Game Art: Calum Bowden's "Calls of Duty" (2016)

"A collaborative project in which people are invited to occupy the voice channels of multiplayer war games during live performances. It is about hijacking games to confront unsuspecting players around the world and start discussions between people who might not hold the same views. Participants come together to stage their own interventions, bringing readings, songs, and other tools to occupy open voice communications channels. While some of the players forced to listen remain hostile, others welcome the intervention, vote for us to stay in the game, and even take part sharing their own messages. Rather than the distancing often associated with the simulated and the virtual, the voice is deeply human. In April 2016, interventions were devised over a series of workshops at the Active Change Foundation, a youth centre and leadership organisation in Walthamstow, East London."

Calum Bowden (b. 1991) is an artist and writer, working with video, song, and performance. His projects embrace absurd and surreal interactions between people and technology. With a background in anthropology, he's interested in the politics of how stories live and are lived by people. Researching specific cases, his interventions work to confront a society that has always been technological, and technology that has always been social.

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