the online character being the ‘mirrored image’ of the real life character. And finally, the artist seems to have deliberately wanted to portray a diverse group of people, while underplaying the homogeneity of game worlds, as apparent from one of the group photo of an ‘old’ game guild (I forgot the name) that is almost totally white and predominantly between 20-40.

The exposition is sponsored by EA (Electronic Arts – the largest (?) and best-known game developer in the world); Playstation2 by Sony. The gallery itself is a space owned by Dutch party/event-organiser Duncan Stutterheim from ID&T. Certainly no marginal players in the leisure economy …;-)

The BBC has an article about the project: news.bbc.co.uk.

The pictures (and even some more than exibited) + stories can be dowloaded as a PDF file from
www.seeingtakesasecond.com/images/examples_preview.pdf (9 MB).