I had a few thoughts to continue on the subject of pervasive gaming, and your question, Sugey: “What if it is simply enough to say that the structure of pervasive gaming exists in order to change one's experience in the city?”
In order to be successful, does pervasive gaming need to change one’s experience of the city? I know that this is a question we’ve been continually asking throughout the semester- how, or how not, did something change one’s experience of the city? But I think that this question may sometimes simplify an artist’s project too much. In the case of Murmur, there is definitely an attempt to consciously influence one’s walk through the city and have an effect on the walker. In “Beyond Locative Media” by Marc Tuturs and Kazys Varnellis, locative media is talked about in terms of taking the traditional gallery space, placing it in the city, and claiming the unchartered territory of locative media. In regards to the .walk project by Social Fiction, Tuturs and Varnellis say “The success of this simple project is representative of a larger event taking place in the media art world, in which, having left behind net art, locative media escaped the bounds of the screen to enter the city at large.” A couple weeks ago in class we took sides- Bob and I on one side arguing for locative media in the city being capable of success by simply making a statement or some type of research. On the other side was Chris and Francesco (sometimes wavering) desiring for locative media to have a measurable outcome. But if the point is to move beyond the screen and the gallery space and into the city, then why should locative media art be limited by such confines? A painting in a gallery space does not actively do anything or create an outcome or change our way of living in a significant manner. But the painting may have a significant effect on the viewer based on the content, intensity of the brushstrokes, or ability to draw the viewer into the space of the canvas. It provokes the viewer to think critically about something, or at least notice it. So maybe the job of pervasive gaming and other locative media artworks is to provoke the person in the experience to think critically or differently about the space they are inhabiting, instead of trying to change the way they inhabit it. I suppose this got away a bit from the original topic of pervasive gaming, but I think my thoughts still apply to gaming as well. Pervasive gaming is supposed to move beyond a typical game and pervade our reality through normal forms of correspondence. Since when is a game supposed to change our lives? Ludologists typically argue against games as narrative and games as being real life simulators (i.e., the are not capable/responsible for provoke kids to go shoot up their schools). Game theory is not about how can games change our lives, but about issues such as immersion, how to make better artificial agents, etc. So, I don’t see why when we start discussing locative media in the city we want to have measurable outcome for how something changes the way we move or think. It reminds me of how conferences typically seem to go today- someone presents their project, and the first question from the audience is “what technology did you use/how did you do it?” so they can gauge how difficult it may or may not be, rather then thinking about the critical issues the piece may raise and what the artist was thinking about. The art gallery space doesn’t ask for these measurements and neither does game theory…so why should locative media in the city?
