Performing for the Self

Henry Lowood gave a talk at the Art History of Games conference held in Georgia in 2010. By and large it is a furthering of his text It’s Not Easy Being Green where he continues to discuss the prowess of Grubby in the 2004 Warcraft III finals. Interestingly, he has moved his attention to art and aesthetics in video games by turning to David Best’s work on the aesthetic in sport. Best, as Lowood explains, believes that there are purposive and aesthetic sports (e.g. Speed Skating vs. Figure Skating). Lowood challenges this division by turning to basketball and Dave Hickey’s analysis of Julius Erving’s famous play in the 1980 NBA finals. His essay, “The Heresy of Zone Defense,” is about the opportunity for artistry in purposive play as a result, interprets Lowood, of the fact there is an audience to react. In this case the reaction was “joy, at the triumph of civil society in an act that was clearly the product of talent and will accommodating itself to liberating rules.” Lowood is building a case for art to emerge in gameplay when there is enough wiggle room between the player and the purpose. Innovation in execution, tactics and strategy is akin to art-making for Lowood, but only in spectated play, it is not the case for solo activity. If such were the case we would have to admit too many activities as artistic, including many scientific discoveries. While Lowood appears to be on to something, my own worry is that he is making certain conceptual errors which risk undermining his project.

Lowood’s use of Hickey echoes ideas surrounding virtuosity. The way I take it, virtuoso performances require skill and creativity. Not all activities performed skilfully can be virtuosic, especially when these have particular goals in mind and few means of achieving them. It is unlikely, for instance, that a stenographer can offer a virtuoso performance because there is no appreciable wiggle room in getting from point A to point B. The missing feature, I suggest, is creativity, which I would define along Berys Gaut’s terms, namely that the act is original, valuable and demonstrating personal style. Julius Erving’s basket was all of these, while also being purposive, which makes his actions virtuosic. There is certainly an argument to be made that it is also artistic, but that would require several pages contending with the current disjunctive definitions of art. The importance of the spectator, with respect to the creative act, is that it is often with them that value judgements are made. This is what Lowood discusses with respect to Grubby’s play, where only the very astute observers could truly appreciate his performance. My own stance is that even if no one but Grubby ever saw the play, and only Grubby knew what he had done, it would still be virtuosic because Grubby is enough of an audience to appreciate his mastery. Peter Kivy, in his text The Performance of Reading explains that it is not necessary for performances to be spectated by more than the performer, otherwise we could not account for the usefulness of rehearsals. If Erving went up against Jabbar one on one without spectators and Jabbar blinked leaving only Erving cognizant of what he did, it would still be virtuosic.
With Guitar Hero, I fear that there is little room for creativity, so that no matter how skilful the play is one will never arrive at an artistic performance of Guitar Hero. There is no wiggle room in getting from point A to point B that is at the same time relevant to the purpose of the game. So while one can certainly perform in interesting and aesthetically valuable ways, these would be on top of also playing Guitar Hero. By the same token, the stenographer can tap-dance in his/her seat while typing but that does not make her stenographic performance an interpretative and creative one. Guitar Hero performers are using their video game as a prop in a larger performance. Of course, one could argue that Guitar Hero's borders extend beyond the high scores and bright lights, but I see little to indicate this in the representations provided by the game itself.

Moral Interfaces

Isn’t the SixthSense’s "natural interface" a contradictory proposition? My understanding of this technology is that it deploys hand gestures arising from metaphors or conventions developed in different social situations as its interface. While one can take a picture by touching both thumbs with both opposing indices, one cannot argue that this is a natural way of photographing objects. A brief history of photography would clearly demonstrate that there are hundreds of different gestures involved in taking photographs and only a few of these, at a few times, benefited from the use of the finger frame.

Perhaps we might present a better term and call the SixthSense’s interface "iconic." Instead of using abstract mechanisms to communicate with the processor, one can now import the constraints of previous materials, oh yay! For example, the SixthSense will project a display of the time if one looks at one’s wrist, because of course a watch fits on the wrist and not on other body parts. In a different world of fashion it could have told the time when one looked at one’s palm as though one were holding a pocketwatch. The reason it is not arbitrary however is because the projector cannot display the time on just any body part, given its own material constraints. The SixthSense brings in the out dated constraints of the watch because that technology’s constraints match its own.

It is absurd to discuss these gestures as though they were “natural,” when they are the result of social conditioning and the distribution of labor between people and machines. Drawing from Latour’s "Where are the Missing Masses?", we can gain insight into how new technology are not only re-appropriating old technological constraints, but their moral labor as well. What is more, we can understand the SixthSense, with its attempt at grounding computing in physical space and in integrating the body, as doing trendy moral work. Pranav Mistry, in his Ted talk goes so far as to claim, “I think that integrating information into everyday objects… will also help us in some way to stay human… it will help us to not be machines sitting in front of other machines.” This sounds like the same kind of alarmism we find all new technologies incur; the only difference is that Mistry thinks more technology will save us by mimicking older technology.

“Oh, yeah, for now. But the beeper's gonna be making a comeback. Technology's cyclical.”
-Dennis Duffy (30 Rock)

"Now, if you're part of Control Group Kepler-Seven, we implanted a tiny microchip about the size of a postcard into your skull. Most likely you've forgotten it's even there, but if it starts vibrating and beeping during this next test, let us know, because that means it's about to hit five hundred degrees, so we're gonna need to go ahead and get that out of you pretty fast."
 -Cave Johnson (Portal 2)