WTF

Work Time Fun.
I may have blogged about this before, but I was just thinking about it, so I am going to do it again.
Out of all of the games that I have played (or have seen played), WTF is probably the most true to life. It uses a maximum of two buttons to play a giant series of mini-games. The mini-games are usually mindless factory style jobs that the Job Demon assigns. Even though the rules are super simple and the game is not open ended at all and the graphics are horrible, it provides a very convincing simulation of real life.

The actions taken while pressing the buttons of the controller are in themselves mundane.

"By completing these minigames, you earn money which can be used at a gashapon machine to randomly receive a new minigame, prizes for your gallery, or even a gadget that you can use in real life, such as a clock."





Well played sir.

WM

Here is my first article for Whitehot Magazine.
It's a review of Art Chicago and Next Fair. Mostly about Julian Opie and Magdalena Fernandez.



All photo credits are to Pablo Gaviria.

Sarah Oppenheimer's Folding Catalog

@ the Berlin based DUVE Gallery, Next Fair Chicago, 2008
photo by Pablo Gaviria,
artist's website.

Sara Oppenheimer displays catalogs of different ways which she has observed people folding their newspapers. When the information meets, one side of the paper to the next, new articles are formulated. It is a brief meeting of information, and each new article is secret. If the fold is undone, the new text is destroyed. There is no way to read the remix. All we can tell of the text is the way it was created.


link.

MFA Party

Here are some photos from the SAIC MFA party that I took this last Friday.
Doing now: Artropolis review for Whitehot Mag. BRB.


Entry way, complete with a red carpet and some famous reporter that I forgot her name.


Dain Oh and Jon Cates set up for a real-time performance.


Screen landscape and balloons.


A vanity faire of sorts.


The School of Rock is a band made up of little kids. They played here.

Section des Miroirs

Blogger image uploader seems to back online now.

Here are the photos I took from Section des Miroirs, by Karen Archey.

29

The "29th February" was a show part of this. Curated by Sara Weis

It was pretty cool, I didn't really get to talk to the curator much because alot of things were running behind and she seemed kind of stressed out. But she was very nice when I did get her sit and talk for a few minutes. Some of Rafael Rozendaal's flash works were not working on the computer too. Mai Ueda described Neen as a strawberry fart (or something close to that). Daniel Roe came and he was really happy because the space for the show reminded him of New York City. It is nice to have a properly run independent gallery in downtown Chicago. Ithink it was one of the better shows that I have been to here...

Here are some pictures.


"Video game green" color for the carpet


The set-up


A series of razzle dazzle tubes.


A poster made for the show by Nikola Tosic


A tree floating in a box


"Watercouleur Park", by Qubo Gas with a virus scan running over top of it


A demo of Stringtheories.org, by Sinem Erkas


A demo of Stripper2, by Mai Ueda


Skype chat with Angelo Plessas


Nikola reads some poetry


Dan Roe tips the bar with Indian currency


The Neen Manifesto folded into a paper airplane


Sophie paints a picture, and fails it. twice


The aftermath of another performance


Dain Oh and Dan Roe

Community Computing

Community is about a type of feeling. It is not about a collection.

I prefer this kindof community computing to the standard definition. We sit around in a friend's living room and show each other what we have found recently. Everyone is sitting and drinking, suggesting search keywords and five or six pages are loading at once.




Johnny Pantalici


The computer reading us a text on UFO landings on Mars


Brinton Holland

Second Life Exhibition

So I went to view art work today on Second Life for the first time. I don't use SL too much because I have slow computer right now.. But this show seemed to be advertised alot, so I thought that I would visit it and maybe take some pictures.
I found the show here at Lowstandart. Here is the link from Select Parks. The artist's name is Tommy Støckel, though I don't know his second life name. The show is titled Boom Pearls.

I'm not so convinced by the work in general. It seems that if you are going to work on a computer and you can start from zero, so to speak, maybe making things look like found objects isn't the best approach. Anyhow, the pictures are below.


Flying over the exhibition site.


A Close-up.


The sign for the show.

No Click Interface

I was browsing around on del.icio.us and found Dontclick.it. It is a no click interface for web pages. It reminded me of this game for Windows 3.1 that I had when I was a kid, Jewel Thief. In the game the goal was to collect jewels without being touched by a variety of other objects moving across the screen. The user's avatar follows the mouse exactly.
In the web page and the game, annoyance follows when one mouses over the wrong object: the "enemy" avatars or an unintended menu.