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TDGC

CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
PHD PROJECT
NFT CONCEPT AND FUNDRAISING MODEL
TDGC – A BIT OF BACKGROUND
TDGC IN A CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
NFT DESCRIPTION AND "THE ESSAY"
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: JUST A CYBER GOONIE
JUST A GOONIE, NOT A HACKER
EMBRACING A BIT OF GAMER THEORY
THE ARTISTS: WHO WILL THEY BE?
INTRODUCTION
My name is Ole Wilken. I am a self-funded PhD researcher in the field of digital
culture and software studies in the Department of Media, Communications and
Cultural Studies (MCCS) at Goldsmiths, University of London where I am fortunate
to be working with my supervisor Professor Matthew Fuller.
As a PhD researcher in the field of digital culture, I am keen to pursue an
alternative approach to fund my research and an established NGO focusing on
digital rights with proceeds from an auction of 100 NFT artworks in a series
titled: The Disillusioned Gamer Collection (TDGC).
The TDGC artwork will build on an autobiographical essay I have written about
the origin of the 'Disillusioned Gamer' (see below or table of contents above).
Together, the essay and artwork can be seen as an emblem of the felt ambivalence
of disillusioned gamers around the world who might oscillate between feeling
sceptical towards or hyper-enthused by metaverse projects and associated
blockchain-based technologies. TDGC seeks to embrace and reflect on this
oscillation between celebration and repudiation of metaverse imaginaries.
Finally, I hope to make the NFTs in collaboration with ten digital artists who's
work has both shaped and been shaped by the lore and iconography of virtual
worlds. From fantasy to cyberpunk and interstellar space operas that I and other
gamers dream about. Meanwhile we're wrestling with a creeping sense of
disillusionment which is bound to emerge when reality-changing stories and games
turn into dreams and unfulfilled hopes that exists on a spectrum of human agony
associated 'with blasted hopes and shattered dreams' as Martin Luther King, Jr.
eloquently put it in Unfulfilled Hopes, a sermon from 1959.
Please see project description below
Reach me at oloeh001@gold.ac.uk.
You can also find me on Twitter and Linkedin and

PHD PROJECT
My PhD project is titled: "Digital-material self: essays on the co-construction
of software, objects and material selfhood". The project seeks to enhance our
understanding of the digital dimensions of what the American philosopher and
psychologist William James called the 'material self' (1890), that is
human-object relations as opposed to the digital dimensions of the 'social self'
(human-human relations) which are more well-understood and researched.
With funding for a full-time PhD I will complete my thesis in 2025. Further, I
hope to undertake post doctoral research from 2025 to 2027 and publish my PhD
thesis as a book on digital objects of the material self. The objective here is
to build on the work of Yuk Hui on the existence of digital objects and Nick
Couldry and Ulises Mejias’ work on data colonialism, among others, to enhance
our understanding of the datafication of the human 'material self', which
becomes instantiated in digital objects included in smartphone logs,
blockchains, and various metadata associated with physical stuff we live with in
everyday life, including the physical things that enhance our personal
relationship with digital assets/artifacts, like digital art/NFTs.
See research objectives (← click arrow to expand section)
Extended PhD proposal
Essay that sparked my PhD project
Read two short 'blogs' about my research

Quick Gephi graph and illustration of the material self with a human-object
distribution ratio (HODR) of 1/1000, so 1:10 of the actual HODR ~1/10000 which
corresponds to the number of objects owned by an average person living in
Germany (Trentmann 2016).

NFT CONCEPT AND FUNDRAISING MODEL

Image 1. "The Disillusioned Gamer" temporary exhibition space in Cryptovoxels.
Displays an illustration and NFT I have created. It is an image of a gamer's
alter ego, inspired by an essay I have written. The essay is included in the
NFT. Leet title "|_@2[]/2 |=[](||5 []|\| ×|>" says "laser focus on XP".
Alternate title, as written in the NFT description, is "Collage of/by
disillusioned optimistic gamer holding on to XP arranged by algos". The NFT is
currently available on Opensea.io, although it has not been fully "minted" and
is still mutable/subject to change.
The Disillusioned Gamer Collection (TDGC): 100 NFTs: 10 artists contribute 1 NFT
with 10 editions of each (10x10=100)
NFT production: 1 NFT as a portrait/illustration of 'The Disillusioned Gamer'
with inspiration from an illustration I have made (see Image 1 ) and essay I
have written (see further). The essay will be embedded in each NFT, as is the
case with the 'seed' NFT displayed in Cryptovoxels space and accessible on
Opensea.io (see ). The original NFT has not been fully minted, and can be
deleted if this project is successful, so as to ensure that there are only
editions of the 'Disillusioned Gamer' by contributing artists.
Fundraising model: NFT auction in early 2022 with fundraising goal to support
fully funded PhD research from 2022 to Oct. 2025: GBP 131,781 (incl. annual
salary of ~39,600 and annual tuition of GBP 4327). Floor price for each NFT in
the collection is equivalent to GBP ~1,317 (1/100 of total fundraising goal, GBP
131,781).
Artist ownership and contribution: contributing artists will receive 100% of
secondary market royalties from each NFT. Any proceeds from the fundraising
auction above the fundraising goal will be donated as a charitable gift to an
NGO such as European Digital Right (EDRi), World Wide Web Foundation, and/or
Electronic Frontiers Foundation. For example, if an NFT is sold for GBP 11,317
(discounting any marketplace fees) the EDRi will receive GBP 10,000 (11,317
minus 1,317) or the equivalent value in Solana cryptocurrency. At the end of the
auction (timeframe is TBD).
Blockchain: NFTs will be based and minted on the Solana blockchain and in
coordination with contributing artists to ensure their rights to unsold artwork
and secondary market royalties. Rationale for choice of blockchain, such as
Solana instead of Ethereum, focus on cost of minting NFTs and carbon footprint.
Marketplace launch: is not yet decided.
Donation to European Digital Rights: The Giving Block can be approached as a
potential partner to create awareness around the TDGC auction and donate
proceeds beyond the PhD fundraising goal to European Digital Rights (EDRi). EDRi
is Europe’s largest association of civil and human rights organisations
defending rights and freedoms online. EDRi has been active for nearly two
decades and has received funding from The Ford Foundation, Apple, Microsoft,
Mozilla and Twitter to defend civilian rights and freedoms in the digital
environment. I would like to support the work of EDRi and/or the World Wide Web
Foundation both with this campaign and through my research which will
investigate data associated with the 'material self' (things people buy and live
with) and related data privacy, policy and governance issues.

TDGC – A BIT OF BACKGROUND
As a piece of creative experimentation, TDGC reflects a semi-broken dream of
vast virtual worlds such as 'the metaverse' – a dream that spills over into the
motivation of a researcher inspired by video games, digital culture and media
studies.
I made a version of this illustration (image 1) just before I started my PhD
research project. As such, the illustration somehow marked the beginning of a
journey – a quest to geek out on software studies and reflect on how my gamer
identity is somehow baked into my research interests and side projects. As you
can read in the autobiographical essay below, The Disillusioned Gamer is a shard
of my ego and figment of imagination.
Further, as a researcher and former graphic design technician, I'm inspired by
the flurry of creativity in the space of NFTs and the collaborative work of the
Digital Culture Unit at Goldsmiths, which engages the intersection of
computational media, art, and theory.
Drawing from this inspiration, I've found it incredibly interesting and fitting
to pursue PhD fundraising with an NFT collection based my initial illustration
and the autobiographical essay I wrote as I was contemplating how and why I was
doing research that deals with the digital-material tissue between the virtual
and the physical world.
My amateur piece in image 1 includes a re-presentation of objects of pop culture
nostalgia and cyberpunk fetishization. From elements of Top Gun (movie),
Lawnmower Man (movie), Ready Player One (found fan art), Full Stop (by Beeple),
The Sims (PC game), Cryptovoxels (screenshot) to a bad derivative color design
that hints at the hero figure of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster by Shepard
Fairey. The image is displayed in a private space on Cryptovoxels next to a
quote from Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark (2007).
The quote is illustrative of the Disillusioned Gamer’s proud self-identification
with the gamer and 'trifler’ who ignores the predetermined objective and rules
of computer games. Instead, the disillusioned gamer prefers to linger within and
explore virtual worlds while grappling with ambivalent feelings of play and
dread – the dread of gleefully submitting to a VR rig, like the
constantly-jacked-in protagonist with a piss pot between his legs in the sci-fi
short story The Relive Box by T.C. Boyle.
In this NFT collection, each artwork will become the avatar/alter ego of the
disillusioned gamer referenced and portrayed in the autobiographical essay which
will be included in each NFT description. The TDGC NFTs will develop from the
"seed NFT" (image 1) which is a rendering of and by a Disillusioned Gamer who
dreams of much more, including the notion of seeing their alter ego (sporting a
VR headset and a haptic-stillsuit of sorts) as a character created by an actual
artist – especially artists who have made a unique body of work that speaks to
the gamer's cyber-fetish with expressive renditions of otherworldly dystopias
and utopias that are the source of metaverse nightmares, hopeful and dreams.

TDGC IN A CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
With the help of NFT artwork, the TDGC aims to portray a version of a character
who is at once scarred and consumed by the promissory imaginaries of massive
virtual worlds and the (mis)adventures they may hold.
Through this collaboration, the figure of the Disillusioned Gamer can emerge in
various guises as an emblem of a digital culture marked by a zeitgeist that
involves both the celebration and contestation of virtual reality on top of the
slow boil of mental health issues that surface slightly in the gamer's
self-conscious self-portrayal, which broaches the challenges of living with
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Moreover, as written in the NFT description below, the alternative title could
have been: Collage of/by disillusioned yet optimistic gamer holding on to XP
arranged by algos. Where "XP" refers to "experience points" (usually obtained in
video role-playing games) and "Algos" refers to "algorithms" and the Greek
meaning of "Algos" which happens to be "pain" or “agony”. In this story, the
gamer turned to PC and video games for fun and solace, completely unconcerned by
the hopes and dreams they instilled as they moulded the gamer's 'digital
subjectivity', that is – in the words of Matthew Fuller – 'ways of seeing,
knowing and doing'.
Further, to paraphrase Ellsworth Kelly's analogue artwork from the early 1950s
('Spectrum color arranged by chance') which appear as 'pixilated' images before
the dawn of the digital age: The NFTs in this collection may be understood as a
collage or spectrum of hope and agony associated with pop culture arranged by
algorithm (simply by way of algorithms embedded in the artefacts and the
software used to produce the collection).

NFT DESCRIPTION AND "THE ESSAY"
Each NFT in TDGC includes a description of the NFT; including tools, media,
resolution and file size. Each NFT will be titled: Disillusioned Gamer #X, from
#01 to #100
The following text and the essay below is included in the NFT description:
Alternative title could have been: Collage of/by disillusioned yet optimistic
gamer holding on to XP arranged by algos. "XP" = "experience points", usually
obtained in video role-playing games. "Algos" = algorithms. The word "Algos"
also happens to be a Greek word for "Pain".
In a way, the illustration is an autobiographical avatar – a collage of a gamer,
a little much, an homage to an intensely mediated hero arranged as a would-be
cyber-god in a haptic stillsuit of sorts by someone juiced on video games, leet,
sci-fi, pop culture, and digital art.
As such, the Disillusioned Gamer is part of a digital-self and it follows from
the assumption that the character (alter ego) in the image would want to be an
NFT. Although, what the gamer really wants, or what the think they're after, is
something like the 'bodiless exultation of cyberspace' or the 'metaverse',
despite the dystopian context in which such imaginaries developed in William
Gibson's sci-fi novel Neuromancer from 1984 and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
from 1992.
Still, there should be no doubt that the disillusioned gamer would want to be or
embody an avatar and roam virtual worlds, from today's Afflarium, to
Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space, Star Atlas, The Sandbox, and other
frontiers within the world of worlds that is the metaverse-in-the-making.
The following essay provides a bit of background, a kind of origin story.
Together, the essay and illustration can be seen as an emblem of the felt
ambivalence of disillusioned gamers around the world who might might feel both
sceptical towards and enthused by blockchain-based metaverse.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: JUST A CYBER GOONIE
'It's hard to really chill and sit still.' Mos Def, Hip Hop (1999)
'[Algos] raised me, and whether right or wrong, [games] gave me all I write
[...] let's move along.' Jay Z , Blueprint (Momma loves me) (2001)
In my mind, I began to view the virtual rift or digital-material tissue between
the physical and virtual, between the analogue and the computational, as an
appealing intellectual and practical problem sometime around the year 2000. It
started with the computer game Diablo and the interest solidified out of
frustration and indeed disillusionment with The Sims and Second Life. However,
my interest in videogames, and their objects, started in the late 1980s or early
1990s when I was close to ten years old. Back then, I spent hours, if not days,
glued to my videogame controller every week. I started playing a few games on a
Commodore 64, like Paperboy, R-Type, and Total Recall before I moved on to
Nintendo, PC, PlayStation, and eventually XBOX.
I did not, however, spend much time thinking about the inside of computers, much
less what I could do with them in terms of making games or writing software. To
use the words of Paul Graham’s take on high school identity politics in Hackers
and Painters. Big Ideas from the Computer Age; my teenage identity was more like
the rebel ‘freak’ – the outsider – who enjoyed the company of ‘nerds’ – the
other outsiders. Although, I would argue – following Matthew Fuller’s definition
of a geek in How to be a geek: Essays on the culture of software, which goes
beyond the stereotype of the STEM-enthused/-educated personae – that Graham’s
freaks who are “over-informed” about, say, hip hop music and video games can be
nerds or geeks as well. Anyways, in a short and stereotypical sense, I spent as
much time as possible playing video games, scribbling graffiti and deciphering
hip hop lyrics, while my ‘nerdier’ and more academically inclined peers would
play video games, scribble code and decipher software.
I did not easily take to understanding how the virtual "sausage" was made, and
the question did not really spark my interest until I was about nineteen years
old, sitting in my room, playing the fantasy action RPG Diablo 2. Like a (cyber)
Goonie hunting for treasure, I enjoyed the game’s scavenger element of finding
and customising virtual objects so much that I started exploring ways to “hack”
a problem that annoyed me enough to care about the code beneath the surface of
animated pixels. In this case, my problem was small, but its undoing felt
necessary; if I (the gamer) wanted to augment and, thereby, upgrade an artefact
(specifically a socketed item, like a piece of armour) by merging it with a
magic gem or jewel, I would have to accept that the augmentation would be
irreversible, the outcome seemingly random, and perhaps sub-optimal.
To me, this uncontrollable randomness was hard to accept. In other words, Diablo
gamers, like myself, were and are frustrated by the risk of getting a poor
(negligible) upgrade via item customisation and, thereby, lose out on what could
have become of an artefact, while at the same time dealing with a couple of
"rare" items like, for example, a six socketed (augmentable) battle armour, and
jewels and gems. These items are, of course, entirely duplicable virtual objects
with an artificially low in-game rate of occurrence (i.e. “drop rate”). Hence,
there had to be a workaround to these artificial constraints – I just had to
“hack the game”, so to speak. But how? Surely, it was impossible, at least for
me, to actually hack the game’s software.
Back then, all I knew about software and hacking was pretty much derived from
watching movies like Blade Runner, Hardware, Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix, Total
Recall, and The Lawnmower Man. Which is to say that I knew nothing about
programming or hacking in real life, except from what I could intuit from the
fiction I had witnessed. Sure, I understood the concept of mutable files which
hold information or data that the computer reads and translates into the rules
and features of a computer game. But I was nowhere close to knowing how to write
a functional programme on my PC terminal.
So, I began looking in the game's stack of folders and files on my hard drive to
find a solution to my problem. If only I could find and duplicate the files
containing the non-augmented items.
Then I would, I thought, gain the ability to reload the game with the
non-augmented items in case I lucked out and got a less than satisfactory item
upgrade – a scenario that would leave me with a disappointing version of a rare
item. I was, in other words, moved to care about the computational insides of a
computer game through the appeal of an unknown virtual object enhancement, which
promised the satisfaction of wielding a rare power that I had conjured by
outsmarting the game. In a way, then, I continued in a meta-scavenger mode
outside the game – in ‘gamespace … the very form of the world ”outside” where
the deck is stacked, the table rigged and the fix is in’ as McKenzie Wark put
it.
Indeed, Diablo’s constitution in gamespace had ensured that the game was stacked
against the player when it comes to the likelihood of getting a worthwhile item
upgrade through in-game customisations. But I found a loophole. I found the
cache I was searching for: as I remember, the cache or folder had the moniker
“objects” and it could be found here: C:\Users\ \Saved Games\Diablo II. It may
have been a mundane Windows folder, but it contained the files for my game
character, including its inventory – augmentable weapons, armour, jewels, and
gems! In my “fuzzy” non-techie naiveté – the “freak” to Graham's “nerd” – I was
thrilled. Perhaps not exactly like a geek ‘juiced on dryness’, buy thrilled by
something that most people would consider ‘dull as dust’. To me, like a tomb
raider or would-be hacker, I had found a secret dusty tomb of infinite treasures
that required only a simple spell to work; ’copy-paste character file to desktop
folder’ titled, for instance, ‘non-augmented inventory’. I would copy the
character file, which contained promising non-augmented items I had found
throughout the game, and I would save it in a separate folder. Then, I would
start the game with the original character file in the correct game folder
(C:\Users\ \Saved Games\Diablo II) and perform an augmentation/customisation
in-game. If the customisation did not provide what I considered to be an
acceptable upgrade, I would simply quit and reload the game with my copy of the
non-augmented inventory and try again. It was a tedious process, but the
anticipatory excitement kept me at it for hours, because I wanted to see all the
permutations of added “fire damage”, “health” and “stamina” points. That was it,
I had “hacked” the game, and I wanted to reveal its possibilities. Moreover, I
was thrilled by the fact that I did not have to suffer all the disappointing
customisations.
JUST A GOONIE, NOT A HACKER
In hindsight, this experience gave me a new sense of appreciation for the
intriguing mutability and contingent ontology of virtual worlds. Exhilarated by
my discovery and new-found interest in cyberculture, I satisfied my
hacker-curious mind with science-fiction movies – I was not much of a reader
(more about that later). I must have watched Total Recall and Arnold
Schwarznegger (playing Douglas Quaid) pull a bullet-shaped geo-location device
through his left nostril at least fifty times. On an even more peculiar level,
this is also the time when the name of my pet Chinchilla (Data) – named after my
favourite character from the movie The Goonies – acquired new meanings in my
cyber-interested mind, meanings that made me appreciate the name’s computational
associations even more than I had previously. I still find that the word “data”
carries positive, fun and “fuzzy” connotations rather than those one might
associate with data-driven personal tracking, surveillance, hi-tech big data
analysis, clandestine mass-manipulation, or 'data empires' as Lucy Suchman
recently put it.
Despite my new-found affinity for cyberculture, and indeed for data, and Data, I
never aspired to become a ‘hacker’ or a data scientist, although the fact that
the mysterious and intricate world of computing was vailed in dryness and neon
lights made it even more appealing – as it still does. Yet, computer science
seemed beyond my capabilities at the time when I identified more with the rebel
figure, oft associated with a lacklustre academic record, than with the
nerd-habitus of a kid who would ease through math problems and academic
challenges – because I didn’t. Hence, I had little confidence in my ability to
study and decipher the language of computer programming, and the prospect of
writing any useful program seemed far-fetched to me. In fact, in my younger and
more rebellious years, I did not enjoy learning or reading in any traditional
sense.
In prior years, I had gravitated more towards the thrills of the skatepark and
reading hip hop lyrics than, say, homework or books like the Great Gatsby, or
other books of literary canon. By seventh grade I was doing so poorly in school
that I was sent to a small school for students with learning disabilities and
what some might consider social misfits. Unfortunately, the school did not offer
much in terms of computer science, which had sparked my interest, but I could
not grasp it in any serious way. I was even afraid to try, feeling certain that
I would fail and this feeling lingered for many years. While the school improved
my academic acumen, it also provided inspiration for kids, including friends,
from other schools to fabricate a negative social stigma around me and my new
schoolmates, a stigma that I would embody in a way that hardened my
rebel/outsider identity. This identity seemed to crystallise every time someone
would refer to me as “one of those kids” from “the stupid-school” or the
“E-class” – implying that we were so "dumb" that we could not even get an F on a
school assignment. Luckily, though, I derived a lot of self-confidence from my
parents and new teachers, who always told me that I could do anything I put my
mind to. In fact, I would often feel like I could do anything, but then I had to
sit still and do it, and that was a different and more lonely challenge to deal
with. Perhaps this was partly because I was dealing with undiagnosed ADHD –
"I'll tell you half the story, the rest you fill it in".
EMBRACING A BIT OF GAMER THEORY
When I had seen enough virtual object permutations, through a simple process of
moving files, loading and restarting Diablo, I moved on to The Sims, which made
me stumble over the physical-digital divide – a theme and problem underlying my
PhD thesis and, as it happens, McKenzie Wark’s inspiring book Gamer Theory from
2007.
However, I never actually played the The Sims in a straightforward way, as in
running the life of a simulated self (avatar) in a simulated virtual home.
Instead of being a “mere” player, I was a “trifler”, meaning that I would use
the game’s cheat code – CTRL+shift+C followed by “Motherlode” – to gain enough
Sim dollars or, “simoleons”, to use the game’s home construction feature for
what I considered to be more exciting and creative exploits, namely to build
fantasy houses, futuristic workspaces and superhero lairs complete with interior
design objects, furniture, computers, paintings etc.
As Wark put it, 'If a cheat is someone who ignores the space of a game to cut
straight to its objective, then the trifler is someone who ignores the objective
to linger within its space' (ibid). I was a happy trifler for a while, fully
absorbed in my tiny simulation, exploring its possibilities. Then, slowly, the
joy ebbed away. The space and the number of objects within it seemed too
limited. Again, the game was rigged to my dissatisfaction and I was lured
outside The Sims and into online communities that shared my interest in
user-generated virtual design objects, like furniture and hardware, stuff we
would make up, and stuff we had seen in movies or magazines. I was frustrated by
the low number of Sim-compliant virtual objects available in the default game
option or online as I faced what seemed like a huge unnecessary gap between the
virtual universe of things at my disposal and the physical universe of things
that I wanted to engage and include as participants in my fantasy 'mirrorworld'.
I tried using software to build virtual objects and fill the gap, as it were,
but the learning curve was either too steep or the upside too small to keep me
interested.
For sure, my visceral disappointment with The Sims seems to have seeded my
interest in the virtual-physical divide which also continues to haunt the
spectre of a fully fledged virtual world. In the words of investor Jonathan Lai:
'one of the biggest challenges with building the Metaverse is figuring out how
to create enough high-quality content to sustain it.'
I moved on, disappointed by what the virtual world of The Sims had to offer in
terms of the scope of its real-life simulation. As Wark describes classic gamer
critique, I held the game accountable as a failed representation of the world.
In a contemporary context, however, I find it more interesting to follow Wark’s
critical game theory as I find that the world outside the game at our present
juncture 'appears to be an imperfect form of [an RPG] computer game', in that
the digital augmentation of the analogue world appears less suited to our
present moment than it could be. The storied and hotly debated inventory
management systems of RPGs somehow seem relevant to our current moment, a moment
characterized by philosopher Tristan Garcia as 'the time of an epidemic of
things', which is to say that human societies are clearly struggling to manage
the accumulation of things. As the emergence of 'dark tourism' clearly
indicates, meatspace is filled with panoramas of techno-dystopian wastelands
reminiscent of your favourite cyberpunk novel.
Contrary, however, to Wark’s view of computer games as perfections of social
order, more often than not, it appears that the RPG genre and visions of a
metaverse aims to recreate the uncertainty, messiness, and arbitrary encounters
that seem to be a source of terror and delight in Wark’s gamespace, that is,
“the real world”. Again, in the words of Jonathan Lai on the metaverse 'Fully
emergent social experiences that model the serendipity of the real world will
become the norm' – thus goes the socio-technical imaginary of the metaverse.
Meanwhile the architects of everyday life in Warks' "gamespace" aspire to build
the order and convenience of virtual worlds that are less tied by material
constraints than life on earth, and far less chaotic. On one hand, then, it
seems that developers behind metaverse-like virtual worlds aspire to build a
perfectly chaotic yet harmless replica of gamespace to cut loose from reality –
aiming for the ultimate simulation.
On the other hand, those developing gamespace – engineers of human sociality and
analogue matter – aspire to conjure in-game features to scratch an itch (like
managing messy matter with inventory management systems complete with
digital-material twins), which seems easily justified in a capitalist
utilitarian system if one aims to minimize uncertainty and optimize for
convenience.
Moving along, as I remember, my Sims-experience also deterred me when my friends
started playing Second Life (a game taking place in a online world, where people
can meet and do stuff with virtual avatars). Anticipating my future
disillusionment with the limited scope of the game’s virtual reality, I decided
against playing Second Life. I wanted a much more extensive simulation – sort of
like the metaverse in Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk classic or the very similar
massive multiplayer online (MMO) RPG The Oasis, dreamed up by Ernest Cline for
his novel Ready Player One from 2011 which was accompanied by a movie adaptation
by Steven Spielberg in 2018. Although, this is my contemporary post-hoc
rationalisation of what I think I was after back then, around the year 2000.
Since my disillusionment with the promises of a vast virtual multi-verse, I have
preferred to read about MMORPGs or play single player action RPGs with a
dramatic storyline, epic and phantasmatic worlds based on novel and inspiring
graphic designs. But this is also not really what I'm after. My fascination with
the closed universe of each game always fades. First, it is a creeping sense of
disillusion and then suddenly a very clear sense that I am not where want to be
or doing what I really want to be doing – I am just simulating, "jerking off",
so to speak. Then, I turn off the game and realize, once again, that I am the
archetype of McKenzie Wark's 'trifler' who daydreams about metaverse exploits
and the possibility of roaming a universe of virtual worlds complete with a
seamless transition and perhaps even epic voyages in-between each adventure.
Starting from my own (autoethnographic) experience — that is, ‘XP IRL’ to the
gaming cognoscenti — the methodological biases and thematic interests worked
into my research are rooted, at least partially, in years of direct gamic
experience from digital-material self-immersion into the computer RPGs. As Chris
Goto-Jones put it in his book The Virtual Ninja Manifesto on the topic of
learning and knowledge-making through video games: "[…] we find ‘philosophy in
the flesh in various times and places emphasizing the fundamental importance of
the body and embodiment as basic aspects of the constitution of human knowledge
and thinking'.
Here, the point is that gamic experience can be embodied and felt as a kind of
knowledge and experience which in turn shapes how we think about the world. In
other words, gaming has shaped my epistemic lens and fantasies about
digital-material entanglements in the worlds I inhabit online and offline, in
cyberspace and meatspace, in the game and in gamespace. Molded by computer
games, and Wark's Gamer Theory, I have found the words to reflect on my
subjective position which seems to constantly train my gaze on the 'curious gap
between the games [I] love and an everyday life which, by the light of the game,
seems curiously similar, and yet somehow lacking'.

THE ARTISTS: WHO WILL THEY BE?
ANDREA UCINI PORTFOLIO

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