http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/eng/ E-journal on Art, Science and Technology UOC en-GB The texts published in this journal are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 2.5 licence. UOC UOC It is now over a year since the redesign of the Artnodes journal. Since then, we have worked hard to have it indexed in the international academic journal databases and directories which help the articles published reach a wider audience. We have continued to improve the quality of our publication, strengthening the review quality and the process as a whole, incorporating new members on to the editorial board, and increasing the functions of the editorial interns. Likewise, we have made the information area into a blog, which allows for flexible publishing of a wide range of information, opinion articles and reviews on events in art, science and technology around the world. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/eng/editorial.html Pau Alsina This issue is dedicated to exploring the relations between art, videogames and culture, focusing on the idea of gameplay as the common thread to the monograph. In the study of play as a cultural phenomenon, there are a number of important milestones, such as the book "Homo Ludens" written by Johan Huizinga in 1938 or "Man, Play and Games" written in 1958 by Roger Caillois, which established a clear link between play and culture, where games are not merely an element in culture but an element of culture. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/jugabilidad.html Pau Alsina The study of game aesthetics is a very recent practice, spanning less than two decades. Unlike game studies in mathematics or the social sciences, which are much older, games became subject to humanistic study only after computer and video games became popular. This lack of persistent interest might seem odd, but only if we see traditional games and computer games as intrinsically similar, which they are not. We might try to explain this lack by noting that games are usually seen as trivial and low-brow by the aesthetic and theoretical elites who cultivate the analysis of artistic media objects: literature, the visual arts, theatre, music, etc. But this does not explain the fact that aesthetic studies of games are now possible, and even, in some academic environments, encouraged and supported with grants. What happened to cause this change? http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/aarseth.html Espen Aarseth Ever get the feeling you are playing some vast and useless game to which you don't know the goal, and can't remember the rules? Ever get the fierce desire to quit, to resign, to forfeit, only to discover there's no umpire, no referee, no regulator, to whom to announce your capitulation? Ever get the vague dread that while you have no choice but to play the game, you can't win it, can't even know the score, or who keeps it? Ever suspect that you don't even know who your real opponent might be? Ever get mad over the obvious fact that the dice are loaded, the deck stacked, the table rigged, and the fix - in? Welcome to gamespace. You are a gamer whether you like it or not, now that we all live in this gamespace that is everywhere and nowhere. You can go anywhere you want in gamespace but never leave it. No wonder digital games are the emergent cultural form of the times. The times have themselves become just a series of less and less perfect games. A new historical persona stalks the earth. The gamer. And it is us, whether we like it or not. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/wark.html McKenzie Wark This essay proposes a new hermeneutic for understanding the formal qualities of video games given the action-based nature of the medium and the interplay between diegetic and nondiegetic space. The framework has four parts: (1) diegetic operator acts such as in-world movement and expression, (2) nondiegetic operator acts such as the coded, pattern-based play that transpires in what I call spaces of configuration (e.g. display, set-up menus), (3) diegetic machine acts such as NPC behavior and immersive, ambient environments, and (4) nondiegetic machine acts like glitches and other technical artifacts. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/galloway.html Alex R. Galloway This article is a contribution to the cultural and historical mapping of electronic gaming. Its basic premise is at least seemingly simple: electronic games did not appear out of nowhere; they have a cultural background that needs to be excavated. The existing literature on the history of videogames has done little towards achieving this goal. In fact, the (hi)story is usually told in a remarkably uniform fashion, built around the same landmarks, breakthroughs and founding fathers (not a word about mothers!). In this article I will excavate some cultural and historical issues relevant for a critical assessment of the emergence of games as an interactive medium. The main emphasis will be the background of electronic games as a manifestation of the human-machine relationship. Although I am fully aware of the complexity of electronic games as a cultural hybrid, I have chosen not to deal with certain of their historical "ingredients", like motives from earlier forms of gaming and play and the oral and literary traditions of storytelling. In the final section I will reflect on the significance of these "media archaeological" findings for contemporary media culture and electronic gaming in particular, pointing out connecting links across the fabric of the 20th century culture. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/huhtamo.html Erkki Huhtamo This article describes various works of digital art which use pain as a form of interaction in the context of a two-player game, specifically PainStation (2001-2003) and LegShocker (2002), by Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe; Tekken Torture (2001), by C-Level; and Taser Tag (2005), by Randy Sarafan. On the basis of a presentation of the works in question and an analysis of the nature of games and pain, the article aims to offer an introduction to the implications of the incorporation of an extreme physical stimulus into a game-based context, as well as to indicate what leads players to perceive a painful experience as something entertaining and even addictive. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/waelder.html Pau Waelder This article examines how graffiti converges with the information society cultural practices. The unreadable, complex, designed typographies known to graffiti writers as tags are global visual codes. Graffiti artists are incorporating modes of production, and performing operations, distinctive to Internet's imaginary. They are creating cultural objects convergent with Lev Manovich's new media objects principles. Using the notions of the agonic and of digitalia, the essay analyses how this movement between online and offline practices is enacted. Through graffiti, information is aestheticized. Stencils, murals, and most of today's graffiti art forms can be seen as portraying the information culture aesthetics meticulously developed by Manovich. Graffiti inhabits digital media in an unconscious and agonic manner. In turn, it organizes space and turns street wall data and structure into a flâneur-user experience. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/7/dt/eng/quintero.html Noelia Quintero We are now beginning a new stage in the Artnodes academic journal, the Artnodes Journal, with a new format, new design, new features that allow considerable improvements to be made to the journal and advance its contribution to the study of digital art and the other intersections between art, science and technology. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/eng/editorial.html Pau Alsina "Organicities" refers to the role of the organic, of live organisms, in the context of artistic practices that, through the dispossession of the pragmatic function of the life sciences and their recontextualisation in their aesthetic form, tread the border between nature and art. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/organicidades.html Pau Alsina The biomass of disassociated living cells and tissues is in the thousands of tons. These fragments do not fall under current biological or cultural classifications. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/catts_zurr.html Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr The body has irrupted into the field of social sciences: Anatomical knowledge can be constructed beyond the biomedical viewpoint. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/planella.html Jordi Planella This essay explores the relation between animality and biotechnology, focusing both on contemporary issues, such as "biodefence", as well as historical issues, such as the Mediaeval bestiary. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/thacker.html Eugene Thacker The article proposes a revision of biopolitical paradigms and seeks to redefine the relations between implicit power, communication technologies and the non-verbal aspects of communication. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/val.html Jaime del Val A paradigmatic and perspective overturning characterizes our horizon. Before a body that extends day by day in space and via the radius of action of its sensors and remote-controls, architecture is experimenting a change into a real, sensitive, reactive and interconnected body. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/palumbo.html Maria Luisa Palumbo This article analyses the work of a number of digital artists who use the resources of the digital medium as the central message. http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/6/dt/eng/puig.html Eloi Puig