The WoW Pod

Artist Cati Vaucelle's WoW Pod -- "an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WoW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs.

Inside, the gamer finds him/herself comfortable seated in front of the computer screen with easy-to-reach water, pre-packaged food, and a toilet conveniently placed underneath his/her custom-built throne.

When hungry, the gamer selects a food item (‘Crunchy Spider Surprise’, ‘Beer Basted Ribs’, etc.) and a seasoning pack. By scanning in the food items, the video game physically adjusts a hot plate to cook the item for the correct amount of time. The virtual character then jubilantly announces the status of the meal to both the gamer and the other individuals playing online: “Vorcon’s meal is about to be done!” “Better eat the ribs while they’re hot!” etc.

When the food is ready, the system automatically puts the character in AFK (‘Away From Keyboard’) mode to provide the gamer a moment to eat. When the player resumes playing, he/she might just discover his/her character’s behavior is affected by the food consumed in real life — sluggish from overeating or alternately exuberant and energetic.

The exterior of the WoW Pod mimics the look of authentic WOW architectural structures, whose swaths of flat, pixellated surfaces digitally recreate the built environment of an imagined past. But upon crossing the threshold and entering into the WOW Pod’s interior, the player finds the digitized look actually becomes the real life experience that World of Warcraft simulates. (Cati Vaucelle)

WoW, Golumbia, strangers

“[according to the] computationalist view of culture… race and the State are not at all obliterated but instead essential attributes of the person at a group level which no individual can ascend.” (Golumbia, 142)

Golumbia’s argument that a computational culture creates not transcendence but more restriction, reminds me of the experimental film, Stranger Comes to Town, by Jacqueline Goss (2007). Goss uses machinima clips from World of Warcraft, overlays her own animated interpretations of those figures over first-person testimonials to problems encountered at US airport border crossings. The reduction of people to racial or national types, and the problems those essentialist view engender, create, in Goss’s view, a world emptied of content, anonymous and unpopulated. Whereas WoW spaces are normally teeming with players (that have a seemingly endless array of adjustable attributes), Goss’s characters are excluded, with all their distinguishing features erased. She frames her film as the oldest of stories told, that either a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town; this is the catalyst for change, and the generative root of storytelling. Hence the restrictions on movement encountered at border patrols suggest the ways in which not only subjectivities, but narratives themselves are fenced in a computationalist framework. Does film (or video, in this case), experimental or otherwise, offer the possibility of rescuing, and critically commenting on, such imperiled narrative?

Here’s a short clip and description, though it doesn’t give you much of a sense of the film except for its vast machinima spaces.