UBERMORGEN.COM
Chinese
Gold, 2006
Domenico Quaranta
UBERMORGEN-COM is one of the most exceptional couples working in New Media Art or, as they prefer to call it, the European Techno Avant-Garde. Founded in 1999 by Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, one of the creators of etoy (www.etoy.com), the collective has produced a series of works which have become landmarks of this last decade of Media Art. These include Vote-Auction (2000), a media performance involving a false site where Americans could supposedly put their vote up for auction, and Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI, 2005, in collaboration with Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio), an operation which proposed using GoogleÕs own advertising revenue to buy up every single share in the company (in other words, the worldÕs most famous search engine would be bought using its own money).
The name of the group (literally Òthe day aAfter
tomorrowÓ) is a conflation of the futuristic rhetoric of the dotcom business
and certain stereotypes of the Far Right. (Who
does not know the worddo you remember the †ubermensch?)
As for the Ô.comÕ, that aims to present this artistic collective as some sort
of business structure (a strategy already followed with etoy). This play upon identities reached its apogee in Vote Auction, when Hans Bernhard presented himself to the media as the manager
of a corporation that intended to Òbring capitalism and democracy closer
togetherÓ;[1]
it also finds expressions in the company logos (seals) which UBERMORGEN.COM
designs for each of its projects.
Only quite recently have UBERMORGEN.COM
focussed their attention on videogames, with a very precise purpose. In the
series Machinima (five videos uploaded on video.-googdle.com
and youtube.com between April and May 2006), UBERMORGEN.COM was extending the
practice of media hacking and the concept of the [F]original (fake original) to
the world of videogames, one of the most economically frenetic and user-popular
areas of media. At the same time, they were aiming to Òchallenge the, now
rather conventional, Ômake and styleÕ of most machinima, which is confined
within such traditional game environments as World
of Warcraft (WoW) and other
ego-shooter games.ÓÒto challenge
the already conventional Òmake and styleÓ of most Machinimas which play within
traditional computer-games like WOW or Ego-Shooters.Ó[2] Machinima are films (some short videos, some veritable full-length
films) shot within the interior of the videogame. Usually they use the camera
within the game and arise as a means of making visible to others what one is
doing. The phenomenon emerged primarily in online gaming, where it became
possible to prepare veritable scripts and involve other players as actors.
Always attuned to what enthusiasts were doing, the production companies lost no
time in making more sophisticated instruments for film direction available;
ultimately there was an entire videogame centred on the creation of machinima (The
Movies, Lionhead Studios, 2005). In short,
veritable production studios were set up and a flourishing new business sector
emerged.
UBERMORGEN.COM machinima go in a completely
different direction. ÒThis is conceptual art. We download a new game for
Macintosh, we install a video camera in front of the screen and we start to
record whilst we play the game only once. Then we edit the video, adding titles
and we upload it on video-google-com, youtube-com and the UBERMORGEN.COM site.ÓÒIt is conceptual art. We
download a new game for macintosh OSX, we install the videocamera in front of
the screen, then we start recording and we play the game once. Then we edit the
video and add black sequences and title and put it online on video.google.com,
on youtube.com and on the UBERMORGEN.COM web-site.Ó[3]
Thus, UBERMORGEN.COM exploit the hype around the machinima phenomenon to
spread, like viruses, their Ôforged originalsÕ, media products that occupy the
fine line between copy and original, reality and fiction. And they do this
whilst rejecting all the conventions of the genre. Their game is rather clumsy
and proceeds by trial and error; there is no directing or script; no
soundtrack. The use of an external video camera breaks down the image, which is
almost always black and white; thus the genre (and the game) are
ÔhistoricisedÕ.
The Chinese Gold project (2006) consists of two series of photographic prints. The
first (Untitled No.1 Ð No.7) is a series of
photos taken at an Online-Gaming Workshop in China. Many videogames, from The
Sims to World of Warcraft, have developed a solid business based on the sale of customised
terrain, avatar costumes, weapons and so on. It is no surprise that this has
led to the emergence of a sort of videogame lumpenproletariat, who work night and day to earn foreign currency by producing
equipment to be sold on to wealthier players (generally via eBay). Nor is it a
surprise that this phenomenon reflects trends to be found elsewhere in our
economy Ð for example, relocation of production to the countries of South-East
Asia, where labour is cheap. An entirely ÔvirtualÕ economy has therefore
produced absolutely real consequences. The project documents these videogame
sweatshops and the life of these ÔChinese Gold FarmersÕ, with the icons of WoW figuring amidst chain-smoking, junk food and doss-house living
conditions. As UBERMORGEN.COM explains ÒThe project looks at the
virtualisation of capital and the new mechanisms of a market which does not
deal in real goods. It is a situation in which new services, such as Ôearning
digital goldÕ and Ôconstructing game charactersÕ, create an important global
market and thus begin to play a role in the world economy. What we are seeing
today might Ð indeed, must Ð be seen as foreshadowing the way the economy will
go in the twenty-first century.ÓÒThe project deals with the virtualisation of
capital and with new layers of market-mechanisms without actual goods that have
to be shipped, new services such as 'earning computer gold' or 'building up
computer-game characters' become a global market of critical mass and therefore
start to play a role in our worldwide economy, although what we see today can
or must surely be considered the business avant garde of the 21st century.Ó[4]
The second series (Chinese Gold Ð World
of Warcraft, Belgrade Session N¡1 Ð N¡8) comprises
several screenshots produced during a game session in Belgrade, at a large arcade
where Serb videogamers spend a large part of
their day. Here is the other side of the above-described economy: consumers who
ÒwasteÓ their day in exhausting game session. In fact, there are already
communities for videogame addicts who have lost the ability to distinguish
between the real and the virtual. This confusion here finds aesthetic
expression in the blue monochrome of the first series (which brings together
reality and the imaginary world of the videogame) and in the confused visual
resolution of the second series (in which it is difficult to tell whether one
is seeing an image of the real or the virtual). UBERMORGEN.COM does not hand
down judgements; it limits itself to photographing phenomena that foreshadow
the economy of the twenty-first century. ÒThe future is now!Ó
Featured in M. Bittanti, D. Quaranta (eds), GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames, Milan, Johan & Levi 2006.