Remember ATARI?

The phenomena of video gaming from arcades into homes has turned it into a modern cinematic subcategory which is currently influencing the entertainment business at large and highly reflecting upon understanding cultural discernment. The Hollywood Entertainment business and the North American culture are not the only two spheres in which influences and reflections are currently being discussed as cultural subjects, there are other spheres within which the same subjects can be more complicating to comprehend or even to link with. However this paper will discuss the influence of ATARI and its reflection to American culture including other gaming consoles in North America. This article does not attempt to define the clear image of interactiveness or cultural labour between the human body and the TV screen but it will make a textual collage of technological advances and cultural effects of video gaming.

Despite the personal, cultural and political indifferences that prevail as barriers of interconnection between people of diverse cultures, somewhere a checkpoint is always available and necessary where cultures can exercise their diversity. The virtual gaming space is now the place where such a checkpoint can be found because of its diverse participants. Virtually speaking, a spaceship is more likely to win and go to the next level if accompanied by a second player. This shows that an effort is made by both the players towards achieving a common goal. This is one of the inexplicable natures of individuals that make jazz combo teams in new paradigms of business management(Drucker,1998). Drucker(1998) states that in a jazz team each participant does his or her own thing but together they make great music. Similarly in the virtual engagement of games like Spacewar (PDP-11, 1961)1 such nature of a team can be seen as a universal checkpoint that can be found and agreed upon by gamers, whereas in the case of ATARI's pong (Atari,1972) the game engages the playing minds and bodies in competing attitudes and gestures. Even though Spacewar was unsuccessful image wise and commercially, it gathered players under a friendlier atmosphere regardless of its failure upon entrance into the "world of play".(Wilson,2004) The entrance of ATARI into the homes from arcades was mainly because of the simplicity of pong which broke down the focus from emphasis over controllers and instructions to easier tasks. So games have various functions that can shape cultural identities. Whether it be Grand theft Auto (PC & Playstation, 1997) or Winning eleven 52 (Playstation 2, 2001) , the role of the virtual surrogates in the screen reflect upon the interests of the player, sometimes literally and at other times arbitrarily. It is not necessary that a gamer likes to play more violence related games because the person has violent tendencies, it is also possible that a gamer who plays Need for speed Underground3 (PSP,2003) could highly fancy the visual upgrades and customizations that she/he has made to the Cobalt SS.

Gaming cultures brings us under an umbrella of intellectual apprehension without having to speak about our intellectual self initially. Traditional board games like ludo, chess and monopoly are still prevalent but their transition to the form of digital media is more popular simply because there is a larger network through telecommunication (Internet & online gaming). The first popular video game to enter the American homes from arcades was the pong, which made the computer game industry a big business but Grifitths(1997) notes that video gaming has become more popular among a larger audience with the advent of the arcade game Space Invaders. This phenomenon is seen as something that happened particularly within the youth culture. Arcade video gaming and home video gaming are new forms of cultural practices, now they are so substantial in the sense that they have become a form of addiction specially for groups of youth. Which in turn has changed family and friend gathering norms, and more importantly identities and personalities. Youths have now become closely attached to videogaming, so much that it is effecting them socially, and also physical and mental symptoms are beginning to show among them. However Griffith(1997) argues that it is problematic to only a small minority of the youth. The view that video gaming is a negative influence over the youth culture is real but simplistic. Contemporary videogaming covers even intellectual human games such as chess. Through chess we understand that war gaming is an old pastime between two individuals where the player is everything from the low rank soldiers to the Kings. Similarly digital video gaming today have opened visual horizons for such players, where the gamer's conscious is tacitly immersed into history lessons. Age of empires (PC,1997) is a strategy game that lets multiplayers participate in online gaming. Carr(2003) relates that this type of gaming brings about a checkpoint where thousands of strangers share a gaming world. Such games offer action, theatrics, community, improvised and sociable role play, or open slather "frag' fests.(Carr,2003) The gaming consoles today are apparatuses between the playing body and the TV by which the player learns about history. However we have to keep in mind that these games are not an effective way of learning about history because all the depictions of historical information are not necessarily authentic(Schut,2007) just how we may argue that all history is not completely true.


The problem solving mind of the human have become over active since the emergence of multi-faceted video games. Our subjective instincts signal us about our wants that turns objective to almost all our limbs and possibly the whole body. If your first gaming console was ATARI, you may remember the grip of that erected joystick with the red button on the panel. Remember the struggle in trying to make sense of how it all works? The engagement in this activity of figuring out what to do, is itself the act of learning to perform a new cultural labour. As the games keep developing cultural labours associated with them also advance. Wilson states that a subject is adapted to flexibly accomplish a greater burden of labour, where labour is increasingly concerned with the production of cultural and informational goods.(Wilson,2004). Schut (2007) draws the relation between a culture's dominant media and the behaviour of the culture. The media ecology perspective that he presents reflects on how our tools of communication surrounds us as our cultural environment. The medium is an important focus in the media ecology. In the context of video gaming the medium is the apparatus between the body and TV. The cultural labour shaped by this medium has its strengths and weaknesses. (Schut, 2007)

Wilson (2007) also contrasts and compares significant works of art in order to relate early video games, video art and abstraction with possibilities of attention. He shows how Barnett Newman's Onement IV ,Videosport's videogame Tennis, Nam June Paik's Zen for TV and Participation TV are all related in a visual resemblance and as moments in tradition. Newman as an Abstract artist is associated with post-war and North American Modernism. (Wilson,2007) Wilson relates Pong to Onement IV because of its pictorial flatness and simplicity. By comparison the vertical line that divides the pictorial space into two halves clearly represent the lines in that of a tennis field, a ludo or a chess board. This is the first commonality that a viewer and a player experiences while looking at Onement 1V or playing pong. Participating in some of his paintings required body movement, this occupied the viewer's visual field and also engaged the body to move in order to get a sense of the whole artwork.(Wilson,2007) His concern was to draw on the dots between the art work and the body. Similarly many consoles bring out the same ideas. When ATARI was first launched, it was an arcade video game in a bar, the participation of the people demonstrated a bodily immersion into the screen. The players were more into the games, but the ongoing pong sessions also has spectators like any still work of art. Both the body work and the mind is more intensely working in a gaming session than in observing an artwork in an art gallery.


Nam June Paik's Zen for TV consists of a TV set with a magnet on one side that serves to horizontally compress the TV image by confining the movement of its CRT; the TV is then upended so that the line is seen vertically. It takes a similar charecteristic from Newman's work into a satirical remediation of abstract art. (Wilson,2007) This abstract work of art reflects more on the interaction between the TV image and different possible dimensions in which we look at a screen. Here the body work and the mind utility is also highly relative to gaming, precisely because Paik stresses on the TV content and the viewer's perception. The way in which a spectator might perceive GTA's violent content is quite different from the perception of someone who is playing the game. The fever of criticizing a game for its visual content can spread easily but its hard to challenge the aesthetics of the very same visual contents.(Carr,2003) Paik further goes into a more elaborate explication of the human body's virtual relationship with the technological advancement by presenting his Participation TV. This conceptual work is a vibrant kind of art that speaks in deeper context of interaction between human body and technology. It is an artwork that achieves the conditions by which the spectator might act upon the new kind of flat victoria space Paik makes of the screen in Zen for TV. (Wilson,2007) Here the artwork unlike those previously mentioned, engages both viewing and participation at the same time. Participation TV's first impression is the image of Karaoke, which means "empty orchestra" in the Japanese language. In the case of Karaoke, the human body is indulged by the screen to sing what the eyes see. Here the human voice before giving instructions to the microphone actually receives the electronically eliminated instructions in form of texts that constitute the lyrics for the vocal. As Wilson(2007) notes Participation TV is one of the first conceptual works that incorporates the audience into the feedback loop of its production. Also the cultural labour that one experiences in this activity is seen as heavy. In comparison to the Nintendo wii this artwork is a vivid representation of the 'aesthetic auro' between the machine and the spirit.

Conclusion

Video gaming is an activity that reflects upon a culture. The technological advancements in this field has been changing the way we communicate with each other. Virtual reality is a whole new horizon where Utopian checkpoints can be created , found and shared by diverse networks because of its infinite space, cultural durability and endurance. Not all video games are negatively influential, video games also have educational and aesthetic purpose. It is easy and simplistic to criticize the violent and unnecessary contents of virtual gaming, but it is even more challenging and interesting to conceptualize video gaming as an important element of American culture. There is a substantial and a metaphysical relation between post-war artworks and ATARI's ping pong. This is where ATARI's auro of cool can be experienced. In understanding that video gaming is not just a novelty or a pastime for adolescents but an enduring culture that teaches us our constant changing nature. The 'auro of cool' is an experience of widening our perspective and strengthening the relation between the technological environment and the physical actions of the human body by discerning upon their various levels of interaction.

Stonefree13 productions© Yaseen Z.

References


Drucker, Peter F. (1998) Management's new paradigm,5,6.

Wilson, Jason (2004) 'Participation TV': Early Games, Video Art, Abstraction and the Problem of Attention: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies 95,97,86, 87, 88. 90

Griffiths, Mark (1997) Computer game playing in early adolescence: youth and society,223,224

Carr, Diane (2003) Game on: The culture and history of videogames, Visual Communication163 – 167

Schut, Kevin (2007) Strategic Simulations and our past: The Bias of Computer games in the presentation of History. Games and Culture, 213, 214, 215, 216

Other Readings

Apperley, T.H (2006) Genre and Game studies: Towards a critical approach to video game genres, Simulation and Gaming

Schott Gareth R et al. (2000) Girl gamers and their relationship with the gaming culture, Convergence: The Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies

Thrush, Emily et al (2000) Virtual Reality, Combat, and Communication: Journal of Business and Technical Communication









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