author: Matteo Bittanti (concept, texts), IOCOSE (concept, execution); Photographer: Kenzie Burchell, Make-up artist: Emma Alexandra Watts, Models: Tom Bennett, Katie Bourner, Sabu Isayama, Maruen Zarino Lanni, Lauren Lapidge, Paul Speziali, Rory Thompson, Juliana Yazbeck
title: Game Arthritis. A systemic study of video games induced diseases
year: 2011
format: digital photographs
exhibited at: ITALIANS DO IT BETTER!!, Venice Biennal (Fringe Events), June 1 - November 27, 2011; Drodesera 2011, July 22 - July 30, 2011 (Trento, Italy)
related news: forthcoming essay - in Italian + English
description: What are the real effects of digital gaming to our fingers, hands, and bodies? The conformity of interfaces produces deformity. It’s a fact. Call it “the reality of the virtual”. Prolonged vicarious aggression lead to permanent physical disfiguration. Gaming activities produce real consequences for the users. Research has been conducted for years in several clinical laboratories across the globe but doctors and researchers are not willing to share their findings with the general population. However, evidence of new technologically-induced diseases is now becoming known outside of the scientific community. These pathologies - labeled collectively “Game arthritis” - are officially not “recognized”. The authorities have dismissed this hidden epidemic as “mass hysteria”. But according to some scientists - who speak under condition of anonymity fearing ostracization - these undiagnosed disorders are the psychopathology of ludic societies. Digital technology is indeed damaging users’ fingers, arms, postures… Even their DNA is compromised. Game arthritis is not supposed to exist. Game companies do not want to talk about it. Clinicians and dermatologists do not want to discuss it. Labs refuse to run tests. And yet, thousands of players manifest similar symptoms. Thousands of players feel real pain in their bodies. Affected subjects are not delusional. Photos and images are beginning to circulate on the internet. We have collected a few samples.
official website: Game Arthritis
Press release
Game Arthritis (2011)
A systemic study of video games induced diseases
A project by Matteo Bittanti and IOCOSE
"What are the real effects of digital gaming to our fingers, hands, and bodies?"
This ongoing project investigates the scenarios imagined by several “scientific” studies conducted in the last two decades which warned against the horrors and dangers of digital gaming. Pathologies such as the “Nintendo Thumb” or the “PlayStation Thumb” - not to mention other repetitive stress strain disorders caused by playful activities - became front page material from such media outlets as the BBC, CNN and more.
“Game Arthritis” presents a "what if" scenario in which techno-pathologies and physical deformities allegedly caused by an excessive use of digital games are presented as “real”. The conspiratorial element, which informs the vast majority of “news” we consume on a daily basis, is also one of the key ingredients of “Game Arthritis”.
What if major video game companies were actually hiding the physical consequences of virtual play?
“Game Arthritis” is a photographic documentation of eight diseases produced by a specific video game technology. The documentation is supported by quotes and references to existing scientific articles and studies published in major medical journals, while the extended captions are largely inspired by J.G. Ballard's surgical fictions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which culminated with the release of the highly controversial The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). The resulting effects are uncanny and disturbing, as the boundaries between scientific evidence and fiction completely collapse.
Game discourse is broken, and it’s your fault
Moreover, “Game arthritis” is a commentary on the changing rhetoric of gaming in the last twenty years. During this time frame, gaming went from being hailed as the “malady of the digital generation” – it has even been called out by President Barack Obama as one of the triggers for obesity in the United States – to being considered the new frontier of physical and mental fitness. The global success of Nintendo’s Wii-Fit and Brain Age/Brain Training series come to mind. These days, respected media gurus such as Jane McGonigal have gone as far as suggesting that videogames will save the world, improve humankind, and possibly cure bad breath.
Game Art is sick
Finally “Game Arthritis” is a pun. The title itself mocks the ongoing debates on the artistic value of digital gaming, which resulted in endless debates (online and offline), innumerable exhibitions, events, conferences, articles, books, lectures and so on. The fear that Game Art is becoming arthritic – asthmatic, too - is not unfounded. We fear that the worst has yet to come.
“Game Arthritis” will be exhibited from the 1st of June until the 27th of November 2011 at the Venice Biennale in Italy, in the context of the exhibition “Neoludica: Art is a Game 2011-1966”, at Sala dei Laneri, Santa Croce 131, Venezia, Italy.
BIOs
Matteo Bittanti is an Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland in the Visual Studies program. He also collaborates with the Stanford Humanities Lab at Stanford University. His artistic projects deal with the shifting perception of video games in our culture. To pay the bills, Bittanti writes about technology, cinema, gaming, and popular culture for various publications (WIRED, Rolling Stone, LINK, Duellanti). => http://www.matteobittanti.org
The group IOCOSE was founded in 2006 and is now based in London, Berlin and Milan. They have exhibited at Tate Modern and HTTP gallery in London, UK, Jeu de Paume in Paris, France, and Aksioma in Ljubljana, Slovenia. They work with camouflage, mimicry, fakes and pranks, mostly based in news, social and mass media. Among their works, they have hijacked an exhibition at Tate Modern, invented a spam campaign for the Italian Democratic Party, designed a religious hi-tech product based on electric shock, crafted an IKEA guillottine, experimented a drug made out of floppy discs, and organized an international contest for the most valueless video on YouTube. => http://www.iocose.org/
Full Credits
Game Arthritis (2011)
A work by Matteo Bittanti and IOCOSE
Photographer: Kenzie Burchell
Make-up artist: Emma Alexandra Watts
Models: Tom Bennett, Katie Bourner, Sabu Isayama, Maruen Zarino Lanni,
Lauren Lapidge, Paul Speziali, Rory Thompson, Juliana Yazbeck
Contacts
Paolo (IOCOSE – London)
contact at iocose dot org
Matteo (himself! – San Francisco)
mbittanti at gmail dot com
Online references
http://gamearthritis.org/
http://iocose.org
http://www.matteobittanti.org/
http://neoludica.blogspot.com/
exhibitions
ITALIANS DO IT BETTER!!, Venice Biennal (Fringe Events), June 1 - November 27, 2011
