Pippin-Barr
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Gaming philosopher Pippin Barr takes on the art world
Again. Pippin Barr – game developer, philosopher, artist – has launched a game within a picture frame, complete with the player's own reflection transposed in real-time over the glass. The game is a snippet from one of Barr's earlier works, Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment, and it uses the camera on your computer or mobile device to throw your own image over the top of the action, as if you were staring at the piece of art in a well-lit gallery. Barr's inspiration stems from an exhibition of his work at Australia's Andrew Baker Gallery late last year. He took a photo of a print of his Prometheus scene in Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment and imagined turning the photo itself into a game, he says. "So I made a version of the Prometheus game that runs 'inside' the picture frame," Barr says. "To add to the effect, I also worked on ways to make the digital version of the frame picture reflective in the way it was in the gallery. This extends to (in the best scenario) a live webcam-based reflection that works on desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, a video-based reflection that works in Internet Explorer and Safari, and an animated image-based reflection in mobile browsers. It was quite the technical challenge for me, working with new web technologies I've not encountered before." Play Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: Art Edition Edition right here in your browser, or here on your mobile device. Or, see it in action in the video below. It's a fairly cool experience, even if you'll never win the game. Seriously, you won't.
Games that last for one second, one millenium in Pippin Barr's Durations
Pippin Barr is an expert in crafting oddly insightful, simplistic games, and his latest collection is a testament to this skill. Durations is a group of mini-games, some quick and others that will last long after you're dead, running for hundreds or thousands of years. They have names that range from "One Second Typing Hour" and "One Hour to Write a Novella," to "One Month Maze," One Hundred Years of Solitary" and "One Millenium Avant-Garde Band." Scroll through a list of the games and click the spacebar to play one here. On his blog, Barr writes about being "on the precipice of a game that will outlive you:" "One thing about the longer games in the series, specifically '100 Years of Solitary' and 'One Millennium Avant-Garde Band,' is that they will outlast us. That is, when you start the game you're at the beginning of something you can't really figure on seeing the end of – you'll die. So there's a weird kind of 'memento mori' going on in those games that I hadn't really given a lot of thought to at the time. It's funny in particular to me because the games do have specific endings." Barr created these games in a collaboration with the Marina Abramovic Institute, a crowdfunded, perpetual art space cultivated by artist Marina Abramovic. If you're into the eccentric, or want to be a part of something that will outlast your own life, check out Durations or some of Barr's other strangely engaging games here. [Image: Pippin Barr]
Be a pixelized performance artist at the Digital Marina Abramovic Institute
Marina Abramovic has spent decades as a professional performance artist. She's tortured herself in front of live audiences, taking pills prescribed for catatonia and schizophrenia (having seizures and blacking out), and allowing the audience to treat her like a doll, standing passively for six hours with an array of objects people could use on her, including honey, oil, a whip, a gun and a bullet. Someone pointed the loaded gun at her head, and she ended that performance topless, crying, with thorns in her skin. Developer and philosopher Pippin Barr is tasked with turning Abramovic's ideas into games, with his most recent project called the Digital Marina Abramovic Institute. It allows players to participate in an hour of experiments set up by Abramovic, or to view pixelated renditions of other artist's performances. It's part of Abramovic's push to open a real-life institute for long-duration art installments, a campaign that raised $660,000 on Kickstarter in August. "Go, check it out," Barr says as an introduction to his game. "It's probably not like many things you've tried before. It may not be to your taste. But it also ... may. Be." After trying it out, we agree that it's definitely not like anything we've tried before – the taste part is up to you. Barr previously turned Abramovic's work at the Museum of Modern Art, The Artist is Present, into an eccentric video game where players wait in line in real time to stare into Abramovic's eyes, and he has a history of crafting odd, tedious and insightful titles. Find out if this is your thing here (heads up for pixelated nudity if you walk to the left).
Pippin Barr's philosophy of developing 'curious' games
Pippin Barr's doctoral thesis is titled Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction, submitted in 2008 to the Victoria University of Wellington as the final stage of his degree, Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science. In the thesis, Barr highlights the act of playing a computer program rather than simply using one, with case studies in Civilization 3, Fable, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, and The Sims 2.Schoolwork completed, Barr spends his time teaching at the University of Malta's Institute of Digital Games, and developing small, profound games with an experimental edge. Barr's projects are simple, thoughtful and play with the boundaries of what a "game" can be:The Artist is Present is a game about waiting in line at New York's Museum of Modern Art, complete with real-life museum closing times and hours of standing, doing-nothing excitement. Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment is a series of short games about Greek myths – short because they're all unwinnable, with death as a constant outcome looming behind each stark, pixelated scene. Barr's most recent project, the Mumble Indie Bungle, features six games based on popular indie titles as if your grandmother misheard them at the last family dinner, such as World of Glue, Carp Life and Gurney. They're short, minimalistic and frustrating, but they're definitely not all supposed to be "boring," Barr tells me."I want to make games that controvert the standard rules – I spent quite a bit of time on that in my early games – well, maybe all my games," he says. "Games that you can't win, games where you just have to wait for a long time, games where you win but it's not satisfying, games where you're not very important in the world of the game, and so forth. These games can be boring if you're not prepared to embrace a different perspective on things – but if you are prepared to do so, I think they can be quite interesting experiences."Surprisingly, Barr has never been called a hipster.
World of Glue, Gurney, Spy Parity, more free in Mumble Indie Bungle
Pippin Barr is up to his academic tricks again, this time with a bundle of six new games based on popular indie titles as if they were misheard in conversation: Gurney, World of Glue, Spy Parity, Proteas, 30 Flights of Loathing and Carp Life. These make up the Mumble Indie Bungle, and five of them are completely free, available to download for PC and Mac on Barr's site. Carp Life – a play on IGF mega-winner Cart Life – is extra special, available for $1 or any price over it."The idea for the collection, in keeping with the titles, is that it's meant to be this set of crappy indie games that someone perhaps bought for you, mistaking them for the originals," Barr writes on his blog. "So you might excitedly unwrap your new bundle of games to find something like Subpar Meat Boy and Flour (Instead of Super Meat Boy and Flower). Not that I'm using those two titles, though both were originally near the top of the list."Gurney – a title parody of thatgamecompany's Journey – has players type out religious phrases as they scroll across the bottom of the screen, over the rolling, flickering lights of a hospital ceiling and anxious faces of doctors. The words become jumbled as the player loses consciousness, and Barr warns that eventually the game can cause seizures, so be careful with that one. Or, have fun.World of Glue is a platforming play on World of Goo, Spy Parity is a jab at Chris Hecker's Spy Party, Proteas is an experiment on Proteus and 30 Flights of Loathing is a step away from Blendo Games' Thirty Flights of Loving.Check out all the games your aging aunt thinks you're talking about on Barr's site, and buy Carp Life for whatever you think it's worth right here.
You won't win Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment, that's the point
Pippin Barr first hit our radar in September when he made a game so boring it couldn't be ignored -- and it seems he's done it again. And again. And again. Barr's games are made to be simple exercises in thought and social commentary; at least we hope they are, because otherwise they're simply extremely tedious and don't offer any reward for effort exerted. His most recent installment, Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment, offers insight into the futility of desire and mankind's attempt to thwart the powers that be, whether they're godly, psychological or stemming from ritualistic self-abuse. Or it's just a series of games that will really piss you off. We haven't quite decided yet. Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment tells the tales of Sisyphus, Tantalus, Prometheus, Danaids and Zeno through the clever use of the G and H keys, pressed rapidly and continuously until you tire and your punishment is enacted. Peregrin Took's Dr. Pippin Barr's other titles include Trolley Problem, ZORBA and All's Well That Ends Well, and they're no less, ahem, enlightening than Let's Play: Ancient Greek Punishment.
The Artist is Present is a game about waiting in line at a museum
Writing articles about video games is so much fun that we often have to stop, wipe the manic grins off our faces and find something really boring to do. Sometimes we stare at a blank white wall and recite the Declaration of Independence under our breath, other times we watch Lost in Translation. Now we have a new option: We can play The Artist is Present, a game about waiting in line at New York's Museum of Modern Art created by Pippin Barr. Unfortunately for us, the game's backstory is pretty entertaining. Contemporary artist Marina Abramović held an exhibit in 2010 that had people waiting hours in line for a chance to look into her eyes for as long as they wanted, and Barr used that idea to make a hilariously serious game about the contemporary art experience. In the game, you enter MoMA, buy a ticket and -- surprise -- wait in line to stare into Abramović's eyes. The game mimics MoMA's hours in real life, meaning when the real museum closes, the game kicks you to the curb and you can wait until it opens again IRL to get back in line. Or you can leave and grab a slice of pizza. Not in the game; in reality. We haven't made it to the front yet, but already we feel enlightened. And bored.
