On 5 April 2006 ↑Erik Ralston has released a piece of amazing MP2-machinima: ↑“Shadowrun: One Night” [21:41min | .gvi | 199MB]. For an interesting discussion and more background information refer to the according thread at 3DR: ↑[MP2 Machinima] Shadowrun: One Night Released! Again the influence of cyberpunk upon gamemodding clearly has manifested itself.
On Saturday I had Spaghetti al Tonno for a late dinner. Within ten minutes after having finished the plate the ache started. Don’t ask me about the night, as my intestines were well messed up. The whole Sunday I spent lying around, living on a diet consisting of rusk and quite healthy tea. Then in the evening, in the wake of a series of accidental coincidences, I learned of a movie-project, which seemed to perfectly match the state of my inner system.
There is a cyberpunk-movie in the making, or planned, or whatever, here in Munich. Low-budget, B-picture, independent—I don’t know. As I understand the matter, the project is undertaken by people out of the late ↑Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s vicinity. The project is called “Red Woman” or “The Kiss of ‘Red Woman'”. There is a whole array of interconnected websites online—which could well belong to an Alternate Reality Game (ARG)—giving “information” on the movie [what I found, in alphabetical order: ↑carlaegerer.com, ↑evillady.de, ↑knowhowsusi.de, ↑mujerroja.com, ↑redwoman.de, ↑redwoman.org/, ↑starboese.de, and ↑umbertomaster.com]. In fact the websites themselves and the whole link-structure are quite messy, horrible webdesign, mixture of English, German, and Spanish, plus .mp3s and real media downloads, the latter using an obscure codec I’ve yet to fathom. But the mess is the message, I guess. Here is what I think I was able to deduce:
The story takes place in the city of Munich, a neon-cluttered Munich of the year 2013. An omnipotent media-corporation called “Media Pax” is in control of society and feeds the public’s needs via omnipresent videoscreens. The essential format broadcasted is a cruel ↑Running-Man or ↑Rollerball-type show. The show’s star is Red Woman, a female half-android [that’s a cyborg, ain’t it?], another time called a replicant. The “chipproto-star” [↑Tally ↑Isham anyone?] Red Woman does no more oblige to the game and breaks away from the show’s set. She teams up with KnowHowSusi, hard core bad girl, former freelance journalist working for New Media, now leading a double life as respectable clerk at the European Patent Office, and head of the hacker-group rebel media—the pocket of resistance against Media Pax. “Smart chip-girlz are on their getaway from industrial-strength sticky boyz—and sticky media images.” Susi teaches Red Woman how to activate her “rebel module” [maybe some uber-cool cyberbionic implant?], and Media Pax sends the killer Umberto Master after her. During the course of the girls’ getaway through the city they kidnap some executives from Media Pax, and with the help of the “street wise” they produce their own show which is broadcastedon the videoscreens by means of the hackercraft.
That’s just wonderful: The BBC wanted to interview IT journalist ↑Guy Kewney live on air for BBC News 24. When the scheduled interview was close, a producer went to the reception of Television Centre and called out: “Guy Kewney!” One man raised his hands and was immediately deported to the studio where “BBC consumer affairs correspondent” Karen Bowerman started to interview him on the verdict in the legal battle between the Beatles’ Apple Corps and Apple Computer. The man was a cab driver who had waited for his fare at the reception, and maybe raised his hand because he wanted to transport Guy Kewney in his taxi. When Ms Bowerman addressed him as an IT expert and founder of newswireless.net, the man briefly showed astonishment, but then immediately took up the role and answered the questions. In my opinion he just tried to be a good sport and didn’t want to see Ms Bowerman’s live interview smashed to smithereens. Read the ↑whole story at Daily Mail—there’s a clip of the interview [.wmv | 3.0MB], too.
via entry at william gibson
↑2R has returned from China and among other things brought along beautiful photographies of which he has put a ↑first set online. Partly noir, partly cyberpunk, partly both, all China. Lots of neon, menacing nighttime indoors and outdoors architecture, artefacts’ details, living urban night without people … go and see yourself.
↑2R has returned from China and among other things brought along beautiful photographies of which he has put a ↑first set online. Partly noir, partly cyberpunk, partly both, all China. Lots of neon, menacing nighttime indoors and outdoors architecture, artefacts’ details, living urban night without people … go and see yourself.
Actually I won’t talk—I already did so on 02 May 2006, high noon, right on Munich’s Marienplatz. Our students invited me to do so, thank you for the faith in me. But allow me to start at the beginning of the whole story.
There are some ‘structural problems’ at German universities. This problems hit all disciplines, but disciplines like sociocultural anthropology in particular. The core problems are too less money and, even more important, way too less academic personnel, plus this problems’ secondary symptoms. At ↑my institute there currently are only four professors and two rough equivalents to assistant professors. Just ten years ago there still were six professors and five of the assistant equivalents. But bureaucracy ate away our former splendour and doesn’t show signs of stopping. According to the official plan in two years only three professors and one of the assistant equivalents will be left. And those four poor bastards—I am among them, as I am the ‘last equivalent’—will have to deal with about 1200 students. I guess there’s no need for describing what that means.
Now you ask how the hell were you little posse able to deal with this amount of students? How did you find time for research and publications, didn’t teaching and grading papers eat you up? How was it possible to guarantee quality in teaching, as it’s obvious that seminars with 100+ people attending do not make sense didactically? Well, there is an institution at German universities which made sense in its original form and concept, but since then has mutated into something obscene, the so called Lehrbeauftragte [roughly: someone assigned to teach]. The original idea behind the concept Lehrbeauftragte was to invite people with worthwhile expertise to teach a seminar at the university, in order to enrich the curriculum. Those people normally had some other job, worked in the business world, at another university or research facility, or lived on research grants, and so on. It never was intended to regularly enlist those guests-for-one-term into the ranks of university personnel, and oftentimes there was no need to fully pay them. To be invited to teach at e.g. my university was an honour for them, they could put it into their CV, it was good for networking, and the universitiy’s teaching was upgraded by high-class input from outside. Some kind of academic reciprocity. In consequence only a symbolical amount of money was paid to them by the university.
Since those times the situation has changed dramatically. First of all the employment opportunities—both the temporary and tenure ones—at the universities got less and less. That means more and more of the next generation of professional academics depend on other jobs for a living or on research grants. But research grants became less and less, too. Both in amount and number. Even the lucky uns who got a grant have to additionally work in day- or nighttime jobs. Mind: I am speaking of qualified postDocs here. Quite a deal of them indeed cope with that situation, work their asses off, and even progress with their research. Hardboiled guys’n’gals. But in order to be accepted within academia you need institutional backup, and to get a regular job at a university later on you need teaching experience to shine up within your CV. But there are virtually no postDoc employment opportunities left at the universities. What to do?
Enter the degenerated version of the concept of the Lehrbeauftragte. So you try to get invited for one of those teaching appointments. And we, that is the permanent staff of my institute, are glad to invite those people, as they not only enlarge our curriculum, but deliver input directly out of current anthropological research. They get our institutional backup, teaching experience for their CV, and the honour—we get priceless academic input. Reciprocity? No more. “Priceless” is the correct word, because the situation has dramatically changed, but the symbolical amount of money still is the same.
Currently one Lehrbeauftragter at our institute gets 250,- Euros for one seminar. We can’t pay more, as the university doesn’t give us more. Not per hour, not per week, not per month … for the whole term, for the whole package! The current term encompasses 14 weeks. That means 14 times 90mins of teaching. Plus designing the course beforehand, plus helping out and giving advice to the students outside of the weekly 90mins, plus grading the papers. Around here a course paper usually consists of 15 to 20 pages of text. Now imagine yourself teaching a course attended by 50 to 100 students. Quite frankly—although that may sound quite preposterous—I wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning if someone offered me mere honour + 250,- Euros for the above described package of work. But our Lehrbeauftragte, having an academic career in mind, do it. Mind again: We are talking about postDocs belabouring hot research topics. Driven by the necessities of institutional backing, teaching experience, and, definitely not to neglect, by idealism, they do it. They were willing to play it the hard way. But “No mas”, as Roberto Duran said to Sugar Ray Leonard.
During the last year the Lehrbeauftragte went all the official ways through the university’s structure to make the obscene situation known and to improve it. We helped them as far as we could. No success. Now they unamimously decided to not teach this term. This term’s ↑list of courses, complete with abstracts, is online—every course which is not held [scroll down to mid-page] I marked with WIRD BESTREIKT [on strike, doesn’t take place]. All in all 20 courses ceased to exist. Especially mind the four language courses in Bahasa Indonesia and Kiswahili.
Of course this hits the students firstplace. But our magnificent and engaged studentship perfectly understands the situation and immediately showed their solidarity with the Lehrbeauftragte. Especially because there is more on the horizon which will hit the students directly: Tuition fees are re-introduced at German universities. At our place here they think about 500,- Euros per term. With no grant-system whatsoever in existence. 500,- Euros for what? For studying at an institute where three professors plus the last of the Mohicans teach 1200 students? For courses attended by 100 students? For a library which has to cancel subscriptions to academic journals every term due to lower and lower budget?
In spite of bowing down to perfect irrationality our students shifted gears. At their blog ↑protest.twoday.net you can follow their every step and discuss it, read every letter they write, including those of the Lehrbeauftragte, read about every action they plan and undertake, and discuss it or help.
One of their steps was organizing a rally at Munich’s central place, the Marienplatz, on 02 May 2006. They invited me to deliver the first speech and to try to explain to the public what anthropology is, and why it is relevant. Meanwhile they have put ↑all speeches online as .mp3s. My contribution “wtf is sociocultural anthropology?” [17:14min | .mp3 | 15.8MB | in German] is there, too [top of the list]. Especially the contributions by student-speakers are very worthwhile to listen to. After my speech ↑Magnus Treiber told me that I could have been a great catholic priest … now that I have listened to my own speech I perfectly understand what he meant. Hell, it’s my voice—not my character shining through.
That Hollywood listens is not really essential, but the public should listen, as we are talking about the public’s university.
↑Anthronaut delightedly used that old vernacular in telling me that he nearly shat his pants when he read ↵when hell is full for the first time. That was exactly the anticipated effect, my intention as author. ↑KerLeone was delighted by the story as well and even ↑linked to it from his weblog—an honest thanks for that, it’s an honour to get a link from such a widely read blog like ↑mosaikum. But KerLeone’s blog-entry on my story is kind of a spoiler—at least within the German-speaking world. “Kind” of a spoiler because it doesn’t reveal information from within the story, but information from beyond the story, which I told him face-to-face. KerLeone wrote: “Zephyrin’s encounter with a drunkard …”
The empirical truth—in this context: roughly what you would have observed if you had been present and an eye-witness—is that, when I stepped back and said aloud “Fuck me sideways” (in fact a German equivalent), the man finally woke up. He indeed was stone-drunk, couldn’t tell me who he was, but had a vague idea of where he lived. And he knew that he had to take the last tram. The latter arrived just in time and I placed him inside. The tramdriver had to take care of him, as he can not leave people sitting inside the car when he drives it back to the depot. So, that was my way out.
All right, it was a living drunkard and not a dead corpse I encountered. But that is not the point. The point is my internal state of mind in the very moment when the man slowly slid to the side, apparently lifeless, and during the moments right after that. Deep down inside me I suddenly felt the presence of death. Just as I had felt it before several times. I have seen dead people before, and I have seen people die before. Now I felt exactly the same. The presence of death. But death as something that can be present is an abstract idea, a concept, an imagination. What is irritating us is rather the absence of a human mind while the human body still is present.
This very irritation I wanted to mediate by my little story. To accomplish this task I decided to use a subterfuge which is close kin to Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov’s decisive criterium for fiction being fantastic literature, which he described in his “The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre” (↵1973 [1970]).
The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty … The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. (↵Todorov 1973 [1970]: 25)
The fantastic requires the fulfillment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the events described. Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader’s role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work—in the case of naive reading, the actual reader identifies himself with the character. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as “poetic” interpretations. (↵Todorov 1973 [1970]: 33)
Todorov’s literary theory is quite controversial—see e.g. ↵Stanislav Lem‘s take on it: “Todorov’s fantastic theory of literature” (↵1974)—but I embrace his core idea of the fantastic, leaving the reader uncertain if he read about something supernatural or not. In horror fiction it has been an established strategy already for a long time, to build up and perpetuate suspense by not telling what is knocking on the door. If it is never told, but we shit our pants nevertheless, then I guess the particular piece of horror fiction borders on Todorov’s definition of the fantastic. In his excellent “On Writing” Stephen King takes up the cudgels for telling what is knocking on the door, for opening the door and letting the uncanny pass the threshold. Mr. King’s body of work is ample proof for that strategy working as well—I especially admire vast parts of his short fiction … and of course his two non-fiction books “Danse Macabre” (↵1993 [1981]) and “On Writing”. But telling that I “only” had encountered a drunkard could not have done justice to my subjective perception of the situation.
My entry wasn’t meant as a piece of horror fiction or even the fantastic, I just wanted to uphold the uncertainty about wether I had found a dead man or not. Let the reader hang in limbo, I thought. Let particular information stay absent. Hopefully this will evoke irritation. And hopefully this irritation comes close to my irritation when I felt the presence of death, the absence of a human mind.
My colleague ↑Birgit Bräuchler, author of ↵Cyberidentities at War, courteously invited me to send in a proposal for a workshop called ↑Understanding media practices, which she will organize together with John Postill at the ↑9th EASA Biennial Conference which will take place from September 18th through September 21st 2006 in Bristol, UK. As the deadline is tomorrow, I today got the seats of my pants dirty and went to the writing desk. In case of the EASA rejecting my proposal, feel free to contact me and to talk me into my writing the paper for your conference or publication ;-) Here is what I submitted:
The online nomads of cyberia
by Alexander Knorr
Abstract
Max Weber may well have been the first to state that everything social already starts with the interaction of at least two human individuals. If the density of interaction and communication between the members of a definable group exceeds critical mass, social structure and even culture begin to shine up. And anthropology again has found a field of inquiry. For the better part of the discipline’s history the scrutinized groups could be identified topographically, and it was tacitly assumed that the essential interaction between their members was of a direct face-to-face nature. This gradually changed with the advent of transnational communities, research on diasporas, and multisited ethnography. A dramatic change occurred with the unleashing of mediating technologies, hitting the streets almost globally in an accelerating pace. In particular services based on the Internet-infrastructure gave rise to a new phenomenon of interest: online communities.
The majority of communities and groups traditionally belaboured by sociocultural anthropology are located within the outside world usually described as physical space, and their members are higly accustomed to the qualities and modes of interaction therein possible, as well as with the aspects and possibilities of their habitat. This again seems to be a tacit prerequisite for anthropologists and their kin for trying to apply established concepts and methods. Because a plethora of inevitable prerequistes are simply not given when dealing with online communities, a lot of transposition work becomes necessary.
To begin with, the spaces of interaction and ‘the habitat’ of an online group are constituted by mediating technologies: computers, software, the Internet, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) at large. At first glance this media seem to be restrictive, seem to rob manifoldness from human communication and interaction. On the other hand some authors claim that online media capture within their domain the whole diversity of cultural practices and expressions. Both is true and false at the same time. In terms of diversity of cultural expressions and richness of social interactions it is the most promising if an online group does not consist of more or less passive technology-consumers, subdued to and depending on what possibilites they are offered by those who are creating the technologies, but of individuals who are not only highly accustomed to computer mediated communication (CMC) and ICTs, but deal with them virtuously and creatively.
This is the case when the members’ shared core interest, around which the community condensates, lies well within the broader field of the mediating technologies enabling the community’s existence. Their expertise allows the members not only to utilize the available channels of interaction in an optimal way, but to mutually complement the advantages and drawbacks of different services, and to actively construct, shape, and change their online-habitat independently from and unrestricted by the range of commercially offered CMC-products and -services.
This paper is empirically based upon fieldwork which started in early 2002 and is still going on, particularly in the shape of thick participation within a transnational technoludic online community of practice. Said community formed itself around the shared interest in, and practice of modifying commercial computergame software. The degree of modification reaches from gameplay-tweaks to so-called total conversions. The latter constitute entirely new games; the original game is not recognizable anymore, as it just provides the game-engine, the most basic technological core of the new game. Especially the creation of total conversions is a complex task requiring diverse skills, resources and lots of working hours, utterly impossible to be handled by one individual alone. Cooperation, and in its wake community building is inevitable. The necessary online infrastructure is created and maintained by the community itself. Astoundingly enough the loss of parts, even of seemingly vital ones, of this infrastructure does not effect or endanger the community’s perpetuation and reproduction.
Nevertheless there is a longing for reliability and stability of certain community spaces, which usually is furnished by corporate power, parts of the responsible corporations themselves being at least affiliated members of the community itself. This makes computergames appear to be co-creative media, its surrounding practices and notions participatory culture, and gamemodding itself post-industrial unwaged labour. But the nexus between corporations and online community is far from being exclusively fuelled by a craving for mutual benefit. In fact a kind of symbiosis or even fusion between industry and fanhood has taken place, supported by shared cultural values and concepts, manifesting itself in cultural and social practices, and no more describable within the confines of the dichotomy industry versus consumers.
The single individuals are online for long spans of time on a daily basis and during that time are in contact with the other group-members via multiple channels. Because of intense and sustained cooperation, sometimes sailing close to the wind and beyond, and the thereof resulting mutual trust between the members of the group, plus the casual and effortless usage and management of the aforementioned multitude of channels, the threshold of exchanging all kind of information is very low within the community. Besides information concerning the core-interest, a plethora of off-topic issues, seemingly meaningless talk, ‘gossip’, and deeply private issues are exchanged and discussed. ‘True’ social interaction becomes apparent. Even phenomena like social stratification of the group are reflected and discussed by the members themselves. In short, dynamic and quite complex sociocultural processes shine up.
The paper strives to communicate two points. Firstly the issue of the complementary utilization of a wealth of channels of interaction, both asynchronous, synchronous, and even parallel, sometimes dubbed multitasking. The essential questions within this argument are asking for the particular qualities of these channels as perceived by the practitioners, and for the latters’ management and use of them. Secondly the fact that the community’s terrain is not restricted to an infrastructure at a given time, and its social cohesion does not ultimately depend upon the maintenance and existence of particular loci of interaction. The community can only be grasped in terms of a social body, as it can neither be localized in topograpical space, nor pinpointed to particular conceptual spaces induced by ICTs. ‘My tribe’ is nomadizing within cyberspace.
The aficionados of course ↑can not accept cyberpunk to be a “long-since dead relic of the 80s,” but “consider it to be alive and well.” Not surprisingly I completely second that. Although ↑Bruce Sterling himself ↑sees it to belong to the 80s’ “Movement” and calls for a new generation, and although the terms “cyberpunk”, “cyberspace” and the like have virtually no meaning within my tribe’s, the ↵MP-community’s discourse [in said context “Gibson” again—or still—is associated with &uarrguitars and not with ↑a writer], I deem cyberpunk alive and well, too. Furthermore I think it to still be dramatically influential—and important for the understanding of contemporary popular- and cyberculture.
Because of that I rewatched ↑“Equilibrium” yesterday night. Another reason was, that the ↵Max Payne 2 total conversion ↑“Hall of Mirrors”
—↵falsely reported to have gone gold in December 2005—on 22 February 2006 ↑finally has been released. “Hall of Mirrors” is based on “Equilibrium” and “allows you to live out the journey of Cleric John Preston [Christian Bale]. Gunkata your way through sweepers and clerics to destroy the regime you once held so dear.”—I’ll come back to the subject of ‘Gun Kata’ below, and I’ll report on “Hall of Mirrors” when I’ve played it extensively enough ;-)
The movie “Equilibrium” draws on a wealth of cyberpunk and pre/proto-cyberpunk material, particularly from Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, George Orwell’s “1984”, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, and Ridley Scott’s ↑“Blade Runner”. As usual with pop-culture artefacts like that, the ↑entry for “Equilibrium” at Wikipedia is excellent, even dealing extensively with literary references, and the ↑Equilibrium fansite has just everything—so there’s no use in repeating all that here. In terms of references I will only deal with the “Blade Runner” related, as they are not mentioned at Wikipedia.
The beginning and the end of the movie literally frame it by more or less direct Blade-Runner references. Close to the end we see a close-up of Cleric John Preston’s eye reflecting the fireclouds of explosions all over the city [see above]. Compare to the Blade-Runner screencap accompanying ↵tally’s eyes. Ignore the Zeiss-Ikon logo—that one I ↑photoshopped in. That particular pane from Blade Runner has been dubbed “the Hades-eye”, as it reflects [pun not intended] the state of mankind’s urban habitats on Earth. The flames in Preston’s eye symbolize purgatory, as they are the visible end of explosions destroying the Prozium-factories. Prozium being the drug prescribed by the regime, suppressing emotions and enslaving humankind to the totalitarian rule.
At the beginning of “Blade Runner” text scrolls over the screen and is red to us by a voice from the off:
Likewise at the beginning of “Equilibrium” we are informed by a voice from the off—supported by written text and illustrative footage—about the state of the story’s universe, and we learn, what a ‘Grammaton Cleric’ is:
… the Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man’s inhumanity to man.
His ability … to feel.
In the end the Grammaton Clerics, just like like the Blade Runners, are privileged executioners backed up by the ruling system’s authorities. Both stories revolve around the basic philosophical question What is human?, and emotion is the central issue, the measurement. But in the world of “Equilibrium” it is exactly the other way round than it is in the “Blade Runner” universe. Those who have empathy are the ones to be sorted out and eradicated.
“Equilibrium” for sure is not Science Fiction, but it is cyberpunk, although it lacks some criteria. For instance neither the issue of technology’s impact on humanity, nor the issue of the fusion between human being and machine are dealt with. But “Equilibrium” is a dystopian story set within a near-future, when a totalitarian, fascist regime controls humankind, largely by means of propaganda mediated via ICTs. The omnipresent larger-than-life videoscreens on the city’s buildings and on the blimps’ sides again reference to “Blade Runner” visuals. Urban decay is found, too—outside of the city’s walls, in the “Nethers”. And then there is the emotion-suppressing drug Prozium, a piece of chemically invasive technology.
It definitely would be wrong to claim, that gamemodders are not interested in the elements of social and cultural critique as mediated by cyberpunk narratives. But their particular interest in movies like “Equilibrium” or “The Matrix” is located on a more abstract level occupied by aesthetics and dramaturgy. “Equilibrium”‘s main protagonist, Tetragrammaton Cleric First Class John Preston, his martial arts and the monk-warrior caste he stems from, are the issues which strike the modders’ heart and creativity.
Unlike the Blade Runners, the Grammaton Clerics are not abominable hangmen of the got-down-policeman type who are doomed to do the most dirty job—they have a religious component and the air of the clergyman, of a respected minister of religion, of a priest not only initiated into the mysteries of life and death, but privileged and able to deliver death themselves. The inquisitor. But not the kind of inquisitor, like Torquemada, who is dependent on subalterns, servants and mercenaries. In terms of combat every single one of them is superior to every mercenary, any number of mercenaries confronting them even. This is because the Grammaton Clerics are a mixed breed out of the menacing European ecclesiastic from the Middle Ages and the Asian pop-culture cliché of the Shaolin monk. Asian martial arts efficiency, aesthetics, and philosophy in turn are fused with the realities of contemporary, or near-future reality of close quarter battle: firearms. The Grammaton Clerics do not defeat flocks of heavily armed enemies by hand or melee-weapon Bruce-Lee style. They are armed themselves with impressive automatic pistols. The Grammaton gun in fact is a heavily modified Beretta 92. Just as a web-trivia sidenote: I deem it to be quite original, that NRA-buff and general madman MadOgre in his article ↑“Guns of Equilibrium” rates the Grammaton gun second only to Deckard’s gun on his SciFi-guns favourite list. But the decisive thing is how those firearms are used by the Grammaton Clerics.
In terms of visual and/or interactive aesthetics every computergame and cyberpunk movie needs something special to stand out. “Terminator 2” has the ↵T1000’s morphing ability, “The Matrix” and ↵“Max Payne” have ↑bullett time. “Equilibrium” has Gun Kata. Director Kurt Wimmer tells us how it came to his invention of this fictitious martial art:
Within the movie, during a training session of Grammaton Clerics, vice-council DuPont explains the hard sciences pseudo-rationale behind Gun Kata:
Following the idea, the probabilities of close quarter battle are inscribed into the Gun Kata’s choreography. Hence it allows to effectively hit enemies without aiming, while avoiding being hit without dodging. Wikipedia ↑brings it nicely to the point: “In short, Gun Kata is the art of shooting where the enemy should be, while not being where the enemy should shoot.” That already is a feast for game-developers and modders alike, as it allows new dimensions of action gameplay within the ↑shooter-genre. But there is more to it, of which the ability to heighten immersion of action gameplay is one fraction: The mediation of imagined and/or experienced moods and ambiences. The most celebrated and famous mods in MP-modding are the Kung-Fu modifications by KenY. According to Kenneth Yeung himself, who within the community quickly acquired the status of a demi-god, his goal was to bring the choreography and aesthetics of Hong-Kong Kung-Fu flics into the playable universe of Max Payne. This “kind” of Kung Fu of course is away from the reality of street and pub-brawls, it is a manifestation of ↑fictional martial arts. Based on real martial arts, but syncreticized, creolized, fused, hybridicized—however you’d prefer—with other martial arts, dancing, acrobatics. Like Gun Kata, and like lightsaber combat of Star-Wars fame. Nick Gillard, fight choreographer for Episode I, said that he had adopted not only kendo & western fencing, but tree chopping and tennis into his “Jedi Style” as well.
Gamemods very often are inspired by movies. And gamemodding has a lot to do with recreation. Within MP-modding take e.g. kemical’s meanwhile classic rendition of the lobby shootout from “The Matrix”, ↵
TheHunted’s beautiful Château from “The Matrix Reloaded”, or “Hall of Mirror”‘s recreation of the “Equilibrium” architecture. But gamemodding goes beyond recreation. It’s transposition, making things experiencable on another level. That’s exactly what “Hall of Mirrors” strives for: Making the flow-experience of “Equilibrium”‘s Gun Kata available to players via the interactive medium computergame.
↑Read more at cyberpunkreview.
via entry at cyberpunkreview
