TURNING QUAKE INTO A CANVAS
Imagine Shelley�s classic �Ozymandias� retold as a short film in the style of Quake. That�s one of the movies Strange Company screened this summer at the first-ever festival of Machinima, or videogame-inspired arts. The film (1, above) can be viewed online at www.machinima.com. Other works from this growing community of artists, who use the digital graphics and software modules of commercial games as paint and brush, are also on the Web. Eye-popping and often thought-provoking, their pieces range from narrative realism to deconstructive art to political agitprop.
In a high-concept project from the Jodi collective (sod.jodi.org), the gory graphics of Quake disintegrate into black and white abstraction (2), and players� efforts to control the game produce strange visual effects. And in programmer Anne-Marie Schleiner�s Velvet-Strike (www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike) — a piece (3) that seems like a preemptive response to the US Army�s new recruitment sim — players protest videogame violence by spraying peacenik graffiti onto the landscape of body count-heavy shooter Counter-Strike.
PLAY
Boys Will Be Girls
Gettin� Jiggly Wit It
Arcade Aerobics
Schooled in Design
Machinimania!
Drilling Into The Core
Built for Sound
Hit Machine
As Heard on TV
DAVID "BROON" BROWN Swayzak
Earth Angels
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
reviews
Fetish
Rough Riders
Light and Loaded
Sharper Imagery
Easy on the Eyes
