Erich Berger (AT), Laura Baigorri (ES)
Homo Ludens on the Net
www.laboralcentrodearte.org

"Homo Ludens on the Net" is a collection of websites about gaming, play and playfulness related to the exhibition "Homo Ludens Ludens" which takes place at LABoral Center for Art and Industrial Creation in Gijón 18th of April until 22nd of September 2008. "Homo Ludens Ludens" is the last part of an exhibition trilogy about the phenomena of gaming in digital times. It follows the exhibition "Gameworld" which reflected the different sides and perspectives of the gaming creativity developed by artists nowadays and "Playware", which highlighted the playful and social character of interactive art. "Homo Ludens Ludens" takes a step further by looking into the notion of play and playfulness as it has evolved in contemporary electronic culture.

The selected websites and works for "Homo Ludens on the Net" consist of online projects and appearances of artists and theorists participating in the "Homo Ludens Ludens" exhibition and give an overview on what play is today. Besides being a source of joy and entertainment that fuels a multi billion euro industry, it is also a powerful medium for our society serving educational, scientific and social purposes. Play is an activity but also a platform that builds relationships, creates networks, forms and affects identities. It enables possibilities for exploitation – in the web 2.0 era – as well as it is a medium for free speech, politics and propaganda. By play embracing these manifold activities in so many different aspects of our everyday life, a speculation about the emergence of "Homo Ludens Ludens" – the contemporary playful man – is expedient.

Erich Berger is the chief curator at LABoral Center for Art and Industrial Creation in Gijón, Asturias and Laura Baigorri is an independent curator from Barcelona.

Molleindustria
www.molleindustria.org
Molleindustria aims to reappropriate videogames as a popular form of mass communication. Their objective is to investigate the persuasive potential of the medium by subverting mainstream video gaming clichés. Since 2003, they have released a total of nine games on social issues that range from the deteriorating work situation to criticism of the junk food industry. Thanks to viral diffusion on the Net, the project has had a huge media impact in and out of their native Italy.

Bordergames
www.bordergames.org
Bordergames looks for scenarios of visible or underlying conflict – scenarios that are out of bounds to manufacturers of conventional videogames. Bordergames organises a series of workshops in which kids work on developing virtual, interactive reconfigurations of their real surroundings and design an adventure videogame narrative starring themselves. So far, they have organised workshops in Lavapiés (Madrid), El Raval (Barcelona), Al-Hoceima (Morocco), Kreuzberg (Berlin) and La Calzada (Gijón).

Ludic Society
www.ludic-society.net
Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer are the directors of the Ludic Society, an international association of game artists and theorists who follow a line of research and exploration that can best be described as “ludic”. Their serious work on fun, play and games occasionally appears in international publications. They express their ludic methodology as a poetic declaration in text and game form. Their theoretic negligence has led to the creation of a series of electromagnetic toys ("célibataire" machines and neo-pataphysic objects).

Selectparks
www.selectparks.net
In 1998, under the motto "Art Defining Games", New Zealand artist and software developer Julian Oliver (http://julianoliver.com) formed Select Parks, a collective aimed at creative videogame development and community. In blog format, "Selectparks" includes his own main software and videogame projects, as well as interesting texts and reflections on other works and events. One of Julian’s latest works is “Level Head”, an incredible spatial memory game based on a hexahedron.

Anne-Marie Schleiner
www.opensorcery.net
This page brings together Anne-Marie Schleiner’s theoretical and practical work on game modifications. Her research, based on identity and gender studies, sees game modification techniques as a new form of hacker art. Her profound knowledge of the subject and her specialised work as an artist, critic and curator in the field, allowed Anne Marie Schleiner to curate some of the earliest online exhibitions on game culture from a critical, feminist point of view.

Brody Condon
www.tmpspace.com
Brody Condon is an artist who has made game art his field, with works like "Suicide Solution", "Untitled War", "John Carmack", "Waco Resurrection" and "Youth of the Apocalypse", which he has presented as installations, DVDs, performances and online projects. Particularly sharp and ironic, Condon has specialised in reverse engineering (subversive modification of commercial videogames) and on developing 3D technology for videogames. He also collaborated on the “Velvet-Strike” project with Anne-Marie Schleiner and retroyou.

Gold Farmers
www.chinesegoldfarmers.com
Gold Farmers is a documentary by Ge Jin on a group of Chinese youths who try to change their real lives through playing virtual games. A new kind of factory in China hires young people to play massively multiplayer online games like “World of Warcraft" and “Lineage" for 10-12 hours a day and generate virtual assets such as online currency, assets and characters, which will be then be sold to rich people all over the world for real money. The young game-workers (gold farmers) experience all kinds of adventures as a way of fighting the frustration and poverty that exists in their real lives.

Playing Columbine: a true story of videogame controversy (2007 - 2008)
www.playingcolumbine.com
On April 20th, 1999, the USA was rocked by a horrific school shoot-out at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. In 2005, someone in the region created an amateur videogame exploring the actions and possible motives of the two shooters. The game was downloaded over half a million times, triggering enormous controversy. Danny Ledonne has made two documentaries, "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" and "Playing Columbine: a true story of videogame controversy" that examine the issues surrounding the future of videogames as an art form, and how a game has touched upon the larger development of an emerging form of expression.