EDDO STERN

Eddo Stern (pronounced "ay-do") is an Israeli-born, socially-conscious multimedia artist, who also happens to be a video game addict. He now lives in Los Angeles and his art explores contemporary video gaming subculture as a way to challenge society’s current state of consciousness concerning media, technology, and leisure activity in our post-9/11 climate. Eddo was featured at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as one of their New Frontier Artists.

Some of his works include...

DARKGAME (2007)
Darkgame (prototype) is a videogame installation in which two participants, playing against each other, maneuver avatars around a two-dimensional plane, their movements projected against the gallery wall. What's unusual about this scenario is that the experience for both parties involves elements of sensory deprivation. One person is completely "blind," unable to view the main interface and responding only to nonvisual cues: the vibrations of a headset Stern designed to correspond with the location of the opposing player, and related audio signals. And while the other character is able to see the action play out in real time, the field of play becomes obscured when he or she is hit and small patches of gray begin to expand.
(see Rhizome's interview with Stern)

BEST FLAME WAR EVER (2007)
Best… Flame War… Ever… (King of Bards vs. Squire Rex, June 2004) is based on a conflict between two testosterone-fuelled gamers regarding the other’s degree of expertise in the game EverQuest.
(see Chris Bors's review in Art Review)

DEATHSTAR (2004) (Digital Video, TRT 10:00 min)
Deathstar is a video in which violence-against a single body, Osama Bin Laden's- is so close to seem abstract. The work edits a series of sequences shot in different games devoted to the assassination of the public enemy number one, together with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ soundtrack, as if trying to compare two different versions-and yet individually similar- of the media representation of death.
(see Domenico Quaranta’s text from DIGIMAG)

VIETNAM ROMANCE (2003) (Digital Video, TRT 00:22:45)
Stern continued to tackle the erosion of memory and history in his incredible smooth video ride: Vietnam Romance. A genre in itself, Nam games now abound in stores giving us different experiences of the rock disillusion of the Vietnam War. Stern cleverly juxtaposes game imagery with MIDI extracts of '60s rock tracks and recreates classic scenes from Hollywood movies to make his point.

A chopper slides over the landscape, for example, as we hear the opening track sequence of the TV series MASH, or get a glimpse of Charlie Sheen as he dies over and over again in the classic sacrificial scene from Platoon. There are more references and visual puns that ultimately seduce you into a state of abandonment or rather... forgetfulness, because the video, with killings and all, is actually a pretty cool, smooth ride, just like Apocalypse Now was; or the rock - hallucinatory - opera of the era.
(see Juan Devis' text from KCET)

TEKKEN TORTURE TOURNAMENT (2001) (game performance/custom hardware)
Tekken Torture Tournament is a one-night event combining the latest video game technology, untapped public aggression and painful electric shock. Willing participants are wired into a custom fighting system - a modified Playstation (running Tekken 3) which converts virtual on screen damage into bracing, non-lethal, electric shocks.
(for Tekken Torture Tournament video)


After viewing/considering the above works...

• Do you think Eddo Stern sees the state of consciousness in contemporary society as an active or passive one?
• What, if any, are the limitations of relying on subculture that is for the most part unknown, misunderstood, and/or ignored by the general public as an arena for social commentary?