Network gamers are breeding. Slowly, tense laughter and twitchy nervous systems are spreading throughout our inner-cities. Perhaps you have already been claimed. How long since your last game of “Counter-Strike”? Did you notice ‘Velvet-Strike’ on the walls, ceiling or floor? Anne Marie from opensorcery.net is responsible for this joystick war on the war on terrorism. You are welcome to join her.

Why spray paint grafitti inside a computer game?
Using the built-in graffiti function that comes with all half-life mods was a good way to propogate our messages.

What sort of responses have u had from Counter-Strike gamers?
Some long involved responses from people who really thought about what we were doing. A number of creepy and sometimes hilarious hate mail: woman-haters, gay haters, military pro-american patriots, a couple right wing pro israeli american jews, and gamers angry we intruded on their normal game play environment. We seem to have pissed off the 14 year old CS game playing boys, judging by their spelling. Spammers keep bogging down our discussion forum and calling us gay faggots.

Have many people submitted their own “spray-paints” relating to this theme?
Presently there’s about 24 sprays by 9 different authors including some by Chris Burke, who made textures for the retail version of Counter-Strike. And at least one from Australia – by Rebecca Cannon from selectparks.net.

What other game modifications have inspired you?
Joan Leandre’s flight sim mod that he’d put aside due to sep-11 shock. That piece was recently finished and shown at the Moscow art software show “read-me” (He has a beautiful approach to modifying games while reusing original movement algorithms.) http://www.retroyou.org/retroyougnosltalg/g-nostalg.htm Brody Condon was the major inspiration for the “intervention recipes”. He had done interventions inside Tribes2 and recorded them on video.

And disturbing game-mods?
Brody’s work also disturbs me in a nice way. Pretty virtual blood and gore. It can make you nauseous. Adam Killer is classic. http://www.tmpspace.com/

Why do you think military network games are so popular?
1) The gameplay in Counter-Strike is engaging and complex and exciting, regardless of whether the theme is militaristic or not.
2) Military fetishism is on the rise. The culture of gamers who play counter-strike is increasingly misogynist, homophobic and intolerant. A boys training ground. The intense reaction to our project seems to confirm this ( I thought most people would take Velvet-Strike as a little joke).

What sort of games do you think might succeed them?
I’m not against in-game violence (i often enjoy it). I’m concerned with what game violence is coupled with: militaristic, heterosexist boys clubs in the real life, outside the game, war time environment of the “war on terrorism.” We are also opposed to military fantasy masquerading as “realism”.

Anime Noir in a nutshell?
AN is an erotic role playing game I co-designed with Melinda Klayman, inspired by Japanese Anime. AN emphasises social interaction and flirtation with other players. Advancement occurs through seduction. Players navigate the city through a 3-D map and use an action palette of erotic actions on each others’ little naked bodies. At some point we hope to add further levels of increasing complexity. http://www.playskins.com

What attracts you to surreal Japanese erotica and computer generated characters?
The mutability of the characters, the transgression of boundaries. What’s disturbing and tragic in RL is delicious in fantasy life. Bodies morphing into sea creatures, animals genetically mutating into sentient sexy creatures, chemical spills that cause a whole city to mutate. We love our female scientist and cat girl characters. Computer generated and even non-realistic digital 3-D bodies, have a kind of doll-like fetish appeal. There’s also a fetish appeal to flat anime style drawn graphics, which appear in the intro story of Anime Noir.

Had any dreams influenced by the way you use software?
When I’m scripting or debugging code sometimes I have dreams where I spend all night debugging strange dream logic word problems. The words just float in space in front of the world. It’s a little boring and not as satisfying as actually writing script. Sometimes though I have a new solution to try in the morning.

Recently X-hibiting at Melbourne’s Game Trigger X-hibition of computer game inspired art, were the dynamic duo behind www.reconnoitre.net. Rather than spring naked out of a soy cream cake with chicken masks on, Tom Corby & Gavin Bailly chose instead to present one of their popular Uk creations: GameboyultraFuk.

Can u describe GameboyultraFuk?
The project is a renderer of the type you can download to play old arcade games like asteroids. What we’ve done is re-write or modify an open-source gameboy emulator. The changes in the code mean that the rendering of the games is unpredictable.

How’d u mangle the gameboy (emulator)?
Game entities mutate into background and interface elements, or appear as fragments of the games binary code. Memory is blitted into sections of the screen, as the inside of the game seeps to the outside. Variations in the rendering behaviour are triggered by user game play and manipulated by a Cellular Automata ‘metabolism’ giving rise to inter-related rendering symptoms. We call this “bit rot”.

What drives the desire for ‘digital dirt’ ?
To paraphrase filmmaker Robert Whitman “we just want to understand what we’re being threaded through.” We tend to work with and against conventions concerning interface, interactivity and productivity in order to highlight, how software/code hugely affects the way we access and exchange information and thus perceive a highly mediated world. Software code isn’t neutral, it’s socially formed, it’s production is a ripe area for artists to colonise.

What is GameboyultraFuk like to play with?
Obviously it problematises the playing of the game as it deconstructs the interface, foregrounding the fact that the games are ultimately made up of code and that the interface is a site of language. In this sense it’s fundamentally anti-immersive, as it denies the transparency of the interface (the supposed goal of “good” interface design).

U.V made your own browser too. Why?
Reconnoitre (1998) is a 3D browser that performs a kind of “cut-up” technique to the web pages loaded into it. It explores alternative metaphors for describing/ navigating the net. Rather than present the web as a homogenised, corporate and over designed “McWeb”, it re-purposes the information it finds to highlight the net’s hidden structure, it’s programming languages, links and other protocols… The web is an intricate ecology, a thing of beauty in it’s own right, we thought that should be celebrated.

What inspires u to play with code as an artist?
Understanding code and being able to use it, puts artists in a very powerful position. Being able to code means that you can work at a very deep level. This really opens-up the creative process and allows the generation of new artefacts/ideas/possibilities. You have much more control over what you’re making because you’re not reliant on other people…or programs for that matter. By code, we don’t mean shockwave or flash. Pre-packaged authoring packages like these, can lead to pre-canned work. Flash/shockwave forces you to work within a narrow band of possibilities, i.e. those allowed by the designers of the program.

What attracts you to open source software?
Old fashioned virtues of collaboration and participation as opposed to corporate obsessions with control and the implementation of closed proprietary systems (Flash/Shockwave). It’s highly political, it’s visionary and very exciting. Strictly speaking gameboyultraFuk is “Free Software” and falls under”copyleft”. Everyone has permission to run the program, or copy and, modify the code. They can distribute it in any manner they like but don’t have permission to add restrictions of their own. Everyone benefits, as the code is freely available in all its versions.

Information wants to be free, but artists, musicians and coders want to be fed. How do you see the next generation of creatives being fed?
For painters, film makers, musicians it’s getting tougher. Very few artists actually make a living from their work. The new generation of artists who code, are in a unique position, in that they have transferable and highly lucrative skills……you really shouldn’t have any trouble getting work to fund your practice. For everyone else I’m afraid it’s the same old story of struggle and fitting in studio time around (generally) badly paid jobs….I guess we’re lucky we can code.

Your advice for wannabe artist-coders?
Don’t disappear into the black hole of programming, read lots, go to exhibitions, take plenty of exercise and don’t forget to get out to see your mates!