game | writing notes

So I am still trying to figure out what the best use of Google+ is, and how to integrate it into my information chaos. But today I when engaging in light procrastination instead of editing an article I looked at my circles and was a bit shocked to see this:

A dozen of the people in my circles seemed to have changed the pictures in their profiles. And they had all chosen to use my image! What was this? Intense hero worship? Finally the recognition I desire? An advanced form of anonymity or pseudonymity? A sure sign of my descent into madness due to article editing? Or just a bug?

The most likely theory is that social media really is just a game where high scores are obtained by collecting “friends”. I have obviously progressed to an advanced level of cheating and instead of collecting friends I have begun to make them up and to populate my social media universe with clones of myself.

While questioning my own reality in this way – I ask myself whether Mats, Jenny, Niklas, Alexander, Rickard, Jonas, Chris, Fredrik, Krister, Stefan, David & Natasja know that they are actual people or just figments of my overactive imagination?

Of course computers and computer games have had an impact on art. There are fields that study art and video games, or indeed even art in games, but I was particularly amused by this twist to the theme. It’s art in the form of an old style arcade video game. The game is created by Hunter Jonakin and is called Jeff Koons Must Die!!!

The game is a first-person shooter and the goal is to destroy as much of Koons’ artwork as possible. If the player does not destroy the game ends.

However, if one or more pieces are destroyed, an animated model of Jeff Koons walks out and chastises the viewer for annihilating his art. He then sends guards to kill the player. If the player survives this round then he or she is afforded the ability to enter a room where waves of curators, lawyers, assistants, and guards spawn until the player is dead.

The motivation for the game is given on the website:

Jeff Koons is one of the most polarizing and well known contemporary artists living today. He attempts to elevate the banal by constructing large metal sculptures that resemble balloon animals, oil paintings that contain subject matter derived from digital collage, and large-scale pornographic photographs featuring the artist and his former wife, to name a few. All of Koons’s art is constructed by assistants. In general, viewers love or hate Koons and his work, and that is why he was chosen as the subject matter for this piece.

Recently Jeff Koons – who has himself been sued for copyright violation – sued for copyright violation (see Koons strikes back) but eventually backed off. It’s going to be interesting to see his reaction both to seeing his works replicated in digital format, used (abused?) in this manner and then the fact that he himself is portrayed in the game.