Dozentin Ludology and Game-Art Conseptions, Hochschule für Gestaltung und kunst, Zürich
Mphil/ PhD Candidate, CAIIA(Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts)/ Planetary Collegium, Plymouth

http://www.ludic-society.net
http://www.ludic.priv.at

 Ludic Society:
Hybrid Jouissance in Game Fashion and RFID Implant-Performances 

Resumee: In urban plays people use to run through cities and to become a hybrid entity, combined of technologies, electronic traces, wave systems and requests of public surveillance and order. In contemporary everyday life some of these „runners“ become „Nymphae“ (an erotic figure, introduced in art history as f.ex. the Venus by Boticelli, Warburg, 1929). Such a Nymphae wears Quick-Read code Patterns, and subcutaneous Radio Frequency Bijoux (RFID-implants), to be activated by electromagnetic waves. She seduces, as hybrid entity and is herself seduced by the portable prison of the futile gadgets, toy objects of desire. Certain obsessions are induced. Evidence: 1st Life Game Figures, Uk 2007: First Life game figures appear on the street, equipped with symbolic toy objects, WIFI scanning Nintendo DS. Rules of the games played in public life are transformed by the circumstances of the electromagnetic topography of the city! Constant sniffs of WIFI clouds access the parallel universes of public and non public communication systems. The Metaverse quits Second Life, is shape shifted by a GAME FASHION apparatus.

The Ludic Society constitutes as affiliation, a social game system to develop a new discipline on play and cultures. Its emphasis lies on Futility as resistance by the investigation of actual philosophical toys as objects of desire. The association is active since 2006, it actually gathers together over 50 socialites.

The LS constitutes as international association to provoke Ludics as emerging investigation discipline, which ironically follows inverse trajectories of toy and mobile technologies culture to cause an effect of awareness in the critical constitution of a society, in which the shifting increase on games and gadgets, smart objects, technical objectiveness of the subjects (RFID implants, blobjects, „blog-jects“ etc.) can be indicated as phenomenon of a crisis of reality constitution abilities of the individual in the society in general. Real Play is investigated as phenomenon, which transfers the rules of play into real life, as statement and as reaction to indicate western societies as game systems of power.

“(Ludics) tantalisingly offers a new approach to under-standing play through the process of play itself. Here we find play used as a conceptual catalyst for theoretical thought. In drawing on the ‘pataphysical, it presents a parody of scientific and philosophical conceptions, or a science of emerging solutions, that functions as playfulness itself.” (Westecott/ Jahn-Sudmann 2007)

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READY PLAYED?

The little black dress as erotic real playground for pong? when marguerite charmante wears her new neck top and offers the game controllers, attached at her lap height. we cannot resist being seduced to play! a charming seduction for playing, since it is possible to play the stylish plastic LED-grid, which covers chest and stomach area of the dress. from underneath the electric circuit tracks shine through. they are bundled on the side of the heart. pong is the name of the game: hit the dot back and forth with two sticks - this time all new on a 3D playing field, that is moving, chatting and laughing. we hit the dot with some spin from the height of the belly button and aim at the left nipple.

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Margarete Jahrmann (A/CH) is an artist whose artistic work and research focus are codes, games, modification scenes and subcultures.

Her modding work was nominated for the Software Arts Award at the Transmediale 04 in Berlin and received at Prix Ars Electronica 03 the award of distinction. In 1996 she co-founded the art server www.konsum.net, focusing on network processes as arts material.

She is lecturing and publishing internationally, as in 2005 in Kunstforum International on games and arts and in the data browser issue Economising Culture, Autonomedia. In 2003 she co-published the Nybble-Engine magazine and DVD, in 2000 the book Intertwinedness, Reflecting the Culture of the net. 2001 she edited the book Artserver—Stargate to Netculture. Since 2001 Jahrmann is professor for mediapoiesis and gamearts at New Media Department, University of Art and Design Zurich.

Her collaborative projects under the label climax.at are exemplified in international workshops as well as exhibitions, as 2003 the Dutch Electronic Arts Show Rotterdam, in 2004 as the show Games, Computerspiele von Künstlerinnen in Dortmund or at Game.Arts in Völklingen or at the Armory Center for the Arts in Los Angeles or in 2005 in the MAF Bankog Media Arts Festival.