A way to see this work is how it connects existing elements. The goal is not so much to invent all new things, but to compose a new meaningful whole of different elements so that they will complement each other. For example, there already are massively multi-player on-line roleplaying games (mmorpg), where people participate in different worlds. Also, there are public displays with which people can interact using their mobile phones, also with game-like content (famously on TV). Furthermore, socially-critical works and communities live on the net. We take a look at those areas, how we see their current state and why and how certain parts of them will take place in the installation.
Computer games are technologically at the forefront in both the quality of
real-time visualisations and fluency of network interaction. For example,
Unreal Tournament 2003 (and Quake3) utilize recent advances in graphics
cards and feature efficient servers where virtual worlds are hosted for
the gamers. Additional tools, such as IRC and voice-over-IP (TeamSpeak?
etc.) make playing a very engaging experience. The content, i.e.
gameplay, can be described as virtual sports. Perhaps similarly to traditional
sports, the action is not in relation with things happening
elsewhere/otherwise in the real world. In The First and The Last, such
connections will be explored in two directions, as elaborated in the
following.
Mobile phones (and PDAs?) are already much more numerous than desktop computers, and are expected increasingly to be so. They introduce computed-based applications such as information organising, communication networks, media processing and games to many people who are not interested nor able to use more powerful, yet more cumbersome desktop computers. However, there is a tendency to separate mobile services from similar, perhaps already existing ones in the stationary computing world. A clear and much discussed reason for this is of course the differing contexts and hence the needs of a mobile user. But another derives from the fact that on the Internet people are not used to pay, but over mobile phone networks the operators tend to charge for each service. For example, e-mail does not cost per message sent (not to mention any length limits). Besides all that and other reasons for the separation (such as technical differences), it is known that same services can well be made usable from both stationary computers and mobile phones / PDAs?. Here we attempt to make it so that there are means to participate in the same worlds in both ways. A social motivation for this is to try to connect computer gamers, often separated in their dedicated communities, with non-computer non-gamers, who might just be passing by the installation on the street.
Public displays provide the (primary) way for people with mobile devices to participate in The First and the Last. ( !!FIXME!! something about them in general?)
The large displays, e.g. projections, are controlled by a computer, which is connected also to a Bluetooth base station that provides the link for capable mobile devices..
, including sensor information from the physical world, such as weather and air$ !!FIXME!!
An additional type of connection in the system is to other, external systems. In particular, common news / economic databases are mined to determine some variables, such as stock exchange indexes, currency exchange rates etc. Also, analogically to how physical sensors read environmental information at the installation site, the condition of the network is monitored (e.g. the latency between the First and the Last main server and Whitehouse.Gov). These variables can be mapped to basically any features of the artificial worlds, but they may often be non-critical: e.g. dollar vs. euro determining wind direction, latency in the network the colour of the sky. These kind of mappings, or ones to more trivial things, reflect how such strongly communicated (in case of economic figures) news in the mass media in a way form a common consciousness about things that often remain remote and render irrelevant to actual actions of people in the everyday lives. Yet it is an attempt to connect game worlds and entertaining virtual environments to information systems commonly used in boring office work.
..
Finally, artificial life has already been demonstrated in different systems throughout the years, and we do not expect to make a (theoretical) breakthrough in that area - quite the opposite, for the sake of simplicity the idea is to limit the genetic algorithms used to very basic and well-known ones. We find that many basic ideas there are still new to most people and not that much publicly explored. Also the applications in commercial games are rare and preliminary (!!FIXME!! what? a big word). But most importantly, we plan to contextualise them in intellectually and emotionally meaningful settings where artifacts communicate to people and people can learn to communicate with each other.
(!!FIXME!! where and how about non-controversial vs. controversial content?)