GEGENSPIELER - NARRATIVE SUBVERSION IN COMPUTER GAMES

Film and new media are linked by the program Antagonist, presenting new subversive strategies of handling computer games. Artists increasingly misuse the setting of well-known computer games such as Quake to create "counter stories" to the indicated content. They criticize the games' often glorifying violence and sexist character, but also their limited iconographic and esthetic specifications and unidimensional alignment destined for a young target group that, however, eventually grows older. There also is a growing following for Machinimas. Machinimas are films, directly taken from computer games, transforming the games' pretended "interactivity" to cinematic "inter-passiveness". For the first time in Germany, Paul Marino from the newly founded Academy of Machinima Art & Sciences, New York, introduces some of the most interesting works of this digital genre.