[-empyre-] from 'unfinishedness' to 'Game Off'

[Christian McCrea]

>  sometimes a /finished/ project can present itself as closed, in the
>  sense of an artefact sufficiently immutable that it is ready for
>  interpretation and distribution as a singular cultural object. this is a
>  legacy from the Fine Arts which traditionally positions the artefact as
>  a common reference object for purposes of discussion.
>
>  in the context of participation - invited or otherwise - an /unfinshed/
>  project often presents itself as open to participation, to continued
>  design and/or development. this i see in various open-source tool
>  development communities quite regularly: in the rare event a 'final
>  version' is released the tool almost immediately loses cultural value.

The procedural then also makes an appearance in games culture, where
players are performing a kind of bug-testing and opinion forming labour,
less and less removed from the testers. The closer you are to that weird
apex point of '1.0', the more work you have to do to bring the rocks down
the other side of the mountain. Forgetting for a moment games in which
play is a neat metaphor for labour, there is more generally actual labour
taking place.

The culture of the 'speed-run' then extends the entire process out into
infinity by making play an exercise in efficiency management.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfBe5WtrQG4&feature=related
(This one is of last year's commercial game, Portal)

>  a finished project is past tense. i like to think of 'project' in the
>  sense of projecting or projection: casting an object toward a target or
>  surface.

This is great; the image of a stone heft into the air and on a slow descent.
Whats the surface, if not a tension to be broken?

-Christian