This is my artefact based on the theme of power.

It features a pigeon who greedily eats a cheeseburger. When he is finished stuffing his face he wants more to eat. He performs a number of rituals in the hopes that more cheeseburgers will appear.

This video deals with our belief in superstition and our tendency to reinforce a behaviour if it results in us getting a reward. In other words, we tend to repeat a process or ritual if we benefit from it at the end with a reward.

leading up to this project i had looked a few video games, the idea of assumptions and beliefs came to mind when I looked at Viva Piñata and how the gamer is expected to guess certain things in the game. For instance i found myself expecting GREEN plant fertilizer would have an effect on an  APPLE tree. I was right. So I  went on to look at a behaviour experiment by Derren Brown in which he puts this theory to the test, his test was based one done using pigeons in the 1960’s which lead me to look into B F Skinners behaviour experminents.

Initially my idea was going to come to life in real time using moving image cameras, but I adjusted my approach as I felt I could be more creative doing an animation instead.

I have had my fair share of problems during the creation process. The animation took the best part of 10hours which was spread out over a few days and It was created in Adobe ImageReady it could’ve taken me even longer if I hadn’t received some valuable advice from a fellow student prior to beginning the project!

Initially i wanted to add a soundtrack to the piece but importing the resultant animation file into Adobe PremierPro seemed to corrupt the flow of the animation, resulting in a constant Jerkiness. Therefore i would have to sacrifice the fludity of my animation for sound. This is something i’d like to rectify at a late date.

Even now i believe YouTube doesnt display the content of my animation as smooth as it does when played on my computer. If anyone wishes to recieve a high rez copy i can email it to you.

These are a few rough thumbnail sketches of my project in its early stages. The pictures on the left highlight a different approach i was going to take, however i opted out of this as it wasnt as tasteful or stylised.

Although they are rather crude, at this point in time during the process i had a lot of the preparation and research completed, it was just a matter of turning my storyboards into a viable project idea.

This video clip from YouTube demonstrates part of my influence for my first project this term. It shows some of Skinners Behaviour experiments with pigeons, whereby he rewards the pigeons for reinforcement, meaning if they perform a specific action they will be given food, it shows that animals are susceptible to conditioning and create a belief system based upon the technique which rewards them, such as rotating in an anti clock wise direction.

I advise a YouTube search of “B F Skinner Behaviour” should this video be removed.

15.10.08

My first project, featuring power as its main underlying theme will be based on B F Skinners experimentation on the behaviour of  Pigeons in 1960’s.

I wish to convey a message about our belief system and demonstrate one of the reasons why we believe in the things we do.

The pigeon in B F Skinners experiment will consume some food, when he is finished more will appear, he consumes the food again, baffled as to what caused the food to appear he makes an attempt at making more food appear by performing ritualistic behaviour in hopes that one of his prior actions will cause more food to drop.

The morale of the story is that regardless of what behaviour the pigeon demonstrates, the food could be given at random, there is no secret action it must undertake to make more food appear. However because the pigeon is rewarded for performing a specific action, it believes that it must re-enforce this action to achieve its reward.

Therefore the illegitimate power lies within the ritual the pigeon performs and his belief he can control something he cannot, this leaves the pigeon ultimately powerless as he is acting on faith and not considering reason.

Relates too – Religion, culture, possessions, sentiment, emotion, illusion.

14.10.08

Surviellance

Consumers and the general public are surveyed on a number of levels, the most obvious being, cameras. Now aside from that there are more complex ways we are surveyed.

Supermarket consumer profiling – although we are not personally logged in a supermarket date base, (unless we have a club card) our purchasing habits are recorded and this data is then used to influence the layout of the stock on the shop floor to encourage shoppers into purchasing items., television advertisements are also created as a result of common occurrences in our receipt data.

Online data – the information we store online through social networking sites is  monitored and used to “improve its services” there are also more devious uses for our data. Various online market stores record our search history and create personalised pages with products that relate to what we’ve searched for in the past.

Email – Our email content is monitored and advertisements relating to key words within our messages to people often appear within the google mail service.

Western culture Ideology – Because we live and abide by a set of cultural beliefs and values we share a significant amount of that cultures ideology towards capitalism and consumerism. We are therefore profiled to a certain extent by large corporations and advertisers who can create links between our buying habits. They are able to survey us by sharing data with company’s who perhaps offer a similar service or target a similar age group. So for instance a magazine aimed at young male adults would advertise a high caffeine soft drink or sporting equipment, these links are not made by accident they are heavily considered and are designed to make the advertisers alot of money.

A film by Jan Svankmajer which is centred around a couple who cannot have children, due to medical reasons. Whilst pulling roots up in the garden one afternoon the husband of the relationship unearths a root which resembles a baby. He decides to tidy it up and polish it, he then presents it to his wife who takes to it immediately and cares for it as if it was a real baby.

The film uses a mixture of stop motion techniques and live action footage, its an experimental piece based upon eastern european fairy tales and features a challenging ideology . The scenes i have seen deals with values such as greed and obsession in the form of a mother longing for a child. It is a surrealist piece and has within it, its own set of ethics and rules that fully comply with and embrace the world that svankmajer has created within his film. For instance, the husband, prior to carving the a baby out of wood was having what appeared to be constant halucinations about babies, these often crude yet humourous scenes involved a baby being bought and wrapped up in newspaper from a market fishmonger and a baby emerging from the inside of a watermelon. These ethical contraversies help create a fanatical to the film.

Other elements include a nosy daughter who lives in a flat close to the couple. She has to deal with what she believes is an elderly pervert who also resides in the same building. Could it be that she is imagining this? from a power perspective her mother seems to think she is acting up and that the elderly man means no harm, this is an example of a person who is influential in this scenario of power, however she chooses not to consider the protest of the person without it (her daughter).

The idea of Superstitious behaviour among humans is intriguing me and the notion that an odd sock or a strange ritual will protect them from an outcome which seems almost certainly out of their hands to control.

Perhaps it is just as intriguing to understand the reason why the ritual or object of power is formed, in the first place, one could consider the elite media outlets for example. They shape, restrict and select how we live our lives therefore it is not outlandish to think they have a detrimental effect on our beliefs and our resultant ritualistic behaviour towards them. The media’s treatment toward, religion, politics and other materials which are most recognisably subject to censorship or restrictions are just a few examples of how pockets of communities are created as a result,in part A of the country people will believe something completely different to part B. On matters regarding politics and religion this comes down to local government and public opinion who’s expressions air the views of the cultural majority of any given population.

The power then lies in the object or result they are protecting themselves from. Practicality has been glazed over and their belief system takes over. Even if the result goes against that of which the superstitious behaviour is supposed to prevent such as losing a sports match, humans still go back to their superstitious belief that their system will come good eventually, when realistically the ritual has no effect on the outcome whatsoever.

I would like to take this further, and perhaps produce an artefact based upon Power within superstitious behaviour and how the result, even when the lucky coin doesn’t work is that we as humans demonstrate a lack of power through our narrow minded belief that we can control the uncontrollable.

RELIGION is perhaps one of the most identifiable ways this theory makes sense, i would hope the wordRELIGION has more impact now it is put into this superstitious context after reading what i’ve just written.

In this space i will throw around a few of my more preliminary ideas in preparation for my atifact based upon power.

POWER FINDINGS in…

Viva piñata

• The player is in control of their garden. By growing plants and buildings.
• Able to manipulate the contents to provoke different scenarios and outcomes.

The player becomes a tool in an experimental process much like the famous pigeon experiments by BF Skinner, whereby he discovered that the pigeons would act in certain ways in accordance to being fed treats, they were fed at random intervals, however, the pigeons thought there was a way to trigger the treats being given, therefore they repeated what they felt was the action that they hoped would trigger a treat. The pigeons all did different things in their cages in their attempts to figuring out how to get a treat, yet the result was ultimately the same for all of them.

Another example is this experiment by derren brown, recreating the same process with humans…

To summarize there are differences in this theory of superstious behavoiour compared with the video game, because certain actions do cause coherent results in the game, whilst in the experiment they do not. However the initial proecss of expermenting still applies. Such as pouring RED FERTILIZER over an APPLE TREE SEED. The conditioning in our minds reads that ‘red’ means apple, and this will therefore be our first choice to poor over the seed, lets not rule out the possibly of choosing the GREEN FERTILIZER. But we would certainly not relate the PURPLE or the BLUE FERTILIZER as having anything to do with apples.

The premise of this game is to create and maintain a garden of trees, flora and attract animals in the style of a Piñata. At first glance it would appear to be children’s game, with its colourful theme and endearing sound effects. However it is an extremely complex and sometimes frustrating game that will get even the most experienced adult gamers into a huff.

You begin with an empty garden and limited funds, as you progress you will unlock seeds in which you can create new plants and trees, as a result new Piñata will come to visit your garden, it is then up to you to for fill the rest of their requirements, resulting in them becoming a permanent resident. Things aren’t always so simple, the garden is forever changing, and attracting new creatures could possibly bring in a predator Piñata to your garden, thus creating rifts between your creatures. The game is about discovery, and is most comparable to harvest moon and Pokémon.

You are given tools such as a spade, watering can and seed packets. These enable you to look after your garden by watering plants, digging ponds and covering the garden in a layer of fresh grass.

The premise of the game is very simple, grow/build things to attract Piñata animals, however making money is a graft, there is no give-aways in this game, you make money by selling that of which you have grown whether it be vegetables or the piñata creatures themselves. And if that wasn’t difficult enough there are Sour Piñatas, professor pester and his goons to deal with. They will actively destroy your garden and its inhabitants. Frustrating you of all the hard work you have done.

There is a levelling system in place; every new piñata that you attract, every new plant you create will go towards levelling the player. This enables players to purchase new types of spades, watering cans and garden ornaments which all go towards making the players experience a tad easier. Enabling players to block sour piñatas and professor pester and his bullies.

The speed in which the player levels up can also depend on their willingness to experiment. Sprinkling fertilizer on plants will sometimes increase their growth resulting in bonus experience for the player; however there are many types of fertilizer to choose from and this can prove to be a costly experiment. Another way the player can achieve more experience is by feeding their piñata certain type of food, seed or plant. This process is far more difficult as it is a complete guessing game, the result however could cause a piñata to change their colour or evolve them into an entirely new species.

The game then is not a simple gardening sim, in fact it is very difficult to sit back and relax as there is always something to do, whether it be whacking sour piñatas with your spade or planting the seeds from a dead plant or freeing up space so you can add critical ornaments and piñata homes.

I looked at this game because the genre is something that is not commonly found in mainstream gaming. It deals with issues regarding the preservation of nature, animals and commerce which are all coated in a generous helping of rareware style. On the surface the game looks like child’s play to the ill informed, however that is far from the case. It is very much a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I think its sheer brilliance in the sense that the game portrays tasks and activities that are not commonly associated with gamers. The makers obviously feel they should be brought to their attention. Producing a tree or plant in Viva piñata may be far fetched from real life but that can be said about a lot of media garbage just the same.

I have a real interest in this video game In terms of the themes the product deals with, it’s a delightful and creative way of playing a videogame, and features a charm which I’d love to replicate in a project of my own. It’s a genre that hasn’t been heavily exploited and I think that makes the game weak in the sense that it isn’t able to identify the things it does badly.

The game puts the user in complete control, they are able to create their very own garden from scratch, however, something that bugs me is the fact that the player will find themselves adding things to their garden, not because they look good or fit the theme but because they meet specific requirements, such as acquiring a new piñata.

The menu system is something which looks nice however it seems to turn simple enquiries about garden space into a timely process. Purchasing new items, hiring helpers or building houses requires users to be taken from their garden and be brought into a slot machine style menu process where they then choose what they wish to purchase. The whole system takes far too long for my liking.

The player is not able to buy, sell and plant things with ease because of this. It would’ve been far better to implement an inventory into the user interface much like real time strategy (RTS) games such as Command and Conquer as this would then speed up the process it takes to buy and sell whilst also not distracting the user from their garden.

We just watched a screening of Lars Von Tiers film called The five obstructions. His aim was to challenge his former tutor into thinking creatively and to break ties with his habitiual production of film.

He wanted Jorgen (his former tutor) to recreate a famous film he made called “the perfect people” but in doing so Lars Von Trier put a number of obstructions upon Jorgen that he must adhere too when creating this new version of his classic work.

The film looks into social, ethical and moral issues, pushing the boundaries of the observer and seeing just how far the film maker will go in order to capture a moment.