Margaux Ancel

Curatorial Statement

Where does the line between the virtual and the real world stand? What does this ambiguity indicate about our society today? With the advances of technology and the Internet, new media artists have discovered platforms to express their vision of the modern culture. Some of these contemporary artists have taken on an activist role in an attempt to bring attention to the issues society faces today. Racism, stereotypes, and the desensitization to violence have become major subject of the conversation surrounding the rise of popularity of role-playing video games. The Internet and role-playing games have greatly contributed to the divide between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ world, by providing users with a space where they can gain anonymity and almost complete freedom of action. This online exhibition aims to unite into a cohesive whole the controversies video games have raised about the access to violence given to users, the racism and stereotypes found in certain game narratives, and the disconnection between reality and virtuality.

The concept for this exhibition was highly influenced by the idea of new identities created in cyberspace. The virtual body-less self, made up and controlled entirely by an anonymous user, brings into question the kind of person one becomes when there seems to be no limits. Many new media artists have explored the concept of cyber-identity and the social implications of the online world in terms of social activism. New media art has often been used to reconnect the divide caused by the digital world (Kataoka 2013). The artists displayed in this exhibition are contributing to the online social activism movement by creating art that highlights issues that are often ignored or overlooked. The conversation about violence in video games tends to focus on the idea that gaming incites aggressive behavior in children (Jenkins 2006). However, it is important to consider the reasons behind the prominent presence of violence in games and the desensitization that results from continuous exposure. Through gaming, users are given the opportunity to escape reality and let their imagination guide them. Yet the disconnection users feel from reality while gaming transpires in the way they react to certain stimuli in the real world, most particularly, violence. Desensitization is the “the reduction of cognitive, emotional and/or behavioral responses to a stimulus, is an automatic and unconscious phenomenon often experienced in everyday life” (Brockmyer 2015). The user purposefully looks for the escape into the virtual world but returns to reality with the experiences of violence and war of their character.

Certain role-playing games, based on military missions and modern day wars, find their context within the real world and as a result, are reconnecting the user to reality. This aspect of gaming questions “how and in what way one can make connections between the gaming world and the real world, both from the inside outward in the form of affective action, and from the outside inward in the form of realistic representation” (Galloway 2004). These kinds of video games are the focus of this exhibition as they are meant to transcribe real cultural artifacts into the virtual world, for example, the anti-terrorism movement, the stereotyping of the Middle-Eastern population, and the American war effort.

The exhibition begins as a commentary on society’s fears of terrorism and the apparent control gaming gives user over the issue. Joachim Olender’s piece “Tarnac: Le Chaos et la Grâce” (2012) is a response to an event that took place in Tarnac, France in 2008. The “Tarnac Nine” a group of youth living a very underground life in the remote location of Tarnac, is accused of being connected to terrorist attacks on major SNFC train tracks and arrested as a swarm of 150 police officers take over their location (Paye 2009). In world where the line between civil disobedience and terrorism is rendered ambiguous by the government’s reactions, the affair soon turns into a sensational display of fear and power from the government as they detain the group for months without substantial proof for months (Worthen 2014). “Tarnac: Le Chaos et la Grâce” is a piece that falls somewhere between documentary journalism and video-installation art. In a four-screen display, Olender combines peaceful scenic shots of the Tarnac site with a virtual replica in video-game form of the events that took place. The piece, as the artist explains, displays “a story that needed to be told in order to expose its absurdity” (Chaos and Grace). The superposition of the peaceful views of Tarnac with the violence and tension presented in the video game are meant to send a message about the way reality can be altered and manipulated to show one side of the story. The video game replica of the arrests critiques the overwhelming violence and fear with which the French government responded to the “Tarnac Nine” by narrating the events in the virtual world and making it appear as simple virtual fiction. By the contrast, the scenic shots show nothing but peaceful landscapes. The ‘nothingness’ of the real-life shots mirrored by the violence of the video game demonstrates the disconnection between two realities, the truth and the vision of the truth influenced by the fear of terrorism and automatic violent response from the government. Olender’s work aims to show the way the two screens can display two versions of the same story.  

The second piece also comments on the government’s influence on gaming and more particularly, games narratives. Wafaa Bilal’s “The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi” (2008) is a direct response to the racist vision of the Middle East found on the Internet and in video games. “Quest for Saddam,” a game surrounding the mission to capture Saddam Hussein, was the inspiration for the artist’s work. The original game, in contrast with Bilal’s, is meant “as a bold and brutal reinforcement of current American society and its positive moral perspective on military intervention, be it the war on terrorism or ‘shock and awe’ in Iraq” (Galloway 2004). “Virtual Jihadi” reverses the conventional roles by turning the player into a suicide bomber on a mission to kill George W. Bush. The work’s most aspect is the way is combines different cultural issues into one game, by reversing the roles of the player and by making the player responsible for character’s death (Muller 2012). Through his game, Bilal denounces the biased view of the effects of war on the Middle Eastern population and the stereotypes that are associated with it. The game is also meant to expose the vulnerability of the Iraqi population in particular to recruitment from terrorist groups (Bilal). Bilal uses video game as a medium to expose the inherent racism present in Iraq War based games and to demonstrate the way the viewer has become disconnected from the realities of the situation. The violence and horrors displayed in these games are not censored in the virtual world while the reality that inspired it is often considered to be sensitive content when displayed in the news.

Robbie Cooper’s piece “Immersion” (2009) is an incredibly powerful piece due to its status as a form of visual proof of the slow disconnection from violence people face. By quite literally putting violent video games on a screen in front of people and filming their reactions as the sounds of gunfire and destruction resonate in the background, Cooper demonstrates the realities of desensitization. The project came to the artist as a mean to record ‘real’ reactions from people, when they are exposed to various things such as comedy, movies, video games, and porn (Virtual Identities). In this particular piece, he mainly records young people as they play video games and watch YouTube videos and creates a powerful dichotomy between their facial expressions and the violent sounds in the background.  The result is raw and honest reaction of children and young people when faced with violence in the virtual world and forces the viewer to take a look inwards before judging the reactions of others (Halliday 2013). By involving real people into his work, Cooper is creating a crowd sourced project that fuels the debate on gaming and violence and forces the viewer to look at their own perception of violence in the content they see online and in games.

            Riley Harmon also takes on a powerful approach to force his audience to react to the violence they are shown online and in games. “What It Is Without The Hand That Wields It” (2008) combines gaming, video and installation art into a room where the public is confronted by the reality of virtual violence and its direct effects in the ‘real world.’ On one wall, the shooting video game “Counter-strike” is displayed on a screen as players in the room and online take part in the game. On an adjacent wall, blood bags connected to valve dispensers are electronically activated to release blood as players die in the game. As the amount of victims increases, the blood continues to spill against the wall, slowly covering the ground. The installation is striking and bothersome, forcing the audience to reconcile virtual violence with real consequences. The piece realizes multiple goals in the way it is constructed. First, it attempts to reconnect actions occurring in the virtual world with the reality of the violence committed through the blood spills. Secondly, it creates an uncomfortable tension as the player gains satisfaction for killing the other players in the game and is suddenly made conscious of the disturbing reality of the death as the blood covers the floor of the room. The installation does not simply denounce desensitization and attempt to mend it; it also forces the audience to question their own enjoyment and satisfaction of their violent actions in the game (Petit 2015).

Eddo Stern’s “Darkgame” (2011) takes on another approach to merging the virtual gaming world with reality by engaging the user’s senses directly. The project, which is still in progress, is composed of a ‘virtual-reality’ video game accompanied by a headset providing haptic feedback to the player (Eddo Stern Experimental). As the game progresses, the player loses abilities such as sight, hearing and touch while gaining other heightened senses. Ultimately, the game reconnects the virtual player with his ‘real’ body through the senses, forcing the player to become conscious of his own presence within the game by making it part of the real world. During the game, a voice recording plays as the player gains or loses abilities, commenting the player’s amount of virtual presence within the game based on the amount of abilities they have. The artist describes the game as a “sensory deprivation game performance,” thus demonstrating its artistic and intellectual value in the context of gaming (Moss 2011). The game also offers something that others do not: access for the sight-impaired. By opening up the gaming world to a new community that relies on physical contact so strongly, Eddo Stern demonstrates that it is possible to reconnect the virtual world with reality, while also raising a question on the kind of gaming content people would respond positively to when the divide between reality and virtual is no longer present.

Technology and the Internet have transformed modern culture in many ways, some more positive than others. The digital divide between the virtual and the real has created a new generation of people who are desensitized to certain stimuli due to continuous exposure in the media and in video games. Violence, racism, stereotypes and propaganda among others, are displayed in every day with a sense of commonality that fails to shock its audience. The new media artists presented here are only a portion of the group of artists and intellectuals addressing and promoting the problem of the cyber-identity in the virtual world and its lack of connection in the real world. This exhibition aims to inform the audience on another side of the issue of violence in video games argument and to bring attention to the way the line between the supposedly fictional world of virtual gaming and the real world has blurred over time.

References

“Chaos and Grace.” We Make Money Not Art. April 3, 2013. Accessed April 21, 2015. http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2013/04/the-chaos-and-the-grace.php.

“Virtual Identities.” We Make Money Not Art. May 29, 2009. Accessed April 12, 2015. http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2011/05/virtual-identities.php#.VUMnh87BxSX.

Bilal, Wafaa. “Virtual Jihadi.” Wafaa Bilal. Accessed May 1, 2015. http://www.wafaabilal.com/html/virtualJ.html.

Brockmyer, Jeanne. “Playing Violent Video Games and Desensitization to Violence.” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 24, no. 1 (2015): 65-77. Accessed April 29, 2015. http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/science/article/pii/S105649931400087X.

Galloway, Alexander. “Social Realism in Gaming.” Game Studies 4, no. 1 (2004). Accessed April 15, 2015. http://gamestudies.org/0401/galloway/.

Halliday, Ayun. “Artist Robbie Cooper’s Video Project Immersion Stares Back at Gamers and YouTubers.” Open Culture. March 8, 2013. Accessed April 27, 2015. http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/artist_robbie_coopers_video_project_iimmersioni_stares_back_at_gamers_and_youtubers.html.

Jenkins, Henry. “Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Spaces.” In The Game Design Reader. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006. Accessed April 15, 2015. http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/EGDFall2013/readings/HenryJenkinsFreedomofMovementGenderedPlaySpac.pdf.

Kataoka, Drue. “Headline: How Art Can Bridge the Digital ‘Divide’.” Wired, January 21, 2013. Accessed April 25, 2015. http://www.wired.com/2013/01/on-the-art-of-digital/.

Moss, Ceci. “Darkgame (2008-Ongoing) – Eddo Stern.” Rhizome.org. January 31, 2011. Accessed April 19, 2015. http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/jan/31/darkgame-2010-ongoing-eddo-stern/.

Muller, Nat. “The Diversion to Subvert.” Afterimage 40, no. 2 (2012): 22-23. Accessed April 5, 2015. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/docview/1151845745/abstract/7734D41571E44022PQ/1?accountid=14518.

Paye, Jean-Claude. “The Tarnac Affair: Symptomatic of a Psychotic Social Order.” Support the Tarnac 10. January 12, 2009. Accessed April 20, 2015. https://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/psychotic-social-order/.

Petit, Carolyn. “In Violent Video Games, the Gameplay Sends Its Own Message.” KQED Arts. February 28, 2015. Accessed April 11, 2015. http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2015/02/28/in-violent-video-games-the-gameplay-sends-its-own-message/.

Worthen, Hana. “For a
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http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/journals/theatre_topics/v024/24.3.worthen.html.