GOD LISTENS TO SLAYER.
_Soldiers in the Gulf are reported to head into conflict listening to heavy metal.
The recent riots in the Northern Territory were between gangs of aboriginal youth with allegiances to different classic metal bands: Slayer, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest._
Recently a popular internet meme was a vandalised road sign: originally saying GOD LISTENS, the circulated photo showed the sign altered to say GOD LISTENS TO SLAYER. Slayer is an old school thrash metal band. They embody the implied threat of metal culture, that violence, that anger. Religion, in all it’s forms is a consistent lyrical target of the band. The altered billboard is blasphemous, catchy and funny.
It’s a good hack. Slayer’s cultural currency with precision.
The potency was amplified by its proliferation across the Internet. Hinting at the importance of the new means of distribution: a slick bit of vandalism has become far more than its anonymous author may have intended.
Things change.
Altering objects, ideas and concepts, inscribing them with other possible readings is an artistic method. At this juncture in the history of art, despite it being no new thing, it could be the most vital method left. It’s always been a problematic activity but that is the point of the exercise; to turn accepted values and purposes on their heads. It’s uncomfortable, finding the other nature of something. Questioning the value of one methodology by suggesting another. The practice of fine art must be re-interrogated and updated as new practices have emerged. We need to examine the new forms and consider their place in fine art practice.
In _encoding_experience/10_October_2008_18:00_EST._ we are dealing with the hack.
The word hack implies breaking open - irrevocable alteration. It’s synonymous with those who probe, test and alter computer software, electronic security and computers. But anyone who alters something for their own purpose is a hacker, and the new, altered state can be called a hack.
Devices such as a Gameboy is hacked to make music, beyond novelty. Outdated computers are re-oriented for new usage. Things used in ways that their manufacturers never intended. New methods dormant in every machine, potential waiting to be unlocked.
Art practice reflects this human tendency – to make new tools from old ones. Just as vinyl never vanished but is now it is loaded with potency as a highly consumable fetish object, each limited edition signed and numbered. To preserve the value of you should record it digitally and then listen to that recording. Use your new USB turntable.
Or view a comic on the web as animation and let it remind us of the expressionistic sets of early silent film, the oldest of moving pictures. The old and the new blend in. We are reminded. We see hints, hear echoes.
Games are just as hackable as any other software and there are many possible adaptations. Gamers have been tweaking since the advent of the multiplayer system. It’s a part of the culture, and it’s a creative aspect judiciously ignored by people who deride game culture. As it progresses, expression becomes more possible: the game is hacked beyond recognition, the goals metaphorical. Interacting becomes more esoteric, the action of play infused with a richer meaning that inverts the goal of entertainment, although for those of us who knew, even the simplest of games were always rich with metaphor. The Space Invaders kept coming, getting faster. You could do better but in the end they would get you, just like life. The hack is the way out of that loop.
The hack reveals the loop and allows change.
_I remember playing my C64, my Atari, my ZX Spectrum. Those chunky bit graphics have so much beauty, infused with memory. There we all were at the milk bar, playing Galaga, Frogger, Moon Patrol. Taking a classic game and creating a new meaning destabilises that memory. _
If you used primitive home computers, early game consoles and arcane school computers, you were using the odd bit of machine code. Playing around with a great many things that the advent of Windows and other proprietary operating systems removed us from; taking us a step back from that which a computer actually is, and thusly what it can be used for.
Potential is always there, underneath the glossy limitations.