AKMA’s Random Thoughts

What I Did While My Server Slumbered

Well, I couldn’t blog for four days, so (a) I bore down and accomplished a couple of things, very minor things but I’m counting them as accomplishments nonetheless, and if you want to make something of it you can come over here and say that; (b) worked on a sermon and an adult ed presentation; (c) read your blogs; (d) thought about things I’d blog if only I could; (e) wondered (and eventually figured out) what the $%^ was wrong with the server; (f) dipped my toe into The Game Neverending, an alpha version of an open-ended massively multi-player game with social, economic, and flat-out entertaining dimensions. GNE seems to have attracted an unusally erudite community of players; I caught allusions to Homer, Poe, postmodern theory; a variety of non-English languages; and numerous technical, pop-cultural, and current-events discussions.

I saw only one short spasm of [apparently] real anger, some irritation, but no rage or destructive rampages. These were by far eclipsed by the generosity of spirit and bonhomie that the players demonstrated. Margaret raised the question of whether this has any bearing on the long-standing deabtes on the effects of on-line gaming; does online charity and patience tend to make us more patient and charitable in physical interactions? Some will say, “Playing Doom XXVI doesn’t mean I’m more likely to gun down people in the street; I’m really just a peaceable character”—but would you tend to trust the spatter-jockey or the mysterious benefactor? (I know, Dorothea will have a deep gamer’s perspective on this; as a dabbler, I’m just opening the topic up for more experienced colleagues.) There are regular parties, sort of online potlatches at which more wealthy players offer refreshments and specially powerful items. Sharing and cooperation constitute the norm for the interactions I viewed there.

GNE has already inspired a zine, Ludus Perpetuus, in which a participant who goes by the name of Jean Baudrillard discusses one of the most fascinating phenomena of the game so far. Baudrillard began accumulating furniture in a particular house—“disposable swedish furniture,” in the game’s terminology. Eventually he added more than eleven thousand articles of furniture and began referring to this as an art installation. Debates broke out among players over whether it was legitimate to disrupt the installation (say, by taking a few pieces of furniture away, or destroying them). Some particpants argued strongly that this was art, and not casually to be disturbed; others didn’t see how taking a few dining-room chairs from an installation of more 11,000+ pieces could make that much of a difference.

The kicker is that of course, no one had ever seen the installation. It’s a purely imaginary construction in a purely fictive locale (Turtle Hill, in Stencilton, if you ever go there—it’s the house with pies sitting in the window); the installation itself consists only of the words, “disposable swedish furniture [11252].” But just how much does that distinguish the Pie and Furniture installation from other works of conceptual art? Isn’t it perhaps even truer to the character of conceptual art if the work itself remains entirely conceptual?

The Art installation craze has swept Stencilton, with a beachball installation by Baudrillard in Huizingaplatz, an indoor jungle by Kallese in Media Shire, 100 Harpsichords in the desert by Kallese (at the sign of the Existential Cowboy) and a remarkable display of aromatic objects entitled “Senseless Scents Studied Solipsistically,” by inspoetica. Smelly objects in a scentless medium.

Now, however, the server is fixed and I’m back to blogging.

Posted by AKMA at November 5, 2002 11:33 PM | TrackBack