KI LAB - ALGORITHMIC STORYTELLING

Date: Sat., June 24
Opening hours: 3–6 pm
Location: Pavillon333
Talk: 4–5 pm
All are welcome. Admission free — first come, first served

Algorithmic Storytelling: Power Structures and Production Practices in Video Games: an exhibition and talk curated by Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez and Felix Klee. Three works of video art by Total Refusal, Grayson Earle, and Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez and Felix Klee explore how the portrayal of non-player characters in computer games replicates power structures and labor relations in the real world.

The projects on exhibit:

LOOP LABOR by Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez and Felix Klee
The Mexican non-player characters in the computer game Grand Theft Auto V are typically condemned to work in an endless loop. LOOP LABOR examines the game in terms of game-inherent mechanisms that reproduce power imbalances in the real world. LOOP LABOR uses modifications, or “modding”, of the source code to achieve critical interventions in the game’s universe: the workers break out of their predefined actions and form a labor union.

HARDLY WORKING by Total Refusal
This work sheds light on the extras of a video game: NPCs. These non-playable characters create a sense of normality in the digital universe. With ethnographic precision, the film observes a laundress, a stableman, a street sweeper, and a handyman in their daily routine. Their loops of activity are only interrupted by bugs. As Sisyphean machines, they offer a vivid depiction of work in the age of capitalism.

WHY DON’T THE COPS FIGHT EACH OTHER? by Grayson Earle
A desktop documentary about an attempt to modify the relationships between police officers in Grand Theft Auto V. This work deals with GTA “modding” scene, a community that uses tools to change the game’s universe. While these mods are nearly unlimited in scope, one feature is completely unalterable: the police officers in the game will never fight each other. Through extensive forensic analysis of the game’s source code and collaboration with mod developers, the artist reveals the extent to which the cultural imaginary of the real police force is projected into the game space.