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Ludic Dissonance
Riley Harmons What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It
Baden Pailthorpe
UFR Arts plastiques Universit Paris 8 2 rue de la libert 93526 Saint-Denis cedex baden.pailthorpe@gmail.com
Cet article examine la notion de rsistance politique dans les jeux vido de guerre en se penchant sur le travail de lartiste Riley Harmon. En tendant le concept de counterplay de Nick Dyer-Whiteford et Greig de Peuter, cet article fait montre que les pratiques dissidentes sont une stratgie crdible pour la cration artistique critique.
RSUM :

This article examines the notion of political resistance in war-based video games through the work of artist Riley Harmon. By extending Nick Dyer-Whiteford and Greig de Peuters concept of counterplay, this paper argues that dissident play is a credible strategy of practice-based, critical inquiry.
ABSTRACT: MOTS-CLES:

Jeux vido, guerre, art numrique, pratiques critiques. games, war, new media art, critical practices.

KEYWORDS: Video

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Whilst the political and military links of war-based video games have been extensively studied, other recent games-based research has perhaps fallen short in its account of the potential of such games to become sites of political resistance through critical artworks. In addressing this gap, this paper will mobilise the concept of counterplay identified by Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (DYE 09) as a strategy used by artist Riley Harmon to create critical works of art from the cult first-person shooter (FPS) Counter-Strike. Furthermore, this paper will extend the relatively limited amount of research that covers the phenomenon of cheating in video games to include dissident play as a credible strategy of practice-based, creative inquiry. In this way, the paper will use the proven political significance and ideological efficacy of war-based video games as an alibi to interrogate the aesthetic mechanics at work within these complex cultural devices. Video games and other new media have been proven to play a key role in contemporary warfare on several levels. They contribute to an already ubiquitous state of militarised vision, following technical shifts in technologies of photography, mapping, surveillance and perception (VIR 84). Recent research also indicates the significant political, cultural and financial linkages between the United States (US) military and the industrial, media and entertainment network or MIMENET (DED 09; HAL 06; HUT 09). Furthermore, this research has shown that video games such as Americas Army (2002-09) and Medal of Honor (2010) among others, form a symbolic political landscape that both embody and actively distribute the ideology of Empire in the War on Terror (HAR 00; DYE 09). This is, in part, due to the way in which enemy characters and foreign landscapes are represented and reduced to simplistic and nave stereotypes that serve to reinforce established regimes of cultural and political power (SIS 08). It has also been demonstrated that the immersive, interactive and repetitious nature of these games contributes to them being powerful tools in military training and rehabilitation, both ideological and procedural (BOG 08). The technology that underpins video games and other new media is predominantly the product of civilian versions of military technologies (HER 97). Recent research by James de Derian has extended our understanding of the militaryindustrial complex to also include the powerful US media and entertainment industries, such as Hollywood and the games studios of Silicon Valley (DED 09). Video games are also increasingly being used by the US military as tools for the recruitment of new soldiers, as well as powerful and affective devices of training. Americas Army, one the US militarys most effective recruitment tools, was launched in 2002 and has been downloaded over 43 million times, and continues to receive an average of 444, 041 unique visitors per month (HUN 10). Whats more, the technologies of video games are increasingly being used in actual wars, such as the use of Xbox controllers to command drones in Iraq and Afghanistan (DER 10). The work completed by Huntenmann and Payne, building on significant research by theorists such as Baudrillard and Virillio, suggests that video games, play and warfare are increasingly indistinguishable, and that this arguably points to a

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militarisation of everyday life. The combination of this research overwhelmingly suggests that such video games are complex affective tools that actively embody and distribute the ideology of Empire (DYE 09). In their detailed book Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (2009), Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter situate video games as essential nodes in the production of new forms of what Deleuze and Guattari call machinic subjects. Through capitalisms ever expanding evolution, they argue, video games have contributed to the creation of emergent forms of Labour (or as Julian Kucklich likes to call it Playbour), that feed the military-industrial-entertainment complex needs for soldiers and consumers. These games, they argue, reassert, rehearse and reinforce Empires twin vital subjectivities of work-consumer and soldier-citizen (DYE 09). As I outline above, the history of video games is inextricably bound-up with the military and its partner industries. As dominant cultural, economic and political systems inevitably create tension and dissent, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter identify increasing gestures of resistance in ludic environments that they call counterplay; [m]inor gestures that they are, they suggest, these protests nevertheless suggest a route from game virtualities to another sort of actuality, that of the myriad activisms of twenty-first century radicals seeking to construct an alternative to Empire (DYE 09). The game Counter-Strike is an excellent example of the antagonistic forces of capture and escape at work within the video game industry. Originally a fan-created modification (mod) of the game engine Half-Life (1998), Counter-Strike became extremely popular and was subsequently licensed and further developed by Valve, the original creators of Half-Life. These subjects, hardcore gamers skilled in the very tools that the industry relies upon for their products, become unwilling workers in an ambiguous rearticulation of immaterial labour. Here, the nomadic tendencies of the contemporary Deleuzien homme de guerre are both captured and redeployed in Empires efficient strategies of control (DEL 80). Despite this, the machinic assemblages produced through video games and their rhizomatic networks eventually create subjects that escape the control of Empire. Increasingly, artists are taking a critical approach to video games. Such gestures of resistance can disrupt and expose these ambiguous architectures of control. These acts of ludic dissonance deserve considered attention. Riley Harmon is a young American new media artist who contributes to this drift from game virtualities to emergent dissonant actualities. His electronic/sculptural installation What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It (2008), links the symbolic violence of the seminal FPS Counter-Strike with the visceral reality of leaking blood. The electronic sculpture is linked to public Counter-Strike multiplayer servers. Each time a player dies, the electronic solenoid valves release an amount of blood, which slowly accumulates and spreads over the gallerys white walls. What remains is a striking physical trace of mediated, in-game violence. This work is highly relevant to the concept of counterplay, as it mobilises a sophisticated critique of the aesthetic and thematic drivers of FPS video games.

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Figure 1. Riley Harmon, What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It, (2008)

Reminiscent of the televised bloodstained footpaths of far away conflicts (that are in-turn represented as playable events), Harmons work unites the disparate but inherently linked zones of conflict: the virtual territories of mediated warfare and the real places and bodies that they mimic, commodify and consume. The clean, sterile gallery, when matched with the visceral, haunting techno-biology of distant, bleeding avatars, conjures an aesthetic of synthetic futures governed by Deleuze and Guattaris machinic subjects; subjects that the military actively create through these games: docile, disciplined end technic (DEL 80). FPS video games and other entertainment products often posit this very proleptic position: the future as an inevitable site of conflict, which reinforces the need for vast military and commercial networks that simulate past, present and future wars. As Josh Smicker highlights, [t]he neo-liberal military apparatus constructed around Future Combat Systems and articulated popularly in proleptic war video games does not connote just possible combat in the future but combat against the future itself, combat against futurity (HUN 10). Indeed, Harmon undermines the temporal vacuum of infinitely repetitious and proleptic multiplayer environments with the finite sacks of

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blood to which they are connected. Since we too, as player-soldier-subjects, are corporeally networked sacks of blood, Harmon then peals back the thin mimetic skin of virtuality to reveal the inner workings of this bleeding, hyper-militarised network to which we all connect. And as we see today with Internet activism such as Wikileaks, the more complex a network becomes, the more it leaks. Harmons synthetic blood represents our vampiric avatars True Blood: liquid architectures loaded with traces, bionic information, viruses and digital genes, both exploited and exploiting, the disparate lan vital of contemporary mediated subjectivities. The often unperceived physicality of networked devices, virtual bodies and their affects are succinctly and effectively mobilised in Harmons work. Whilst DyerWitheford and de Peuter did not include this sculpture in their discussions of counterplay, I believe that it represents a robust and important example of contemporary arts contribution to ludic dissonance. Indeed, just as histories of new media are inherently bound up in their military forebears, so too are those of art bound up with gestures of resistance and dissent. In examining the future ebbs and flows between centres of power and their subjects, widening the proverbial net will only strengthen our grasp of emergent critical discourses.

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