performance-art
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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).
Cello Fortress is half video game, half live musical performance
On its surface, Cello Fortress looks like a fairly straight forward (if rudimentary) twin-stick shooter for up to five players. Dig just a tiny bit deeper, however, and you'll discover that this game has a somewhat unique set of rules. For starters, one of the players must always be a man named Joost van Dongen, and his controller absolutely has to be a cello. For realsies.Basically, van Dongen controls the half of the game that would normally be the purview of the computer in a standard twin-stick shooter, spawning cannons and mines and such to thwart the other four players and their respective tanks. To do so, van Dongen must play his cello in varying ways, improvising melodies that will lead to both effective in-game strategies and a listenable performance.Don't expect Cello Fortress to show up on Steam Greenlight anytime soon, though. The game is as much of a piece of performance art as it is a collection of code, and as such can only be experienced during live events scheduled by van Dongen. That schedule can be found on the game's official website, and here's hoping for some tour dates outside of The Netherlands.
ASUS Computex keynote now on YouTube: relive the excitement, the yelling
You think it's easy up there on stage? Then just try shouting "ubiquitous cloud computing era" at the top of your lungs without sounding silly. It's virtually impossible, as ASUS chairman Jonney Shih discovered 45 seconds into the video after the break. Fortunately, he quickly moved onto his company's rather stellar array of Computex reveals, including the dual-booting Transformer AiO (which doubles up as the "world's biggest tablet"), a couple of Windows 8 hybrids and the Taichi swiveller -- not to mention some live performance art ten minutes before the end. If you're the "Home C.I.O." in your family, then it could be professionally negligent to miss this.
Kinect hacks, performance art edition: pin boards, puppets and RoboThespians
Tired of Kinect hacks yet? We hope not, as the frequency and ingenuity of them only seems to be increasing with each passing week. The three in this latest group all fall more or less under the banner of performance art, and include two hacks that let you control two very different avatars -- a virtual puppet in the "We Be Monsters" project and the very real "RoboThespian" -- as well one that creates a virtual pin board that's perfect for your next rave. If the RoboThespian looks a little familiar, it's because it's actually been in development since 2005, but it recently got a Kinect-enhanced upgrade for its appearance at CeBIT this month. Head on past the break for videos of all three hacks in action, and hit up the links below for some additional details. [Thanks to everyone who sent these in]
Allotment bar in Glasgow pays homage to Pong
You know, the United Kingdom isn't a great place to go if you enjoy drinking. The folks there, they just aren't big drinkers. It's difficult for them to find reasons to partake in the time-traveling powers of alcohol. Enter: Allotment, a new bar in the Glasgow area that offers thirsty patrons live performance art, music and a bit of the in-between.Right about now, you're probably wondering what this has to do with games. Well, this Saturday, the bar will be transformed into a living dedication to retro gaming, with a central theme of "gaming and morality." There'll be roulette and karaoke, some arcade gaming. But, more importantly, coordinators will envision a real-life Pong tribute in the space, allowing attendees to participate at any time in the recreation by simply walking up and changing it. If you're looking for more information on Allotment, or tickets to attend, then head on over to the National Theatre of Scotland. If after reading this, you're in the mood to watch that awesome video of Japanese Matrix ping-pong, well ... you aren't the only one.[Via GamePolitics]
The Vertical Bed -- never coming to an IKEA near you
For those of you who like to lay in bed watching TV, but always manage to get a sore neck, Jamie O'Shea from the "Office for the development of Substitute Materials" has devised a solution: the Vertical Bed. Supported by a harness that is craftily secured under the clothing, nappers can catch up on beauty rest at any subway stop or back alley of their choosing. As an added bonus the wearer can be made impervious to the effects of the outside world through the use of noise canceling headphones and mirrored glasses, and the ensemble comes with an umbrella for convenient use in a variety of weather conditions. The only thing it appears to be missing from this performance art project is an anti-pick-pocketing force field -- undoubtedly in the works. More photos after the break.[Via we make money not art]
Obscura Digital projects multi-touch "hologram," blows all sorts of minds
The creative cats and kittens at Obscura Digital have put together a stunning piece of performance art / data manipulation demo which combines their proprietary multi-touch software with Musion's Eyeliner 3D holographic projection system. Like that BMW installation we saw recently, this is one of those odd combinations of technology and art which is best seen in action rather than described -- so check out the video after the break and see the work in all its mind-bending glory.
Berlin's Tesla gallery hosts ghostly techno-art
Do you like art? Do you like mystery? Do you like technology? We get the impression that at least some of you are either nodding in agreement, or mouthing the words, "Yes I do," over and over. If you're one of those lucky few, here's some information you might enjoy. Two artists at the Tesla gallery in Berlin have created fairly interesting works which also happen to have connections with technology and our perception of technology. The first is called Digit, wherein a writer sits at a table and runs his hand over a blank piece of paper; as his hand moves down the page, words appears as if by magic, though no mechanism for writing is visible to an observer. In the second piece, artist Martin Riches has created a random number generator, a complex system of wood and string which allows a steel ball to propel through the machine, eventually playing one of three instruments when its journey comes to an end. Interesting stuff, surely... but can it play Doom?
WoW as the artist's canvas
For a while now I have been snagging screenshots to use as my desktop wallpaper. It began innocently enough with a lovely shot of my mage on her flying mount against that breathtaking Nagrand sky. Somehow this idyll hobby of mine has turned into a sort of obsession, where I now have a filing system on my hard drive for various screenshots-turned-wallpaper. My foray into WoW photography made me think about how actual artists express themselves using the game as a canvas. We watch the machinima with rabid frenzy, are amazed at the ingenuity of those that capture moments for Around Azeroth, bask in the glorious talent of those that create fan art. We also take role play and express it in terms of performance art. I once went to an interactive media conference where a speaker presented his robot that played his MMO 24/7 in order to create a performance piece that included a row of characters that marched in a certain pattern day in and day out. Has anyone out there experienced, witnessed, or created performance art pieces within World of Warcraft? What was it like to be part of such an experience? If you as an artist are planning any pieces of performance art, let WoW Insider know about it so that we can showcase your event.
Performance artist Stelarc implants "third ear" in forearm
Picking up where the Vacanti mouse left off, Australian performance artist Stelarc went through with his plans to implant a cell-cultivated ear beneath the skin of his forearm earlier this year, and he's now showing off the results for the world to squirm at. Stelarc apparently isn't satisfied with his newfound appendage just yet, however, and is reportedly planning another surgery to give the ear "more definition." What's more, he's also hoping to implant a microphone inside the ear that'll use a Bluetooth transmitter to, you guessed it, broadcast what it hears over the Internet.[Via Boing Boing, photo courtesy of Nina Sellars]
Audience participation helps manipulate flexible skyscraper
The one thing that even non-architect-types know about skyscrapers is that tall buildings are designed to be slightly flexible, so strong gusts of wind don't send them tumbling to the ground. Well a group of MIT students have used that concept to build their own 800-pound mini-skyscraper which, in an impressive application of performance art, actually allows on-lookers to control the way it shimmies and shakes. Winner of a competition sponsored by the university's Department of Architecture, the 40-foot-tall modular structure sports four pneumatic muscles in each one of its stackable sections, which make it lean and bend into strange and unnatural shapes when multiple audience members operate the bicycle pump- or digital-controls simultaneously. Once the current exhibition is complete, we hope the design team decides to donate the wobbly wonder to their classmates who built that completely automated dorm room, because those guys could definitely turn it into a party accessory that would put those dancing flowers from the 80's to shame.
