[arg_discuss] ARG's & relational aesthetics

[Alex Fleetwood]

Hi everyone,

I think this makes really interesting reading for anyone who's into the
aesthetic & political context of ARG's:

http://imomus.livejournal.com/271729.html

I think it's really interesting that these ideas manifest themselves so
strongly in the contemporary art world. I don't know if anyone else saw
Christophe Buchel's installation in London but it was ARG-ish - follow the
walkthrough online and maybe you'll get a sense of what I mean -
http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/walkthrough.php?exhibition_id=415.

You explored, and hung out with people, asked them if they were part of the
exhibit or not, and found secret passages, and had a player's thrill at
getting a reward (a hidden gallery with a buried wooly mammoth in it) for
finding the most secret of all. Nb - it wasn't that secret. Plenty of room
for more layers of game here.

I also wonder if anyone else out there is monitoring the UK TV telephone
calls affair (http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2036766,00.html)
and thinking of it from the perspective of the ARG community - it seems to
me to be a classic betrayal of the principles that 42 Entertainment laid out
in their wonderful keynote speech from the ARG Fest-o-Con. To relate it back
to the above blog post, it's an illustration of how large media
organisations have come to be laid out according to the management
principles that derived from game thor. Those principles ultimately manifest
themselves in the treatment of the audience as the rational self-interested
beings described in game theory, which then bites them firmly in the ass.

Maybe this also explains why no British broadcaster has commissioned a true
ARG yet. Are they structurally incapable of doing so?

Anyone else who's geeky enough to want to discuss this kind of stuff, mail
me!

All the best

Alex
alexfleetwood at gmail.com