Eddo Stern Lecture

Eddo Stern Lecture Critique
The Eddo Stern Lecture was held on April 14 2010 in RGJ Room 2006. His works consist of digital media and game art. He is from Televiv, Israel. He has experience working with sculpture, video, performance and fame design. His main focus in digital art is videogames as an art form. The content of his work varies from cultural, political and dark to comical and ironic.
Stern’s first performance work was the Tekken Torture Tournament which consisted of the hack version of Tekken, reconceptualized. Micro controls sense the life bars in the game and take control over the players’ muscles. This performance featured Tekken champions from Australia who could not even take the pain. Videogames usually are disconnected from the player even when the gamer is completely disengaged in the levels. This tournament proves that gaming experiences can be fully brought to life.
Unlike his Tekken Torture Tournament, Stern’s Waco Resurrection fully programmed and simulated performance installation based on the Waco incident with David Koresh. It consists of one to four players and has headsets that are modeled after Koresh. It also has voice recognition and players can chant “super powers”. The goal of the game is to collect as many followers as possible before the compound burns. More followers increase aura. There is a ten minute countdown before the character dies in the game inevitably. The content in the game mixes history with fantasy. Its intent is to relive the Waco tragedy.
Eddo Stern’s current project is a videogame that is playable for blind and deaf gamers. Like Waco Resurrection, this new installation is based on real life accounts. Gamers are played as Jon Walker Lin. The game has headsets that are designed to accommodate those without sight or hearing, and they are supposed to create a way to trade physical attributes for extra powers. Stern says that one of the biggest challenges to this game is creating heads-up display to fit the needs of blind and deaf videogame players. For this game, he has an audio HUD instead to accommodate blind gamers. Those who have all senses can experience the blind/deaf experience in this game.
Stern also creates sculptures that embed technology and hacked games. Keyboard Castle is one of his works where the mechanical bot plays the hacked version of Everquest in everlasting loops and it randomly talks to those who are engaged in it. The structure of the sculpture is modeled after a castle. Fort Paladin is a hacked version of America’s Army. Like Keyboard Castle, Fort Paladin has a bot that runs on itself and is structured like a medieval castle.
I had a second to ask Stern if he has ever presented any of his games at videogame conventions such as PAX and E3. He answered yes. When I asked him about their reaction, he tells be that he has either been well received or met with scorn by the game designers there.
My reactions to his pieces are unique to any other piece that I have seen in art so far, because I could not fully comprehend the intent of his work. I am both a budding artist and someone who loves to play videogames. As an artist, I found his work to be creative and original, especially his sculptures. From seeing his presentation on his game designs, I am not so much in favor of them. However, as a gamer, I find that his games may not be well received by the gaming world. The idea of creating something for people who are blind or deaf is great. I feel that mainstream game designers can learn from him. I believe that the idea of videogames as art does not sit well with me, unless the game is written well enough to have a tasteful and artistic meaning. I also find that his games that are based completely on tragic events may trivialize what really happened and it may be more received by the digital art world than the gaming world.