Art/Work/Play

Ok, so here’s a fun one (sincerely!). We’re all on COVID 19 lockdown, our gigs and jobs have been cancelled, and so we had on SPC Weir to talk about a video game art installation he and Ben showed in Toronto in February. Along the way we talk about the confluence of gig economy work, influencer marketing, art-trepreneurs and, of course Kim Kardashian. Readings from Natasha Stagg’s Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019 recorded into WhatsApp by Saira Sabri. Tim Heidecker ‘Work From Home’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGs1-bfiYFQ Workman Arts: https://workmanarts.com/ Natasha Stagg Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sleeveless Meow Wolf: https://meowwolf.com/ King Krule (feel something!): https://kingkrule.net/ Find Cale here: Bandcamp: https://taxhaven.bandcamp.com/ IG: @1000000000000000000000000likes Twitch: Twitch.tv/taxxxhaven Follow our increasingly regular Twitch streams here: Twitch.tv/spekwork Please consider signing this petition and sharing it broadly: https://www.15andfairness.org/covid19_help_now?sp_ref=626904651.392.204640.e.0.2 Four Sisters podcast (this play is literally about class and plague): SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/foursisterspodcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/four-sisters-podcast/id1497373632 Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork

Interview szn, bb. The Real Erin Gee drops knowledge on ASMR, electronic music and affect in the circus of contemporary technology. Erin shares her casual brilliance with us, a beer, and her galaxy-brained pups. Find Erin: https://eringee.net/ FB (her main squeeze): https://www.facebook.com/erin.marie.gee IG: @_eringee Twitter: @_eringee Check out Erin’s work: Project H.E.A.R.T. dev blog: https://combat-therapy.tumblr.com/?fbclid=IwAR2FblEbXHWGCIxYOIWY6SrjZGjzKUpBeiOSpQgASI45Fy5hHZn5jB3Ux2s LaughingWeb.space: https://laughingweb.space/ Cosey Fanni Tutti: The piece Erin was referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5wYjVjFBnc&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR186to_AmhjjWFsjlLNHSKMJwxX761nfH3IE-3zCcyQGAEK2_trhO_1sMo Interesting interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSaIBWyUIgM Four Sisters podcast (give it a listen, why not?): SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/foursisterspodcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/four-sisters-podcast/id1497373632 Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork

In this episode we talk about all things flightsim and spiritual succession. We talk about the Yes Men’s SimCopter ‘himbo’ intervention and Cat and Jon’s new game, produced for the Global Game Jam, Co-op Copter Scab. We also talk about the RCMP as big oil Pinkertons. Play CO-OP Copter Scabs: https://spekwork.itch.io/coop-copter-scabs Get the Scabby the Rat instagram filter: https://www.instagram.com/a/r/?effect_id=2503745169841908 WTO protests in Seattle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests Global Game Jam: https://globalgamejam.org/ Four Sisters podcast (Ben’s gf says it’s too arty for mainstream listeners): SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/foursisterspodcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/four-sisters-podcast/id1497373632 Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork

2020 is interview season for the pod. This week we speak to Sagan Yee, who talks about their collaborative art and video game practice, their role in running the not for profit Hand Eye Society, and the relatively recent emergence of labour politics on to the video game making scene. Find Sagan here: http://www.saganyee.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaganYee Check out the Hand Eye Society: https://www.handeyesociety.com/ Or follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HandEyeSociety Artists and artworks mentioned in this podcast: Nadine Lessio: http://nadinelessio.com/ Hannah Epstein: https://www.han.ski/ Kenton de Jong’s ‘Regina Cemetery Tours’: https://reginacemeterytours.ca/ Kai Hutchence’s ‘Queen City Chaos’: http://www.queencitychaos.com/ Now Magazine article on housing costs an artist incomes: https://nowtoronto.com/lifestyle/real-estate/cost-of-living-in-toronto-2020-lowrates/ Art Stats report from TAC: https://torontoartsfoundation.org/tac/media/taf/Research/2019-TAF-Arts-Stats-booklet-FINAL-web.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0B1EivnD-FrlQPeAUcBfqGnpply5CJPYipoRmwEwBNAJ_FI9Vj8_Rytmg Mayworks’ ‘Unfeeling Capitalism’: https://www.nghtshfts.org/unfeeling-capitalism Game Workers Unite: https://www.gameworkersunite.org/ ‘Rockstar spouses’ controversy: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/rockstar-spouse-accuses-dev-of-pushing-its-employees-to-the-brink Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork

“And what I now see is that the new virtual world that our children are growing up in is so addictive precisely because it satisfies the need for reply and response, and because it does so immediately. In this way the virtual penetrates to the core of the social and provides us with all the rewards of the social realm without requiring us to pay the corresponding price, so that we can now sit entirely alone, on our own island, without the mechanical interaction ever causing the urge for other human beings to rise within us and tear wildly about like a recently caught animal in a cage.” --Karl Ove Knausgaard Legal, political and bureaucratic systems often move slowly in response to labour unrest and injustice. Not only does this function to quell the energy required to organize these actions, but too the hope required to sustain them. The gang talks a bit about these techniques in application to the Foodora Unionization vote and the Regina Co-op Refinery lockout, before launching into a play-through of Jon’s beautiful new first person shooter Tower Fantasy. Check it out yourself. Tower Fantasy: Itch.io: https://spekwork.itch.io/tower-fantasy Bandcamp: https://jonathancarroll.bandcamp.com/album/tower-fantasy Coverage of the Regina Co-op Refinery lockout: https://www.rankandfile.ca/dance-parties-personal-growth-and-police-three-days-with-locked-out-regina-oil-workers/ No Man’s Sky and 10,000 Bowls of Plain Oatmeal: https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowls-of-plain-oatmeal/ This guy on Perlin Noise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG0uEXV6aHQ Therapy Font (Jon, Cale, and Ben’s generative and improvised music project): https://therapyfont.bandcamp.com/ Itch.io: https://therapy-font.itch.io/ Find Ben’s fancy theatre podcast: SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/foursisterspodcast Or an Apple Podcasts: https://pcr.apple.com/id1497373632 More on the play and the Trilogy: https://www.empiretrilogy.com/ Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork

A special episode with activist, playwright, gig-worker and union organizer Thomas McKechnie. Thomas talks about the under-reported case before the Ontario Labour Relations Board between Foodora and its employees. He also takes us through strategies for organizing app-mediated gig-workers and his motivation for writing Remembering the Winnipeg General. Caveat emptor: Because Ben’s computer is ancient and it’s battery dies unpredictably, because his art practice does not afford him the ability to keep himself in working gear, our recording died midway through the session. Happily Jon took a back-up recording, which if you squint your ears ably captures Thomas and Ben’s rich contributions to the middle part of the exchange. Nota bene: Ben is available to offer his professional recording, engineering, and sound design skills to paying customers. Hit him in his DMs. Details on Rally for Worker Rights in the Gig Economy: https://www.facebook.com/events/175351570515807/ More on Thomas: https://www.cbc.ca/arts/this-playwright-is-trying-to-unionize-foodora-while-writing-about-one-of-canada-s-biggest-strikes-1.5164055?fbclid=IwAR35ndnNz7wXYSKSiroIdhD5IHjguVFBrhVg3uz-rr2OBwQ2qm3fYC1lbss Find Thomas: Twitter: @postbrechtian Zeitpunktheatre: https://www.facebook.com/zietpunktheatre1/ The Foodsters: Twitter: @FoodstersUnited IG:@ unitedfoodsters Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForFoodoraCouriers/ Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork

And we’re back. Cat takes us on an art history tour of late-medieval Paris vis-a-vis Ubisoft’s virtual Notre Dame Cathedral, constructed for Assassin’s Creed Unity. Etienne Boileau’s “Le Livre des Metiers,” written in 1268 outlines regulations and penalties overseen by the various trade guilds (French): http://virtuater.free.fr/Le%20livre%20des%20metiers%20d%20Etienne%20Boileau.pdf Giorgio Vasari, who first used the term “Gothic” to make fun of what had until then been referred to as “French Work” in his 1550 book “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.” http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25326 Vitruvius wrote even more than Cat thought, with his “Ten Books on Architecture” available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20239/20239-h/20239-h.htm Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork twitch.tv/SpekWork

“Every new technology necessitates a new war.” — Marshall McLuhan We have SPC. Cale Weir back for a AAA Let’s Play of Counter Strike. The gang talks about passé discourse, the myth and intoxication of war, while Ben and Cale get a little drunk and Jon and Cat eat dinner. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/books/wars-are-made-not-born.html Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FRW5jw19y0 War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict by Corey Mead: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/playing-war-how-the-military-uses-video-games/280486/ Radical Critique of ‘Papers, Please!’ by Marijam Didžgalvytė: https://medium.com/@marijamdid/radical-critique-of-papers-please-d1e24e57b8d5 War and Peace in the Global Village by Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/2854056 Find SPC. Cale on his newly minted twitch channel here: twitch.tv/taxxxhaven Or his excellent music here: https://taxhaven.bandcamp.com/ To rent at the Brandscape you can contact us here: http://brandscape.club/contact.html Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork twitch.tv/SpekWork

‘Everything is permitted, but nothing is possible.’ -- Michel Clouscard Coldwar, dystopia, americophilia, the posttruth world, reality control, sonic the hedgehog, furries, vorelords, stealing videogame valour. It’s all here, and also is not. How the famous, design-by-committee ‘Needle Mouse’, and his incoherent lore, produced a culture of post-internet kink and uncanny valley normativity. This week’s episode art are OCs produced by Cat Bluemke. Very nonheteronormative!

“Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression “free as a bird,” Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, ‘You know? They’re not free: they’re fighting over bits of food.’” — John Cage The spekwork longfrom social media account tackles bullshit jobs, the force that the PMC (professional managerial class) exerts over the arts, the oversubscription of cultural labour markets and Julian Glander’s Art Sqool. Note: Amusingly, the freeware Jon downloaded to capture the videogame audio for this episode was for trial purposes. This is why the robot voice declares every few seconds ‘trial!’. Although aesthetically it exists within Glander’s idiom, it was our own inadvertent imposition. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯¯ The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance by Bifo Berardi: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/uprising Bullshit Jobs in the Creative Industries by Jack Newsinger: http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2015/04/23/bullshit-jobs-in-the-creative-industries/ On the Phenomena of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber: http://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ Against Economics by David Graeber: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/12/05/against-economics/ On (Surplus) Value in Art, Reading by Art and Labor Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/art-and-labor/id1387325985?i=1000455509423 Indiepocalypse: https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/28/17911372/there-are-too-many-video-games-what-now-indiepocalypse Art Sqool: Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsfhPVaZDmQ Official website: https://artsqool.cool/ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/953300/ART_SQOOL/ Itch.io: https://glander.itch.io/art-sqool To rent at the Brandscape you can contact us here: http://brandscape.club/contact.html Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork twitch.tv/SpekWork

“Everyday’s leg day now, bro.” — James L. Burling The gang is paying their dues in the attention economy and doing a play through of the much anticipated release from Hideo Kojima and Sony, Death Stranding. For this episode we’re joined by SPC. Weir, AKA Mr. AAA. Ben tries to talk theory, but Cale won’t let him :( Technoscience and fiction: https://www.palgrave.com/br/campaigns/robotics-and-ai/why-science-needs-fiction Closing track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9hagVL-__c SPC. Cale’s excellent music: https://taxhaven.bandcamp.com/ To rent at the Brandscape you can contact us here: http://brandscape.club/contact.html For details about the close listening party November 19th at the Brandscape, contact Ben at notsawry@paleeyesmusic.com, on IG @paleeyesmusic, or on twitter @notsawry. Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork twitch.tv/SpekWork

‘If the reader wishes to see shortly whether [it is true that the pleasure in this world outweighs the pain], let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.’ — Arthur Schopenhauer We’re in the content production grind and flow now bb. We talk Bennett Foddy’s Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy in the light of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism, and explore various instances of game maker snobbery. QWOP: http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html Studies in Pessimism by Arthiur Schopenhauer: On the Sufferings of the World: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Sufferings_of_the_World On Noise: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Noise The Schopenhauer Cure: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19508.The_Schopenhauer_Cure Speedrun w/ uninstall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=jGa9822kdrw Faster speedrun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-v5GHxn94o Art and Labour podcast, On (Surplus) Value in Art: http://www.artandlaborpodcast.com/podcast/reading-on-surplus-value-in-art/ Bennett Foddy plays through Getting Over it: https://youtu.be/DYjbCJXxWLg Bennett Foddy on making games matter as much as sports: https://youtu.be/5uUPPtBJqR0 Bennett Foddy’s course where students produce a prototype game a week:https://youtu.be/9O9Q8OVWrFA Game Cat liked at Amaze Berlin made by a student of Foddy’s in his protype-a-week course: https://q_dork.itch.io/consume-me To rent at the Brandscape you can contact us here: http://brandscape.club/contact.html Find us elsewhere: http://spek.work/ https://www.instagram.com/spekwork/ http://twitter.com/spekwork http://twitch.com/beigecathy

‘My savant boy is only as good as the game he plays.’ Ian Cheng The gang talks sandboxes, compare credentials, white flight, urban blight, Will Wright, Ian Cheng, SimCity 2k and desperately apply topical political references to whatever circumstances they encounter. We continue to grapple with the podcast as medium for videogame playthroughs. Since recording this podcast Ben has begun obsessively playing the SimCity Build It phone-based game. Build It focuses upon construction and property value development and is a game that seems impossible to succeed in without in app purchases. Despite his awareness of these ideological allegiances both in the form and content of the game, Ben continues to be quietly and irrevocably inculcated. Hito Steryl at the AGO: https://ago.ca/exhibitions/hito-steyerl-future?gclid=Cj0KCQjwr-_tBRCMARIsAN413WS_LE0i_tBPS3uQzDggiM9qe4-mkW5UjQdHXvg7M_6xCGRhv_UEeewaAgTUEALw_wcB Ian Cheng: Emmissaries: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/40 BOB: https://gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/16819/installation-view#&panel1-6 ‘This Papaya Tastes Perfect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3erXsviwqs Brats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL9jtjJ3zv0 Pruitt-Igoe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe The Architecture of Socialist Yugoslavia: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3931 More on Forrester and urban planning: https://logicmag.io/play/model-metropolis/ Democracy 3: http://positech.co.uk/democracy3/ Videos on the Sim universe: https://youtu.be/Vjf3VKguq_U https://youtu.be/TrScy1icWjI Rhizome New Museum thing: https://www.newmuseum.org/pages/view/rhizome To Rent at the Brandscape you can contact us here: http://brandscape.club/contact.html

We discuss our experience at the Ryerson conference on 'VR as Empathy Machine' and take up our ambivalence about the medium. We offer several lukewarm cultural critical takes on contemporary digital media and the supposed connection to the real it affords, riff on Baudrillard, frontline work, kvetch about budget cuts, and do a playthrough of our VR documentary ‘resourced’ with a sickly and solemn 9 yr-old. ARTIST STUDIO SPACE FOR RENT AT THE BRANDSCAPE : http://brandscape.club RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS FESTIVAL : https://workmanarts.com/rendezvous-with-madness/ Simulations Jean Baudrillard Semiotext(e): https://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/144970/Baudrillard_-_Simulacra_and_Simulation.pdf VR as Empathy Machine: https://www.ryerson.ca/jack-layton-chair/events/2019/09/vr-as-empathy-machine/ Alan Warburton ‘Goodbye Uncanny Valley’: https://vimeo.com/237568588 Occupied : http://occupiedvr.com/ Ken Moffat Jack Layton Chair: https://www.ryerson.ca/socialwork/people/faculty/ken-moffatt/ Adam Curtis ‘The Trap’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y97Ywl7RtUw&vl=en etc OYA MEDIA GROUP https://oyamediagroup.com/ Mayworks Toronto: https://www.nghtshfts.org/ Carol Conde & Karl Beveridge: http://condebeveridge.ca/

In episode 1 the Spek Work gang discusses the goals of the new pod, its themes and format. We talk about Foodora workers unionizing, and do a playthrough of the No Frills browser-based game, Aisles of Glory: Back to School. Hiiiii! ARTIST STUDIO SPACE FOR RENT AT THE BRANDSCAPE : http://brandscape.club RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS FESTIVAL : https://workmanarts.com/rendezvous-with-madness/ TOUGH GUY MOUNTAIN AT HALIFAX NOCTURNE : https://downtownhalifax.ca/event/nocturne-art-night-festival-2019 LIBRA SZN PLAYLIST : https://linktr.ee/notsawry Stream url : https://www.twitch.tv/spekwork Spek.work : http://spek.work/ Aisles of Glory (no frills game): https://aislesofglory.nofrills.ca/ Hauler clothing line: https://haulershop.com/hauler Trudeau doing brown face: https://www.cbc.ca/news/justin-trudeau-brownface-blackface-1.5289259