http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/FcMRkyoHKeA
Transformations of the urban physical spaces into gamespaces
Ilias Marmaras
Artist
Country: Greece
URL: www.personalcinema.org
Email: mbholgr@gmail.com
In response to the theme of the “Hybrid City” symposium, I propose a talk on the transformations of the urban physical spaces into gamespaces, as a result of the new forms of resistance and political movements.
My point is that the immersion of virtual worlds and the networks of the digital social media in the recent years have strongly influenced and transformed our perception of the urban landscapes, changed the social relations and gave birth to new forms of political struggle. We cannot talk anymore about separated environments like the “physical” as opposed to the “virtual”, but rather about a fusion that is perceived as a constant change. Consequently, in these new environments identities, subjectivities and performative actions are born and function in a dimension that can be seen and analysed as an ‘’imaginary dimension consisted of new forms of desire production’’ while at the same time older ways of understanding the social and the political power relations and hierarchies should be considered. A fusion that gave form for a period of time to such a gamespace happened in Greece, and especially in Athens, during the riots of December 2008.
The events that took place during this period can be seen much more clearly if one goes further from the standard political analysis that is usually used to explain the causes and the results of such revolts and political movements by introducing terms and concepts used in the online video games, virtual worlds and in the social media. Terms as single user game, multiuser game or gameplay become very useful in order to understand the forms of participation, the ways of acting and the political demands of these ‘’urban wars’’. In my talk I will present the #griots days by using such terms. I will also depict the streams of information, the emerge of which became possible through the social media and to some extent in the virtual world of Second Life.
A person who is suffering from compulsive disorder loses the earth under his or her feet, if someone moves something from its pre-fixed position inside his or her ‘’secure universe’’. This obsessed mapping, this identification of oneself through images and forms that represent or simulate the world, aim to effectiveness, aim to guarantee a kind of func24
tionality. As in 3d videogames the player records the objects that compose the space and reserves them faithfully in her memory, and on this base evolves the suspense of changes and the whole action, in other words the gameplay, same processes run in the real world where the memory that dictates the ‘’why’’ and the ‘’where’’ that in their turn define the position of every object and the roles that we are supposed to play, is the memory that ensures the daily compulsion of maintaining the reality of public space.