'The World Is Down': Eddo Stern's Visual Art Consoles

----


'Born in Tel Aviv and San Francisco based, Eddo Stern's work ranges from video game modifications, to machinima (cinema made through video games sequences) and installations. His work explores new modes of narrative and documentary, fantasies of technology and history, and cross-cultural representation in film, computer games, and the Internet. He works in various media including computer software, hardware and game design, kinetic sculpture, performance, and film and video production. His short machinima films include "Sheik Attack", "Vietnam Romance", ”Landlord Vigilante” and "Deathstar". He is the founder of the now retired cooperative C-level where he co-produced the physical computer gaming projects "Waco Resurrection", "Tekken Torture Tournament", "Cockfight Arena”, and the internet meme conference "C-level Memefest" He is currently developing the sensory deprivation game “Darkgame" recently featured at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.' -- The Influencers


* The Influencers: Eddo Stern
* Eddo Stern Official Website
*Eddo Stern @ Postmasters Gallery
* An interview with Eddo Stern
* Eddo Stern's 'A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games'


______________
8 works by Eddo Stern

'These days I spend about 20-30 hours a week playing computer games. At an early point when I just started making things I decided that the way for me to be happy was to keep the art-making rush at full speed and make work around all the other things I was doing -- a sort of grand unification life theory. Doing this seems obvious to me now but it felt like a revelation at the time -- it's basically about working with your life experience, very non Platonic. With games it's particularly great, a way to justify and process the thousands of hours of playing and reading game magazines. I find game culture fascinating beyond the experiential acts of gaming. It's so rich with questions about identity, power, and politics -- there's a lot of work to do.' -- E.S.


1. WACO RESURRECTION (2004)
Computer Game/Installation/hardware/mixed media
(Eddo Stern, Peter Brinson, Brody Condon, Michael Wilson, Mark Allen, Jessica Hutchins)









Watch Waco Resurrection game footage
Waco Resurrection: Game Design Doc

Revisiting the 1993 Waco, Texas episode, gamers enter the mind and form of a “resurrected” David Koresh through a specially designed voice activated, surround sound enabled, hard plastic 3D skin. In an attempt to defend the Branch Davidian compound against internal intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival theologians and the inexorable advance of government agents, each player on the network plays as a ”Koresh”. Ensnared in the custom "Koresh skin", players are bombarded with sounds of government psy-ops, internal voices and the clamor of battle, and empowered to voice messianic texts from Koresh's exegesis of the book of revelation, wield a variety of weapons from the Mount Carmel cache and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents by “radiating” charisma. Waco Resurrection draws on the rhetoric of conspiracy theory, cult activity and apocalypticism to investigate the Waco siege as a cultural milestone. It addresses the multi-layered dynamics of a 51-day media-event that served to mobilize the militia movement, radicalize Timothy McVeigh and cause a re-evaluation of the role of religion in society.

____________

2. DARKGAME
computer game / hardware /software
1 ft x 2ft x 1ft

Darkgame is a sensory deprivation computer game.
The project is in progress.

Eddo Stern interviewed about Darkgame and independent gaming

EXHIBITION/ DEMO HISTORY:
IndieCade at E for All Expo, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Sundance Film Festival, , Park City, UTAH
IndieCade at E3, Los Angeles, CA
Edith Russ House for New Media, Oldenberg, GERMANY
Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, KOREA
Gameworld Exhibition, LABoral, Gijon, SPAIN
Cinematexas 11, Austin, TEXAS


____________
3. Portal, Wormhole, Flythrough... (2008)
18' x 17' x 6'
Steel, Aluminium, Fiberglass

'Eddo Stern’s monumental installation Portal, Wormhole, Flythrough consists of a 17-foot-tall octagonal gate with a circular screen in its center, upon which is projected a looping montage of found video images of motion-tunnel sequences, swirling vortexes, and other abstracted passageways through virtual space. The massive steel-and-aluminum construction suggests the low-polygon 3D graphics of a contemporary computer game; its chunky proportions seem slightly off, as if it were a very small object suddenly made unusually large. More precisely, the structure resembles interdimensional portals found at various spots in the universe depicted in the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. A comparable but square entranceway, seething with a membrane of swirling, luminescent color, appears as the login screen every time one of the game’s more than 8 million subscribers worldwide decides to enter the game world once again.' -- Ed Halter, Moving Image Source

_____________

4. USS DRAGOON (2003)
"One God to Rule Them All...And in the Darkness Bind Them"
wood, plastic, electronics, software
10' x 5' x 4'

USS Dragoon: One God to Rule Them All...And in the Darkness Bind Them - An Elvin class computer aircraft carrier prepared for battle with an on-deck army of knights and dragons.

____________

5. Fort Paladin: America's Army (2003)
6' x 6' x 5'









Keywords: Tolkien, Christ, Your Empire and Your Desktop

Fort Paladin is a medieval computer castle automaton trained to kill and master the American army 's recruitment training game "America's Army" using elecro-mechanics and a custom written expert system.

____________

6. COCKFIGHT ARENA (2001)
game performance/software/hardware/costumes etc...
(Eddo Stern, Mark Allen, Jessica Hutchins, Karen Lofgren)





Watch three videos of Cockfight Arena in action

A one night parade of sweat and adrenaline hopes to reclaim performance art in the age of video games, pitting viewer against viewer in brutal virtual cockfighting theater. Audience volunteers suited up in custom-made wireless game controllers with full sized wings and feathered helmets. Combatants stepped into an arena to control their life size game avatars through vigorous flapping and pecking, competing for blood and birdfeed while rapaciously inflicting onscreen bodily harm in a custom made "joustlike" fighting game.

____________

7.HATE WAVE (2004)
kinetic sculpture
8 ft x 6 ft x 5 ft
244 cm x 183 cm x 152 cm



A clan of templar, farmers and champions gather to greet the future
A mechanical crowd does the wave
Their giant prays


____________
8. Narnia, Again (2007)
Lotusman (2007)
Man, Woman, Dragon (After World of Warcraft) (2007)
Tsunami (2007)
Kinetic Shadow Puppets (after Narnia,Segeal, World of Warcraft and Iraq)
Plastic, Paper, Electronics

'Eddo Stern's new works - kinetic shadow sculptures and 3D computer animation videos - use a mash-up of documentary material from online forums, clip art, youtube videos, midi music, electronics and hand made puppets. They mine the online gaming world at its paradoxical extremes: on one hand, an untenable perversion of everyday life spent slaying an endless stream of virtual monsters, on the other, an ultimate mirroring of the most familiar social dynamics. The struggles with masculinity, honor, aggression, faith, love and self worth are embroiled with the game world’s vernacular aesthetics.' -- Postmasters Gallery
----

p.s. Hey. As you'll be able to tell by the length of this p.s., the blog is hampered at the moment. Very long story very short, I injured my back yesterday morning, and, it being Sunday, and Belfort being a tiny town, no doctors were available, so I spent yesterday lying on a cot devouring ibuprofen and trying to work on the rehearsals when I wasn't moaning in pain. I managed to see an osteopath this morning, and he worked on me, and I supposedly will be feeling at least a little better tomorrow, but for now I'm simultaneously kind of agonized and zonked on pain killers at the same time, and sitting in a chair is very difficult for me, and I haven't even looked at the comments from over the weekend yet because I just don't have the focus to absorb them at this point, so I'm going to have to launch yet another post sans my usual p.s., but it would seem that I should be able to interact with you tomorrow if the prognosis was correct. I sincerely apologize for all of this, and I promise I'll read the comments and do my best to catch up as soon as possible, likely tomorrow, as I said. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the post today about the artist Eddo Stern, and I hope everyone both local and distinguished and afar and unknown are doing really well. One last apology, a few ouches, and I'll go hobble back into the rehearsal space now at my current one inch per hour traveling speed then lie down in my chosen spot until further notice with the hope that things will be back to normal on my end of the blog by tomorrow. Take care.