A report of the Evening of... Ludic Society
by Omar Muñoz-Cremers
Friedrich Nietzsche can be remembered for a host of revolutionary insights but the idea encapsulated in the title of his book Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) remains to this day the most necessary inspiration. Not surprisingly the art, games, theory and political collective known as The Ludic Society prominently displays a quote from this book on their website. It’s the quote from which all other quotes flow, because The Ludic Society are quite brainy, they know their citations, they have a way with books as they have with games. Theirs is a joyful intelligence, therefore they are such a necessary proposition. Criticism, theory and philosophy have these past few years been caught in a vice-like grip of seriousness – certainly this was not without reason, as on the geopolitical level things look rather glum. But even so, those politics of seriousness, however real they are, and in whatever way they touch our lives, are essentially back-mirror politics. This repudiation of the politics of seriousness may appear to be the effect of a futurist haughty impatience with 20th century nationalistic militarism, turned even worse when it is liberally doused with the rhetoric of medieval religious wars – but somewhere an alternative must exist. Something alive with futurity, something resembling a small utopianism.
The ludic mission statement states its aims clearly: “The ludic society
exists to provoke an artistic research discipline best to be addressed
as ludic studies. The goal is to provide a playful theoretical starting
point of a methodology around the act of play as a state of
transformation.” That is why an unsuspecting audience member can be
overwhelmed with a sense of liberation when witnessing a
seminar/performance by The Ludic Society. The droning oppression
through PowerPoint is destroyed and one is at last subjected to
something unpredictable. On screen an intro film is shown of
warrior-game figures before a fight, bragging in ridiculous hyperreal
style. Subsequently the image is distorted and we enter a punishing
tunnel of digital mayhem, shifting sounds and vortex like visuals. This
goes on for maybe ten minutes whilst the members of The Ludic Society
scattered all over the stage, most of them behind laptops, wait
patiently. Then the program begins as if our preconceptions had to be
wiped out first. A defragmentation of our minds has taken place. But as
you delve deeper into the ludic world you will also notice that nothing
is done without purpose, without being named and coded. No
advertisement, no fashionable term, no tech-talk is irreversible,
everything just waiting and ready for reuse. So on their website you
will find under the header of ludic jargon:
“Glitch as an element in the creative process, where unexpected
conflicts between hard- and software and people play an important part
in generating the work itself. Here the Glitch is a driving force in
the interplay of humans and machines, while the results fluctuate in a
continuous temporal state of change, which may be adjusted or radically
altered underway.”
After that the self-described panel game is on a heady mix of
theoretical presentations, role-play, film and so-called Real Play. In
this play volunteers form the audience are invited to go on a stroll
through the city and tag objects, move other objects, enter into
communication through absurd telephone calls with the ludic operator
back in the auditorium. Tagging comes under scrutiny, as a social
process and as a specific object: the RFID tag (basically a minuscule
object carrying and transmitting data that can be attached to products
or even be implanted in human body.) Now that the Radio Frequency
Identification phenomenon has been exposed, arguably defused of its
more sinister possibilities with a host of contra-strategies, it seems
ready to be relegated to the dustbin of technological history. Although
it may yet be too early to do exactly that, since it just embodies the
perfect plaything for surveillance-happy types in society, the RFID
through its alternative uses is able to make us conscious of other
issues and may harbor a political move: tagging objects with valueless
RFID is to “de-valuate real world things into virtual play-objects.”
Resistance through the overflowing of meaninglessness, excess of
information yet at the same time making the player focus on things
he/she normally doesn’t consider part of the game world (here in
Rotterdam: a flowerpot that is triumphantly brought back to the
auditorium by the volunteers.)
The event is immediately put in a line of earlier projects through the
screening of a film of the play preceding the one in Rotterdam. Also
present are copies of The Ludic Society magazine that are positively
brimming with ideas and in which talks given at the panel can be found
next to extracurricular levels of meaning added to a Real Play. So the
Plymouth play is embedded in an occult history turning the local
shopping center, where much of the action took place, into a sinister
space. Indeed in their texts the Ludic Society knowingly place
themselves in a certain tradition of aesthetic dissent, the line that
runs form Dada through Surrealism to Situationism and Fluxus. They
possess the same international charm, use of humor; interest in
sampling media, fascination for hidden meaning and notions that play is
a political act.
As a vanguard movement they are too intelligent to change anything
beyond an exploration of “possibilities of social transformation.”
Traveling to Rotterdam by train one passes at Den Haag an incredibly
elongated shopping mall called Mega Stores. Its size has something
oppressive, an all-encompassing experience of regulated, zombified play
that will absorb the desires of a vast majority of people, without any
of the ruined, slightly diseased ballardian charm the Plymouth center
possesses. And this the Ludic Society know themselves when they state:
“the failure of social revolutions thus far is accounted for by the
observation that they have failed to liberate desire sufficiently
well…”
This obvious has been a problem haunting any political movement since
1968. With desire getting an excellent distribution deal from
capitalism there exists an ever-widening chasm between intelligentsia
and consumers. But at least The Ludic Society can be credited with
taking their ideas to the street. Even if they cause a flash of
bemusement that will quickly fade away, there is an intent to let
thought crawl out the ivory towers. Computer games indeed form the most
promising route into popular consciousness. The Ludic Society, for the
most part consisting of game theorists, is well aware that academic
discussion sap games of their truth. Games need to be played. This is
why their new version of the classic arcade Qix interfacing with Google
Maps opens up potentialities of at least reaching gamers (even if it
has the thankless task of competing with other clones such as Ultimate
Qix, Bully, Volfied or the emulated version on the Taito Legends
collection.)
In The Ludic Society a very fine line exists between theory and fun.
That they actually know how to laugh, makes you wonder if they don’t
make it all up as they go along. Rest assured: no one can keep up a
joke for such a prolonged time period in so much detail. They will
remain an underground phenomenon and on the off chance of reaching some
mediated light will immediately lose any power they possess. Such are
the rules. Still, those witnessing The Ludic Society, especially the
breed who are both readers and gamers, will find much to enjoy and
expand upon. There is for instance this clever play-within-the-play of
a therapeutic session between game theorist and game figure that makes
you conscious of some of the absurdities governing the reality of
computer games, that we take for granted while playing. The patient
complaining of blackouts (as when the game is paused) and strange
symbols moving around its head (the game menu) eventually whines he is
depressed to which the “therapist” can only reply: “well, that’s not my
problem. I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m a game theorist.” Scenes like
these pave the way for such excellent existential analyses as ‘Playing
is believing’ by Olli Leino that in another context would perhaps feel
too dry.
Their obsession with games eventually will make them do things that are
silly and audacious at the same time. After the panel discussion they
use the most Rotterdam of things to hammer their point home. A game of
Tetris is played in the harbor with a crane and colored ship
containers. It is the perfect monument for their strange fusing of art,
theory and the First Life Engine.
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