Following Bit is a performance that took place in Liberty City, the setting of Grand Theft Auto IV, between July 3 and July 25, 2013. Each day Coll.eo picked out a different a non-player character (note 1), at random, in the street, at different locations. Coll.eo - controlling a specifically designed avatar of Vito Acconci developed in collaboration with Iranian modder Amir Ghoreyshi - followed that character as long as possible, until he or she entered a private place – home, office, etc. – disappeared or died.

Following Bit is concerned with the language of virtual bodies in simulated public spaces, in this case Liberty City, a replica of New York City. By selecting a computer-controlled pedestrian at random, Coll.eo submitted their own will, goals, and movements to the will, goals, and movements of simulated beings, showing how our intentions are always influenced, sometimes subordinated, to external forces – e.g. bots and algorithms – that we may or may not be able to control. The following episodes ranged from a few minutes – for instance, when someone was run over by a car – to seven or eight hours – when a person kept walking. In all cases the following activity did not last more than a day (note 2).

The initial following performance was itself followed by a second intervention; in the course of the subsequent month, a tweet was sent each day by @colleoproject describing with less than 140 characters the particular details of the following episode that occurred the same day during the previous month.

San Francisco, August 30, 2013

Colleo is Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti

Notes

1. A non-player character (NPC), sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any character that is never controlled by a player. In digital games, this usually refers to a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence.

2. One minute of lived time corresponds to one hour in Liberty City.