workshops @ [sonic]square brussels, october 23-25

[sonic]square # 6: Out of the Bedroom
23, 24, 25/10/2002

2 workshops on gaming, open source software and other bedroom politics as part of a three day event with concerts, screenings and demonstrations.
Kaaitheaterstudio's, o-l-v-van-vaakstraat 81 rue n-d-du-sommeil, Brussels

** Two-day workshop with Anne-Marie Schleiner **
** on game modifications, patches and hacker art **
** thursday 24 & friday 25 october **

Anne-Marie Schleiner is an artist/cyberanthropologist and lectures at the Cadre Institute in San Jose, California. For some time she's been concentrating on the culture of the computer game and has a soft spot for it. Now that games are linked more and more to on-line data, they offer - in contrast to commercial television - a form of entertainment in which there is room for a creative contribution by the user. According to Schleiner, the time is ripe for critical intervention by artists, theoreticians and Lora Croft fans so as to hack the game industry. She's set the ball rolling with a series of game mods. Mods (short for modifications) are small items of software that supplement existing games. These additions are part of the marketing strategy of the producers of Quake' and Marathon. You can download the extras, subject to payment, via the Internet. On the other hand Schleiner's mods are intended to disorganise the game. This means a parasitic plug-in can at any given moment replace the macho protagonists of a popular shoot-em-up game with lethargic gawks or androgynous animals. This truly interactive intervention offers innumerable possibilities for a critical view of the traditional conventions of the corporate' computer game. How this hacking at the same time forges new paths for game interaction, navigation and narration can be seen from the exhibition that Schleiner curates on the net: Cracking the Maze: Game Plug-ins and Patches as Hacker Art' compiles her patchwork' and that of her colleagues.
http://www.opensorcery.net/

During [sonic]square # 6 Anne-Marie Schleiner will be giving a two-day workshop on game mods. In a small group she'll sketch the history of the