According to Kant, we perceive, and, in turn, appropriate, the things we phenomenologically experience in an effort “make sense” of the world. The “make” in this “make sense” is telling: Kant claims that we “make” reality with and through Reason.
Accordingly, it is impossible to imagine or to create any “thing” unless it is understood that this “thing” is but an appropriation of “things” that have, either one: been phenomenologically experienced by the subjective “I,” or two: as but a composite of those “things” which are understood to exist a priori. In Kant’s own words, “reason contains in itself the source of ideas.” (58) Our experiences, then, alongside the experiences of others around us , function as a sort of palette from which we draw (or paint or speak or preform, etc.) our lives.
I begin with Kant for a reason: to illustrate how Pippin Barr is inextricably bound to an historical-ontology within which he is but a (contributing) member. As such, his artistic offerings belong to a very material reality. Barr is both a member of and an extension of a history of human (and, thus, material) relations. Furthermore, Pippin is only able to use already existent “things” in his creative process.
This drawing by Pippin precisely illustrates our point:
Now on to the site itself:
When we “arrive” at pippinbarr.com, we are confronted with an immediate reminder of the technologically-mediated experience one has upon engaging with the virtuality of “the web” (we note how existent words [in this case: “web”] are ever-perpetually re-appropriated by a history contingent on such re-appropriation). While we tend to think of the “virtuality” of such an experience as immaterial, Barr reminds us of the materiality inherent in the “virtual” world, without which such “virtuality” could not exist.
The view-master held by the anonymous black figure (perhaps an allusion to the “democratization” that occurs in web-space?) reminds us that we are viewing this through a “screen,” through a “filter” of sorts: there is literally a technological apparatus between us and this cloaked figure, just as there are a myriad of technological apparatuses at work each time we “log on” or send “invisible” mail.
When we click on About Me, we learn that Pippin Barr is not a black-clad web-ghost of sorts but rather a University Professor and video-game designer based in Denmark. He is also an artist and an author. The site provides links to his blogs (inininoutoutout and stimulusresponse). He is also a Dr., having received his Ph.D. from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Barr’s status as an integrated subject, a subjective “I” bound to very physical, tangible, and material histories, is thus effectively established.
As it is the first thing Pippin directs us to, we proceed to his games page. Says Pippin: “I’ve been trying to make what I’ve been calling ‘curious games,’ which is: games that are about questioning what the conventions of what ‘games’ are supposed to be.” Pippin belongs to a (counter-)cultural movement of DIY game designers that challenge status quo assumptions of what a “game” is supposed to be. Though this site is self-designed, self-published, and self-funded, we must not forget that Pippin, at all times, remains inextricably bound to several material realities, be they social or technological, etc. Pippin, like any designer of “virtual” space, is perpetually engaging with physical infrastructures from which it is impossible to dissociate one self. We must understand that “material” does not exclusively mean that which can be touched, or held in one’s hand. Brown reminds us of “the physical infrastructure of the medium, […] the cultural and economic forces that continue to shape both the technology itself and our interactions with it.” (22)
The first game presented to us is Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment. As the player, you are given the option to choose which punishment you’d like to receive. The first option is Sisyphus, and it is towards this tragic figure that we will now turn our attention. It should be noted that one must physically strike the ‘S’ key to select ‘Sisyphus’ (and here we note the crude assignation of ‘letters’ to ‘actions,’ in a truly Saussurean sense).
If you’re not familiar with this particular myth, here’s a quick synopsis: Sisyphus played a trick on the Gods: he put Death in chains and thus no one could die. This infuriated the Gods (though they were able to eventually wrest the chains off of Death), and when it was time for Sisyphus to die, they decided that he should, as punishment, be doomed to a most unpleasant eternity. In death, Sisyphus finds himself at the bottom of a large hill. Next to him is a giant boulder. Without thinking (and this is a crucial point: we might say “unconsciously”), Sisyphus begins to push the boulder up the hill. As he approaches the crest, the giant boulder rolls over him and both he and the boulder end up back at the bottom of the hill. Sisyphus tries again and, again, as he nears the top, the boulder rolls over him. Again and again, this sequence repeats itself- for forever. This is the eternity that Sisyphus has been doomed to endure.
And this is the myth that Camus appropriated as a metaphor for human Existence.
“To understand is, above all, to unify,” says Camus. Echoing Kant, he continues: “Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. Likewise, the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought (13).”
Thus we understand that Pippin has re-appropriated what Camus already re-appropriated , thus establishing his role within a synthetical dialog between himself and the long gone Albert. Schlereth is thus quite right in suggesting that “there is always a culture behind the material.” (3) In this case, it is the materiality of culture (a la philosophy, history, fiction, etc., as well as the physical infrastructures that support these cultural mediums) that Pippin draws on (and emanates from). On another level, both Camus and Pippin ground abstractions (philosophical Concepts, in the Kantian sense) in material realities, via the written word and digital encoding, respectively.
So we have thus far come to understand that Pippin, properly interpellated, exists as a subject within a multifarious network of material realities, surrounded (and thus determined) on all sides by a vast system of social signifiers; and we have explicated on the technological as well as the cultural (read: intellectual) histories that Pippin actively perpetuates.
Now it’s time to play the game:
Before I planned on writing about this game, I found myself at 3 a.m. playing the game and thinking: “is this really what today has come to?” Truly the game is absurd. I reflected that Camus would most likely never bother with such a game, wherein Sartre would most likely write a 20 page exposition on the ontological implications of such a game.
Anyways, once inside the games page, the materiality of this site assumes a new dimension. We are informed that we will be engaging in a virtual emulation of Sisyphus’ fate: a virtual “I” will roll a virtual “boulder” up a virtual “hill,” and we will virtually “fail” over and over again, ad infinitum. There is no “winning” in this game, only preforming. In creating this type of game, Pippin effectively challenges normative assumptions of what a “game” is, thus further binding his “I” to the material history of “gaming” at large. Pippin’s “game” is a material response to the material history of all “games” that have come before; subversive, to be sure, but a direct response nonetheless.
The player is informed that he must rapidly alternate between hitting the “G” and “H” keys to push the boulder up the hill. We again note the semiotics at work: letters (abstractions) are utilized (“mashed”) to impel action (experience). The “game” is manifest in the material realm: sweat; the eventual erosion of keys; the noise of fingers hitting keys; the psycho-socio-politico implications of “I,” a white American male, virtually appropriating (in 2012) the discourse of Existentialism (as introduced in the early 1940s).
Both Pippin’s game, then, and one’s playing of the game, are necessarily linked to what we now understand to be a very material history. Though existent in the “virtual” realm, we also understand how material this “virtuality” really is. Further, we understand the process of this games’ coming-into-being as a synthetical (dare i say “dialectical”?) process. For our purposes here, let is suffice to say that in order to “make sense” of the world, we need this “boulder” and this “hill,” without which our Concepts would forever remain mere abstractions.
We have moved from Kant to Camus, and all through a postmodern lens. We have illustrated our points theoretically and philosophically (rendering this “exhibition review” material in much the same way as the website it’s reviewing). We have traced the material histories that bring Pippin’s game into Being. We close with a quote from Appadurai:
“[E]ven though from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context.” (6) It is as such that we come to understand the “human” version of pippinbarr.com.
WORKS CITED:
Appadurai, Arjun, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. ed. Appadurai. Cambridge: 1986.
Brown, Bill, “Materiality” in Critical Terms for Media Studies, ed. W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Random House, 1955.
Kant, Immanuel, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. Paul Carus. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 2007.
Schlereth, Thomas J., “Material Culture and Cultural Research” in Material Culture: A Research Guide. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985.