Talk: Hito Steyerl's Why Games? Can an Art Professional Think? (June 2016)
Priceless talk given (or, rather performed) by Hit
o Steyerl at Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona on June 6, 2016, disguised as a tribute to Harun Farocki.
Some highlights:
Games are real
Games are extremely powerful, generative fictions
Unexpected outcomes
Games as a form a social control
"War is just a videogame"
Turing test: the imitation game
Game Theory
Games as models of reality (Platonic ideas)
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" (Peter Norvig)
Useful games/operational games. [The horror of gamification]
Captcha games: prove that you are human... to a machine [while working for free for Google]
Art rank: the art world as a (rigged) game [LIQUIDATE!]
Games as profiling tools ("social sincerity")
Crapstraction: "Art is what your friends buy" (Jerry Saltz)
Crapstraction = reputation score, academic ranking, scientific benchmarks
Crapstraction = game theory formalized as a pattern
Can an Artist Professional Think? Try Turing test
Do not imitate a robot: Start talking about the weather instead
LINK:
Hito Steyerl