I’m really starting to enjoy revisiting & reentering items into the Avant Game List. Analogously it has been like taking a picture of something, and then forgetting that that thing continues to live/evolve after the picture was taken.

In that light, it has been interesting to see how Cory Arcangel’s I Shot Andy Warhol changed since I last took a look at it. The game itself hasn’t changed, but the popular knowledge of the game has. It has garnered a decent number of blog posts over the last year- most likely precipitated by a YouTube video showing game footage.

What I find most interesting is that I Shot Andy Warhol now seems to be totally absent from Cory Arcangel’s website. I wonder what caused this- I believe that it used to be there, but I might be wrong.

Regardless, I Shot Andy Warhol has been added to the Avant Gaming List.

I’ve been intending to repopulate the Avant Game List for like forever (Clone High anyone?). So without further excuse:

Augmented Coliseum:

…a game environment using augmented reality (AR) technology that enables virtual functions for playing a game using small robots is proposed. Similar to how children can use their imaginations to make a normal room into the air for playing games with toy airplane, we propose a way to embody such imaginations virtually by superimposing computer graphics onto toys in the real world.

Augmented Coliseum has been added to the Avant Game List.

Well I’m on the fence about adding this one to the avant game list, but I do find it pretty damn amusing.

What is Faceball?
At its simplest level Faceball involves two people hitting beachballs at each other’s faces. At a deeper level it’s a vehicle for the release of personal animosity, and the Shaming of the Weak.

The word of the street is that Faceball was invented by the staff over at Flickr. Check it out here, flickr photos here, and vimeo videos here.

Wow. Brilliant. Does anyone know whose work this is? The concept is just beautiful. I’ve placed an email to Whydoesshelovethemoon@gmail.com in hopes of finding out. Also, no chatter yet over at the ufiction forums. So I really have no idea whether this is one-shot art or part of a larger campaign.

Via Stencil Archive:

“She Loves the Moon” is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. It is told in a new medium of storytelling that uses spray painted stencils connected to each other by arrows. The streetscape is used as sort of an illustration to accompany each piece of text.

It’s a love story involving two characters who start in different locations. His story starts at 16th and Valencia, in front of the Crown Hotel / Limon Restaurant with the text “He Leaves his Lonely Apartment.” Her story starts at 21st and Guerrero in front of a Victorian mansion with the text, “She Leaves her Lonely Apartment.” Eventually their paths merge in front of Tartine Cafe at 18th and Guerrero, where they meet, and their paths travel together until relationship drama pulls them apart. Eventually their paths remerge, at which point there are two possible endings, happy and tragic, and two other points where the story can end unexpectedly if the viewer chooses the wrong ending. All in all, there are 4 possible endings.

Stencil Stories: She Loves the Moon has been added to the Avant Game List.

Two more links for you:
Doej15’s Flickr Photo’s
Stencil Story @ New York Magazine

Thanks for the link Al.

As much as I ‘d like to believe otherwise, it isn’t possible to make regular updates to the Avant Game List if I insist on review each game before I post it. So the new policy is going to be post now, review later.

So, via selectparks:

Neil Hennsessy’s Basho’s Frogger is a is a ludic response to Canadian poet Derek Beaulieu’s translation of the works of Matsuo Bashō; the most famous poet of Edo period Japan and master of the brief and clear haiku.

I wish I knew more about this piece- particularly which haiku inspired it. Honestly this feels like a piece out of Ian’s Games-in-Translation class at Georgia Tech and is very similar to Jeff Crouse’s Laüstic (which I need to see if he has a playable web version of).

Basho’s Frogger has been added to the Avant Game List.

I’ve been asked a few times now, “What is a good indication that something is an appropriative game?” In the past I’ve used a few different answers but after listening to a recent NPR report on Parkour, I think I’ve settled on the perfect sound bite: If the game pisses people off and makes them say something like, “Hey! You can’t do that here!” there is a good chance you are playing an appropriative game. Unlike other games, the primary friction between an appropriate game and the rest of the world isn’t a discussion of content. It is a discussion of location and Parkour is a perfect example of that.

Via Wikipedia:

The cultural phenomenon Parkour is a physical activity which is difficult to categorize. It is not an extreme sport, but an art or discipline that resembles self-defense in the martial arts. According to the founder David Belle, the spirit of Parkour is guided in part by the notions of “escape” and “reach,” that is, the idea of using quick thinking with dexterity to get out of difficult situations. You want to move in such a way, with any movement, that will help you gain the most ground on someone/something as if escaping from it, or chasing toward it. Thus, when faced with a hostile confrontation with a person, one will be able to speak, fight, or flee. As martial arts are a form of training for the fight, Parkour is a form of training for the flight. Because of its difficulty to categorize, it is often said that Parkour is in its own category: “Parkour is Parkour.”

Parkour has been added to the Avant Game List.

Bonus: A David Belle BBC Commerical:

Earlier this week Kotaku blogged on 1Up’s Platform Agnostics: The Most Whored Out Games In History. The reason that I mention the Kotaku post is because, for an image, their post used the Arcade: A Blinkenlight’s Installation version of Tetris.

Seeing this image got my mind back to Arcade making a perfect candidate to be re-entered into the Avant Game List.

The installation featured versions of 4 8-bit all-stars; Tetris, Pong, Breakout, and Pac-Man. Via a customized ISDN control system, individuals could dial in to Arcade with their cellphones and play these modest games on a truly grand scale.

Arcade: A Blinkenlight’s Installation has been added to the Avant Game List.

Btw. Tetris is the most whored out game of all time appearing on 39 separate platforms.

The greatest contribution that the first iteration of Avant Gaming made to the gaming community was the Avant Game List. It was a list of games that “that in a certain time and place, by design, modification or accident, offer a unique experience of play through the subversion of mainstream conventions.”

As I have had more than a few emails asking what happened to it, I apologize for the time it is taking to reconstruct this resource. My goal is to repopulate the list with its old entries, as well as, add new titles. Personally, it is turning out to be an interesting experience. In revisiting this old content, I’m forced to reconsider the validity of my previous arguments. There have been a couple “What the hell was I thinking”’s.

The first entry on the new list is an oldie but goodie, Jim Andrew’s Arteroids. In revisiting the material, I was pleased to learn that Jim has continued development on the piece and the game is progressing nicely.

So without further adieu, Arteroids has been added to the Avant Game List.