Games as political and cultural avant-garde!

Recently I came across the works of artist Joseph DeLappe. He uses a unique way of using a game space as an environment to initiate social, and political change. DeLappe in 2006 began using the US Army's own game server to protest the war in Iraq. Using the "Dead in Iraq" for his avatar, he logged onto the US Army simulation game servers and began entering names and dates of U.S troops killed in the war. When describing this project he says "It's really a multi-faceted gesture to (protest) what's in the game and the hyper-reality, the disconnect that game has. I'm trying to make a direct link with the game and with what's going on in reality."

The official website about Delappe's project is http://www.unr.edu/art/DELAPPE/Gaming/Dead_In_Iraq/dead_in_iraq%20JPEGS.html

GamePolitics also interviewed Delappe asking him about game spaces and the use of mediums like games to protest and reflect upon reality and social change.

Where do Virtual Corpses go?

The following is a great article written by Brody Codon about visual art and it's implications. Brody's work’s aim is to create new and disorienting experiences for gamers, specifically designed to deconstruct modern games and in term reconstruct a more critical piece of art that represent new ideas in terms of form and content and another reality. In the conclusion of his paper, he summarizes the ideas presented through his work stating “I have invested myself in the creation of alternative possibilities for game development technology beyond the commercial sphere. Each piece is a meditation on a different manifestation of dysfunction and its relationship to a contemporary culture that is becoming dependent on interactive screen based representations of its environment.”

http://www.cosignconference.org/download/32

We Are The World

A short commentry on war and peace