This blog presents documentation and information related to the art project War Games: Wow, you must be an intellectual! which was composed and directed in 2001 by ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ and materialized by the contribution of Dionysis Bouloutzas, Eleni Stroulia, Vassilis Harmantas, forming the art group Peace Of Art. This project was presented at Sarajevo in 2001.

Both motivation and inspiration for the creation of this project was the fact that in 2001, the X Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean would take place at the city of Sarajevo. Sarajevo at that time was still counting the wounds of the recent war.
Living in a neighboring Balkan country, the information related to this war had a heavy imprint on the local society, arising all kinds of passions. To some, questions on the role of the intellectuals, the artists, the education, the mass media, created the need to seek for answers.

War Games: Wow, you must be an intellectual! is the first of a series of projects by ΚΟΝΣΤ ΜΠ focused on the Media and information. This particular project consists of three individual parts, all together forming a new installation.
At the center of this installation stands the starting point of the project, which is the video-game Wow, you must be an intellectual! presented on a large video-wall. To the right, there is a home couch and a TV furniture with a TV playing the video People's Stand. To the left, as a promotional trick for the video-game, war toys used in its production are presented framed as artwork. From a stand next to the exhibits, one can obtain the magazine War Games.

20151207

Wow, you must be an intellectual!

The video-game Wow, you must be an intellectual! consists of a video-wall of 9 screens [3x3] and a video-game pistol on its stand, placed about three meters in front of the screens.

Each one of the nine screens is presented having an inhabitant.
Each inhabitant comes from a different nation speaking a different language.
Each inhabitant is monitored inside his house doing specifically one of the following actions, each one presented onscreen on individual clips:
> Sits comfortably in an armchair reading a book,
> Sits comfortably in an armchair reading out loud in his native language a specific part of Aristophanes play The Birds,
> Picks up a toy-weapon and shoots towards the direction of one of the neighboring screens.
> In separate clips, does at a time the same towards all -vertically and horizontally- neighboring screens,
> Looks straight towards the camera,
> Moves around inside his home doing ordinary things.

Each time an inhabitant shoots with his toy-weapon towards a neighboring screen, a funny sound is heard and the targeted screen plays a rather funny graphic animation and then turns black.

By the time all "survived" inhabitants, neighbor -vertically or horizontally- only to black screens, these screens start flashing simultaneously the message SHOOT in red letters.

The visitors' participation is at the point they decide to use the pistol on the stand and shoot towards the screens as they are told. Actually, this can be done at any point.

When a visitor pulls the trigger a loud BANG is heard followed by a voice saying Wow, you must be an intellectual!. The game then starts over.

The clips on the nine screens are programmed to play in an accidental sequence, so that, each time the game begins, the outcome will be unexpected.

People's Stand

People's Stand presents the influence of mythology and the word of the intellectuals upon people.
Young people, recorded at Sarajevo prior to the upcoming Biennial of 2001, reproduce the Cosmogony in the way they perceived it.

Their statements are presented on screen in front of a comfortable couch to the right of the main video-game installation, were visitors can sit comfortably and watch.


Aristophanes' The Birds [693-699]

The part of the play used in this project is a direct parody of a similar part from Hesiod's Cosmogony.

Text in English:
At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus. Earth, the air and heaven had no existence. Firstly, black-winged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.


Text in ancient Greek http://dide.kef.sch.gr/docs/filolo/arxmetafr/ornithes.PDF 
[page 77, 693-699]


20151127

War Games / english edition

War Games
Monthly Preview

New game presentation
The Enemy Above
Unexpected and successful killings is the goal of this bloody game.
“I would never imagine that I could ever be in charge of such powerful weapons. True satisfaction…” is what a customer declared.
War Games editor's rating: 2 bombs

New game presentation
Who is the Mother of War?
What is her name?
Where does she live?
The Universe, with its eyes 
seeing a tribe of ants eating another tribe, on a grey blue planet, 
may 
turn with indifference.
Within just a moment, the tribe will be
vanished just like every moment tribes
vanish and reborn.
Every little ant though, with its own 
eyes sees 
the just one moment of his existence 
to be threatened, to get even shorter, to fill with 
pain 
misery 
and death
Maybe he could save himself, if
he could find where the
Mother of War
hides.
“A very sensitive game for those who’re not very much into action… I’ll get it for my wife” said a war game consumer.
War Games editor's rating: 1 bomb

Article
Francisco Goya and the war game
Mr. Goya has probably influenced the war game industry more than any other artist. It is though hard to decide whether it is reality or pure imagination that led his creativity.
For more than 200 years he definitely stands safely above all the creators of war game effects.
His poor means cannot be compared to all the technical support that creators have access to nowadays, his passion though, inspired hundreds of young creators.

Advertisement
Wow, You Must Be An Intellectual!

New, smashing offer: real action for only 99,99. 
War Games editor's rating: 3 bombs

20100912

The 2001 presentation on the internet


The original presentation of the Peace Of Art project, War Games: Wow, You Must Be An Intellectual, at http://users.otenet.gr/~pako4art/ has been removed by the server administrator.