[-empyre-] play and game: War Pigs

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

Thought I'd give you a preview of a piece for the net with a game mode and
play mode i'm currently working on with Regina Célia Pinto. It isn't
finished, but what's there is finished. The url is temporary.

WAR PIGS:
http://vispo.com/vismu/warpigs/warpigs5.htm (8.5 mb, Shockwave, audio)

GAME MODE:

The war pigs are on the rampage. Your job is to stop them. Your score at
level 1 (only level 1 is finished) represents the number of innocent
civilians killed by war pigs today. Try to make your score 0. No one has
yet, but it'll happen. To play for points (or lack thereof), click on the
audio wave-form so as to make the audio continuous-sounding, ie, click (in
time) at the end of each loop. It doesn't matter *where* you click, in game
mode, it matters *when* you click. Click through the whole song to finish a
game. The top 100 scores are saved to the Internet and your personal scores
are saved to your hard drive.

The song is "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. Anyone have Ozzie's email address?
I asked someone else and they said sure they got an email from him but the
headers were bitten off.

Maybe level 2, which will involve shorter loops, will be the number of lies
told by war pigs today, and level 3 will be the number of murderous ravening
silent musings by war pigs today. Again, the idea would be to make those 0
(good luck).

PLAY MODE:

Click the pure black triangle button to enter play mode. Scroll the song.
Clicking on the wave-form of "War Pigs" plays the loop you click on (rather
than having to advance through the song sequentially as in game mode). Play
mode is not about stopping pigs, it's simply an exploration of the loops of
the song. Scroll the song and click around to compose something that sounds
good to you. You can also adjust the length of the loops by entering
positive integers (1 to 2147483647) in the 'Chops' text box and clicking
'OK'. The higher the number in the 'Chops' box, the shorter the loop. Play
mode is a kind of anti war pig piano.

COMMENTS:

What I've done with "War Pigs" could be done with any song. So this is a
sort of a different way of listening to or examining a song. Also, you can't
play the whole song through without glitches unless you have quite the sense
of rhythm and know the loops well; and you can't extract the mp3, so this is
a way of having music on the net without giving it away, and can be a kind
of alternative to the music video, with more work. Hopefully some bands will
be interested in this sort of thing on their sites. As with other types of
cut-ups, this form emphasizes the phrase, looks at the phrase or other parts
of a piece more intensely or differently. When I listen to music, I
sometimes take the mp3 into Sound Forge or Acid and check out its loops. So
I thought I'd make a piece that makes that process easier and brings out the
game aspect of the activity.

We'll be adding more visuals to "War Pigs" at some point, maybe streaming
graphics that are interactive or processed via imaging Lingo. Or something
else. Have to tie it into the concept in game mode and play mode so as to
expand these. That part hasn't been conceptualized yet.

Many thanks to Regina for her waveform graphic, a partial timeline of war
pigs through history. Thanks also to Martin Kloss for the Lingo and CGI to
write the high scores to the net, and to Katharine Norman for her
suggestions.

And to Black Sabbath for their unfortunately enduring "War Pigs" song from
1970 during the Vietnam war. War Pigs: the same old song for a new
generation only with a messed-up computer game. It's depressing, of course,
to think of the state of computer games in relation to an imperialist and
righteous military culture. I wanted to try to make something that is
engaging as a game, encouraging of musical thoughtfulness in its play mode,
and is something way different from a shoot-em-up.

ja