Warren Sack: Agonistics: A Language Game
April 2005
Warren Sack: Agonistics: A Language Game
Agonistics: A Language Game by Warren Sack is an online game that visualized exchanges on public online discussion forums, such as Usenet newsgroups, and encouraged users to enter conversations. The project translated players’ posts on forums into a graphic display in which participants were represented by thumbnail images. Players were assigned a position in a circle depending on their messages’ content and were placed in relation to the other players who posted on the same theme. Depending on their opinion, they could move themselves closer to or farther away from other players. Users earned points when they responded to or cited the messages of others. The goal was to move toward the circle’s center by establishing dialogue with as many participants as possible. Sack’s project was inspired by agonistics, the science of athletic combat or contests in public games. By enabling participation and filtering based on the artist’s established rules (and the algorithms used), Agonistics enhanced awareness of how individuals position themselves in a social context through the ways they express their opinions.
The Usenet groups Agonistics: A Language Game relied on are no longer online. Further description of the project can be found on Rhizome.
Warren Sack (b. 1962; Minneapolis, Minnesota) is a media theorist, software designer, and artist whose work explores ideas and designs for online public space and public discussion. He is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches digital arts and digital studies. His artwork has been exhibited by institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the New Museum, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany. His scholarship and research have been supported by the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Sunlight Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.
Gate Pages
Every month from March 2001 to February 2006, the Whitney invited an artist or collective to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each page was meant to function as a portal to the artist’s own sites and projects. The Gate Pages comprise a range of artistic approaches to the format—while some of them are designed as entry points to the respective artist’s website or promote a recently launched work, others take the form of a more complex stand-alone project.
Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.
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