Artist: Andy Deck
Visit: http://www.artcontext.net

Andy Deck is an American media artist specializing in Internet art.
His work addresses the politics and aesthetics of collaboration, interactivity, software, and independent media. Deck started making what he has called "public art for the Internet" in 1994. Since then he has been at the forefront of aesthetic research into the creative possibilities of the Internet as a medium. In addition to being an image producer, he now acts as a collaborator, cyberspace architect, and programmer. Using the site ARTCONTEXT.NET, he combines code, text, and image, demonstrating new patterns of participation and control that distinguish online presence and representation from previous artistic practices. Deck collaborates with the Athens-based arts collective, Personal Cinema, and with the environmentalist arts organization Transnational Temps.
In addition to numerous online exhibitions, his work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Barcelona), PS1-MoMA (NYC), Net_Condition (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany), and the Moving Image Gallery (NYC). Further recognition and awards include Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), a Webby Award nomination, Art Futura (Spain), and VIDA LIFE 4.0 (Spain). Deck studied for a Post-diplome, at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; and received his MFA in Computer Art at School of Visual Arts, NYC. He has taught at the Universidad Internacional Menendez Pelayo, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University. Currently, he teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.


Game: Space Invaders Act 1732
Development Date: 1997
Tips: Shoot at American corporate logos with words from a legislation Act
Play: http://artcontext.com/act/97/space/

Space Invaders Act 1732 is a recreation of the popular arcade game, Space Invaders. Players take the role of the US Congress, and shoot at corporate logos. Instead of being armed with bullets, they are armed with lines of text from a piece of legislation passed in the US Congress, designed to limit corporations' ability to advertise their products in public space. The game uses the familiar format of 'alien invasion' computer games, but instead posits the corporations as the 'invaders' and the legal system as defenders.

In 1993 the Space Advertising Prohibition Act sought to prevent the launching of billboards made of square mile-size mylar into low Earth orbit. This legislation holds the phenomenon at bay for the present, but U.S. law could be eluded by launching from other countries. This issue calls into question the ability of national governments to regulate international businesses. For years the media has represented invasions of the Earth by space aliens. But we may have more to fear from our own invasive practices.
Andy Deck comments: "What I set out to do was not simply to "challenge" corporate power, I wanted to make something that could fit into the game niche, that poses questions about the symbols and narratives of other games. The "missiles" are in fact the words from the House legislation Act 1732 prohibiting space advertising, so people who play the "game" are armed with legal rhetoric. Video games are a tremendously important influence on minds, particularly those of young people. And yet there are very few serious critiques of their content. That's changing".

Artist: Mongrel
Visit: http://www.mongrelx.org

Mongrel is a mixed bunch of people, machines and intelligences working to celebrate the methods of London street culture. The core members are Matsuko Yokokoji, Mervin Jarman, Richard Pierre-Davis and Harwood. Mongrel grew out of a series of powerful cultural and political exchanges at Artec in London 1995. During this time it became apparent that there was little critical attitude to the exclusive nature of emerging digital technologies. To address this, Mongrel was formed and began to make socially engaged culture. This sometimes means making art, sometimes software. Mongrel also run workshops and help other mongrels to set projects up. Mongrel's work Natural Selection (including Heritage Gold and Blacklash) has been exhibited extensively all over the world.

Game: Blacklash
Development Date: 1998
Tips: Shoot the racist cops, the Nazi symbols and the Ku Klux Klan
Play: Download the game (Mac only)


Blacklash is a game based on popular arcade 'shoot-em-up' game, Backlash. Each player has to choose a deliberately stereotyped black character, and then proceed to battle the forces of evil that plot to convict or eliminate the player from the streets. The premise of Blacklash is that the authorities are in command of society and the streets. They have unleashed their law enforcers ­ racist police officers, Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan - to crack down on the undesirables and maintain control of the streets. Players have to annihilate the powers-that-be to win back their freedom, and the game.

Blacklash is based on a combination of stereotypical half-truths and hardcore reality coming from the point of view of a young black male trying to survive inner city life in London the 1990s. Blacklash aims to encourage the black community through game culture.

Artist: Josh On/Futurefarmers
Visit: http://www.futurefarmers.com

Josh On is one of New Zealand's most acclaimed artists and designers working with new media. He was born in 1972 in Christchurch He studied at the Royal College of Art in London.
Josh On joined the acclaimed San Francisco art and design studio, Futurefarmers in 1998. Futurefarmers are well known as innovators within the new media art and design contexts. They have exhibited internationally at numerous galleries and museums, including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the ZKM in Germany and at America's most prestigious art exhibition, The Whitney Biennale. They have received numerous awards including the Webby Award and the Transmediale award among others.
In 2001 Josh On completed They Rule, an online artistic project which aims to make some of the relationships of the elite of the US ruling class visible. They Rule has been exhibited widely since 2001, and in 2002 received electronic art's most coveted award, the Prix Ars Electronica.

Game: Antiwargame
Development Date: 2001
Tips: become the US president, secure offshore oil-wells, maintain popularity
Play: http://www.antiwargame.org/

Antiwargame lets a player act as the US President and lead the USA into a war against terrorism. It won't be easy though. In real life soldiers often desert (over half a million during the Vietnam War), people at home protest, and the President's popularity sinks. In Antiwargame it is the Presidentšs challenge to keep up presidential popularity while pursuing whatever strategy might appeal to the player's sense of gameplay or political outlook.

Antiwargame illustrates ways in which the US has responded to terrorist attacks within its borders. It is Josh Onšs attempt to create a political cartoon through a war-game. It shows how war-games are used to legitimate killing, and makes political observations about US foreign policy. After the tragedy of September 11, the US government launched an attack on Afghanistan, clamped down on security in the United States, and finally prosecuted a bloody and messy war against Iraq. Josh On believes that:
"the war in Afghanistan and the war to effect regime change in Iraq, have little to do with battling terror and everything to do with securing the interests of the US ruling class in the world. This includes controlling the world's oil resources (the planned pipeline across Afghanistan, the abundant high quality oil in Iraq)".

Artist: Natalie Bookchin
Visit: http://www.metapet.net

Natalie Bookchin is an artist whose work focuses on the intersection of art, politics and the Internet. She has spent the last two years developing a free on-line computer game, Metapet, which will be launched on May 1 2003. In 1999-2000 Bookchin organized <net.net.net>; an eight month series of lectures and workshops on art, activism and the Internet at CalArts, MOCA in LA, and Laboratorio Cinematek in Tijuana. From 1998 to 2000 she was a member of the collective ®TMark. She is based in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.


Game: The Intruder
Development Date: 1999
Tips: Shoot, score, catch, hit a ball or kill an alien!
Play: http://www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder/

The Intruder is an Internet based art project that uses a series of ten arcade-like game interfaces to tell a short love story by Jorge Luis Borges. In combining these familiar scenarios with Borges' short and brutal tale of a tragic love triangle, The Intruder seeks to makes the metaphors in these interfaces - shooting, wounding, surveying (a woman's body) - grossly apparent.

Players move forward through a linear narrative only by shooting, fighting, catching, or colliding. Instead of winning a point, a player is rewarded with a piece of the narrative, told in a voice-over. Playing transforms readers into participants, who are placed inside of the story, and must master the games, for which they are rewarded an unfolding narrative. Throughout The Intruder, players' subject positions shift, and they must play on different and opposing sides in the same story, sometimes assuming the position of the male character, sometimes controlling the female character.

In some games, player must lose or receive a penalty in order to continue moving forward through the Borges tale. The story is told in 10 game scenarios that together present a loose parallel narrative of a history of computer games. The Intruder begins with a reconstructed version of one of the earliest computer games, Pong, and ends with a war game, that, like its real-life screen-based counterpart, serves to simultaneously reinforce and abstract violence- in this instance, the story's violent end.

The Intruder draws attention to the inherent violence within early computer games, and enables players to reflect on the absence of meaning within most games.

Artist: the escapefromwoomera collective
Visit: http://www.escapefromwoomera.org/

the escapefromwoomera collective is group od diverse people based in Australia, which focuses on exploring artistic applications for computer gaming technologies.

One of the key members of selectparks is noted artist, writer, composer and games developer Julian Oliver. Oliver has presented his work internationally at locations such as Tate Modern (Britain's national museum of modern art), the Interactive Institute in Sweden and many electronic art festivals and games conferences. Oliver has recently completed a tour of Europe, the USA and Japan performing with a custom-built 3D game, which he uses as a musical compositional tool.


Game: Escape from Woomera
Development Date: 2003
Tips: Read the website, watch the video, wait for the game
Play: http://www.escapefromwoomera.org/

Escape from Woomera is an online first person, 3D adventure game, being developed by an Australian collective of games developers, artists and activists. The game invites players to assume the character of a modern day refugee, and attempt to escape from a well-known detention centre in Australia.

Picture a modern-day Alcatraz in the middle of the sweltering Australian desert, surrounded by double steel fences and razor wire. This is Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing centre. Woomera was one of Australiašs many detention centres, which imprison refugees who have fled their countries to claim asylum in Australia, in accordance with the UN convention on refugees. Hundreds of people, including children, languish inside these detention centres while the state processes their claims for asylum. Many are imprisoned by the Australian state for several years. In the Œgreatš tradition of concentration camps, the Australian state replaces refugeešs names with numbers. Refugees routinely suffer physical and psychological abuse at the hands of prison guard contractors.
The Australian government wants the public to see refugees as "queue-jumpers" and "illegals". Escape from Woomera instead portrays refugees as victims and heroes, who have escaped life-threatening situations in their home countries, and now must attempt to keep their spirits unbroken against the "slow death" of years behind razor-wire, and the cynical and racist bureaucratic manoeuvres of a state that sees anyone of middle eastern origin as a potential terrorist.

The game is still in development, and will be launched late in 2003. <re:Play> presents the Escape from Woomera website, and a video simulating the gameplay.

Artist: Max Barry
Visit: http://www.maxbarry.com + http://www.nationstates.com

Max Barry is a writer. He was born on March 18, 1973 and lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of the acclaimed novels, Syrup and Jennifer Government. As a former employee of Hewlett Packard and a teacher of marketing, Barry is aware of the dynamics of corporations and marketing, and his writings often address the rapid corporatisation of society. His second book, Jennifer Government, published in 2002, is a satire of the a not too distant future where American capitalism has taken over the world. Government is privatised, the Police are for hire, the NRA is publicly traded, people take their employer's name as their last name, and the true war is between the loyalty programs. Barry developed the game, NationStates based on this book. It is a nation simulation game, where players create their own country, fashioned after their own political ideals. Barry is presently working on his third novel.


Game: NationStates
Development Date: 2002
Tips: Create your own country and run it!
Play: http://www.nationstates.net/

NationStates is an online simulation game. Players create their own country on the internet, fashioned after their own political ideals. Players can either care for the people in their nation-state, or deliberately oppress them. Players need to constantly monitor their state's economic and cultural health. It enables players to experience governance and consider different methods of control.

NationStates is a based on the novel Jennifer Government by Max Barry. In the novel, the world is run by giant American corporations, taxes are illegal, employees take the last names of the companies they work for, the police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms, and the U.S. government can only investigate crimes if they can bill a citizen directly. In short, it is a free market paradise, and a plausible model for the way that nation-states may be run in the future. The NationStates game inviters players to model different realities for governance. It was conceptualised and designed by Max Barry. Geoff Wong from Zikzak developed the software architecture.