Eddo Stern Lecture

Eddo Stern

I enjoyed Eddo Sterns view on the world of art and digital gaming. He was quite hard to follow as a lecturer and seemed timid about his work, but had an overall sense of art in the gaming world we do not see often. His view/perception of the gaming world and of art is not the way a normal human would envision gaming. He is outside the box and it seems like a step ahead of the rest of the gaming world. I was confused in the beginning where his mind was going in the world of art, but it became clear later. He has a different perspective of gaming technology and gaming art than most people. His use of computer mod’s, World of Warcraft art and technology in gaming is fantastic, but a little outside the box for most art connoisseurs.

The computer case mod’s intrigued me the least, I had never envisioned a computer gaming system or computer as art, or that the art of the computer mod could then correlate to the game it was running and then actually playing. It was no great AI experiment; simply code telling a computer how to act like a robot, but it was art and it did have a meaning. However, I simply did not like the majority of the programs being run. The dragons taking off of an aircraft carrier was cute, but had no depth to it. The sculpture was fantastic and creative, but the dragons taking off and flying around the screen was too much of a shock to really enjoy the piece. The best computer mod he did was his first one of the castle where his character in the game ran around gathering information and talking like a robot out in the real internet gaming world, that with a mod like the air craft carrier would have been phenomenal.

The WoW time in Mr. Stern’s life seemed to have a great effect on his life. The shadow art and two ton virtual tunnel that came out of his year and a half of WoW was interesting. The virtual tunnel is one of a kind. A collection of codes and programming put into one to be presented and view both in and outside a gallery space, breaches the formal art environment. It is a connection of how technology is art and how much progression has been made from the days of painting to photography to digital media to and artwork bigger than one man. It is the conceptualization of pulling in internet resources and years of gathering information, and long with actual sculpture art, to be put together and realized as art. He should see that as a revolution and advancement in his field.

Lastly, and probably his most impressive work is that of his video gaming work. To incorporate political activism, visual gaming, code writing, creation of audio and sensory feelers all into one game, is not only erratic, but simply crazy. He is making the game of the future. It is the WII, but a strategy game to be played by all people blind, deaf, and so much more. I do not see the art side of the project as much as the emotion and creativity he has for the game. I think he is light-years beyond actual gamming, but with the right graphics, a good price and changing of the mind frame of gamers everywhere, his sensory game could work, and could be the future, even if he doesn’t intend for it to be. From his lecture I learned that an individual, torn by passions for art and video gaming can come together to make some unique and very futuristic art projects that are obscure but fantastic.

Question: Out of the year and a half you spent playing WoW along with your art background, how well do gamers conceptualize and relish in more than the game, but the art that is in games? You have a funny view on putting politics and real world event into games, do you think games need that extra edge today to pull in the high educated and more able gamers of the future?