Sergi Jordá
versión en español
Sergi Jordá
versión en español |
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FRAME 1
From the beginning of the seventies, the first videogame I remember is that black and white ping pong game in cafés, with its little ball and two paddles which you could slide up and down with the rotating buttons. This provided "healthy athletic competition." A short while later, the little Martians arrived, and from that first moment, John Wayne's phrase "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" became real like never before.
Until that time, the majority of violent games had required real antagonists, which inevitably relativized the good-bad dichotomy. Even with the absence of human rivals in the violent and cruel pastimes such as the trapping and torture of insects, spiders, frogs or bats, the evil was caused consciously and formed a fundamental part of the pleasure. With the virtual enemies of electronic games, this balance is broken; the bad guys are always the others and the violence and cruelty are free.
FRAME 2
In 1992 during the Persian Gulf War, the videogame of virtual war broadcasted by CNN made us discover a horrifying reality. The flight simulator interface was the same as always. The only difference was that the click now produced thousands of real deaths.
FRAME 3
In the mid-eighties AIDS began to change people's sexual habits. Clean sex is born, and by logical contrast, dirty sex as well. Cyberspace is very clean. Its viruses, for the time being, cannot affect human beings. Thus, cybersex is without a doubt, a kind of sex with a future.
FRAME 4
Is it permissible for cyberspace to give us the right to cruelty without remorse, and the safe immersion in crystal-clean sex?
FRAME 5
Since the end of1994 the multimedia performance of EPIZOO (produced by Marcel.lí Antúnez, Sergi Jordá and LOMA productions) has turned the user into a potential transmitter of tele-pleasure and/or tele-pain. EPIZOO integrates elements of performance, installations, body art, videogames and multimedia applications so that the public may play with (or torture) the performer's naked body via the graphic interface of a computer. The nose, ears, mouth, chest, and thighs of the performer are generously offered, together with the possibility of modifying the graphic animation, music, lighting and the entire course of the piece. Thus, EPIZOO can constitute a creative experience in real virtuality in which the moral price to pay for a possible act of cruelty is absolutely subjective.
Since its premiere, EPIZOO has been presented in numerous countries (Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Holland, Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia) and our experience has demonstrated to us, among other things, clear behavioral differences according to age, sex and ethnic group.
Biography: |
Sergi Jordá Puig, born in Madrid 1961, is an artist and software designer. After receiving a bachelor's degree in Physics in 1985, he began work in musical computer science, both in composition and programming, research and teaching. He has composed for theatrical and video productions, presented work at electro-acoustic music festivals, given lectures and written numerous articles and computer programs. Since 1992 he has been working in the area of multimedia, collaborating especially with the visual artist Marcel.lí Antúnez, with whom he is producing the interactive projects JoAn I.home de Carn (a robot sculpture made out of pigskin) and the interactive performance EPIZOO, which has been presented at the major electronic art festivals around the world. |