The Art of Notation (Pt. 2)

(see my previous post on this topic)

From John Cage, Williams Mix (1952-3), the composer's first work composed for audiotape (Source: Newton Armstrong)

Faust, Faust IV, Virgin Records UK (1974) (Source: Faust-Pages)

Game Space_1: Portal/Fez

At SXSW this past week, Bryan and John both alerted me to some interesting games out there. The first is kokoromi's Fez. Think Mario Bros. on X-Y-Z gimbal axes. The result is, to say the least, pretty awesome.



The second is Valve's Portal. The online entry for the game tells us that

The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device ("Portal Gun" for short), a unit that can create an inter-spatial portal between flat planes. The player character is challenged by an AI named "GLaDOS" to complete each puzzle in the "Aperture Science Enrichment Center" using the Portal Gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The unusual physics allowed by the portal gun are the emphasis of this game, and is an extension of a similar portal concept in Narbacular Drop; many of the team from the DigiPen Institute of Technology that worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal.

These games are fascinating in that they involve some type of spatial manipulation. Specifically, Portal reminds us of the work of Israeli architect Eyal Weizman. In a 2006 essay, Weizman describes the IDF's theoretical approaches to navigating hostile urban spaces. He writes:

During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of ‘overground tunnels’ carved out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian guerrillas were manuvering simultaneously in the city, they were so ‘saturated’ into the urban fabric that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as ‘infestation’, seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.

All in all, these two games are evidence of practices that fall outside architecture's more normative realms.

Architecture at SXSW Interactive

Less than a week has passed by since SXSW Interactive 2008 came to an end. I was fortunate enough to participate as a panelist this year. Our panel -- comprised of Mimi Zeiger (Loud Paper), John Szot (Brooklyn Digital Foundry), Molly Steenson (activesocialplastic), Bryan Boyer (sorry, Bryan - my bad) and me -- was called "Meet the Architects", and it must have seemed out of place in what has become a very web- and technology-heavy conference. According to the SXSW website:

A new kind of digital practice has emerged. We see it in our buildings and our cities: new architectural interfaces, new communities, new ways of thinking about the physical world around us. In "Meet the Architects," we'll take on these ripples in physical architecture and urbanism. This panel tracks new directions in architecture culture at the intersection of digital, film and urban environments; architecture zines, blogs and communities; and architectural and urban research.

The response, however, has been uniformly good. And this is no doubt because of the superior caliber of my fellow panelists. I would like to think that we brought something different to SXSW. Something more interdisciplinary and compelling than the usual SXSW fare.

Overall, it was a thrilling experience. Being the aprocryphal "fish out of the water" at this conference meant that I could think about my own work within a larger context. Molly, Mimi, John, Bryan and I have some more conference-like things to hammer out in the future. Stay tuned.

Image Source: Mr. Biscuit

(p.s. I'm the one in the grey sweater)