Gamescenes

The term “artist” is often flawed by a certain imprecision and
there are many cases in which it is used with reluctance. However,
there are few cases in which all its shortcomings are as
clear as when it is used to describe the Spaniard Joan Leandre,
a strange combination of hacker, agent of cultural activity and
mystification, media archaeologist, programmer, and, perhaps
then, artist. For years now he has been active as both a creator
and event organiser within the world of experimental video. In
1999 he launched his retroyou.org project. On this site, which is
the very opposite of “user-friendly”, one finds bizarre software
that, with a little patience, appear to be modified videogames
– or rather, a progressive series of modifications of a racing
game, accompanied by a detailed and wordy guide to the
hacked version.
The first modification – RETROYOU R/C [FCK THE GRAVITY
CODE] – is limited to the parameter which regulates the effects
of gravity within the game. Everything remains unchanged,
except for the fact that the cars can no longer stay on the
ground. Floating freely into the air, the vehicles often end up
in parts of the three-dimensional space that were not even
designed by the game’s creators because never intended to be
visible. Proceeding from one modification to another, Leandre
gradually fragments the interface in a vortex of crazy, brightlycoloured
polygons, making it totally impossible to use the software
to play the original game. The overall visual impact is very
powerful, ranging from the surreal disorientation of the first
modification to a sort of futuristic dynamism in the later ones,
in which the fragmented planes of reality blend with features
that seem to come from memories or dreams (for example, the
rocking-horse which recurs continually in R/C Paradise).
What really interests Leandre, however, is what happens beneath
the surface and remains totally invisible to the player.
What he undermines is not just the game’s interface but its
logical structure. As Florian Cramer commented in 2003:
«Asked whether through this destruction, retroyou R/C re-approaches
painterly abstraction, or – on the contrary – realism
(because it makes people more aware of the reality that they’re
playing with something artificial), or whether it creates a new
reality of its own, Leandre replies that the software he modified
still preserves its «essential integrity, the core of the program
is still running as the original», yet: «Its logical structure
is collapsed. The narrative and the simulation is totally negated,
what you see and experience is the program operating
without end as there’s no competition, no flight simulation, no
representation [...] Perhaps the whole thing is all about shutting
down conventional representations of a world [our world]
invaded by cloned software which massively bewilders and
induces cloned rituals. By extracting standard mimesis from
commercial software one may have a better understanding of
the machine “realities”».1 So, one might ask, in this case why
does the surface itself remain so dazzling?
The answer can be found in another series of works by Leandre
known as nostalG2. These projects of reverse engineering and
media archaeology use old software for Windows, in many
cases viruses that have since become innocuous for the
system. Implementing them, often nothing would happen,
whereas in other cases there are messages in text. However
«...what you see (or what you read as we are talking here about
OS terminal applications) is never what you get. The text often
refers to elementary common fears or elaborated conspiracy
environments, the graphics are just playful… while the different
modules are interacting or abusing your system in the
background.»2 In short, the emphasis on the interface serves
to distract the user from the real functioning of the software,
which is the true meaning of the work. But such disorder also
has a liberating effect, freeing the player from the constructions
of predetermined interactivity and liberating the secrets
which the software harbours beneath its skin. As a consequence,
the beauty achieved has an ideological value. As Vanni
Brusadin writes (2002) «the beauty of an unplayable game can
lay in beautiful colors, shapes and sound impying a challenge
against secrecy as a cultural and psychological weapon».3
Extend this approach to the whole of Joan Leandre’s work
and you will see why – quite apart from the multiple fields in
which he is active – it is so difficult to call him an “artist”. With
no desire of self-promotion, he seems rather to be intent upon
hiding his work. For example, he might suddenly interrupt the
links to a specific version of retroyou R/C, bury necessary information
beneath a mass of unrelated data and facts or increase
the “noise” that disturbs an already weak signal even more; one
project might be broken off halfway, whilst another is protracted
ad infinitum. Such an approach presupposes various levels
of awareness in the user of his work, varying levels of access
to it. As Brusadin points out, this is the poetic core of Leandre’s
work: «…videogames are only one part of a wider project of research
which embraces on-going experimentation with secret
or “background” information; media archaeology investigates
formerly reserved information or propaganda materials. His
work seems to be an investigation of the secret connections
(both practical and psychological) between technological-religious
beliefs, the arms industry, hi-tech and the dominion of
commerce in our world».4
One can see all of this in the retroyou nostal(G) project (2003-
06), which follows on from and develops upon retroyou R/C.
What is deconstructed here is a flight simulator. The project is
introduced by a rather cryptic tale about an encounter with a
mysterious globe of light told by Lieutenant John Kernel, copilot
of nostalG (though, of course, a “kernel” is the core of an
operative system). Then comes a long scientific document on
spatial disorientation and the characteristics of human vision.
Leandre explains «yes, all that confusion is part of the story as
the story is sometimes just noise in all the series, some new
age nerds would call it the holy chaos, in this context I just call
it a big mess leading to the light. All those tutorials could be
seen as just noise data and it’s true, it would be seen as well
as some kind of metaphor because the modified fly simulator
becomes in fact a simulator of spatial disorder among many
other issues».5
A “simulator of spatial disorder” is a good description of software
in which sounds are the only tenuous clues onto which
we can latch in order to orient ourselves. It is like moving
around in the dark, even if everything remains very visible: the
setting shifts from three to two dimensions and then breaks
up into a whirl of polygons. The flight controls gradually blend
with the background and with fragments of the code caught
on the surface; and even if they frequently function, it becomes
increasingly difficult to work out the relation between the
movements one makes and what one obtains. A whole series
of indicators become alchemical symbols in a context that is no
longer legible. Hesitatingly, the user learns to move in an environment
without coordinates, or else realises that he is caught
up in a situation beyond control. nostalG_pw_phoenix-west, for
example, «transforms the flight simulator into a non-identified
system of simulation which can only be worked by a machine…
The aerodynamics is absurd; the entire system of the plane is in
continuous conflict, shifting from stable to unstable and back
again. No human player can control it. The spherical world becomes
flat, with no data relating to altitude… there is only one
landing-spot, of thirty centimeters, to one side… It seems totally
chaotic. But, in fact, it can be controlled… by a computer,
which knows with certainty what to do…».6 Leandre modifies
all the parameters: aerodynamics, plane stability, point of
view, control instruments, and altitude data. The behaviour
and appearance of the interface reflect what is happening at
the level of structure.
And if, on the one hand, Leandre interferes with or limits the
surface interactivity of the programme, on the other he seems
to be inviting the expert user – the person who can keep up
with the game – to go deeper. That is where the real game is
taking place. «The mods RC and nostal(G) are a progression
(or regression) to the point of almost zero interactivity, that
means machine does the job (like a stupid screensaver) and the
role of the “player” would be just protocol, routine or insomnia.
I use to spend time in my Debian system or in our server while
maintaining it up [...] every day I learn something new. That
would be my idea of playing. Those mods don’t need to be
played anymore and commercial games don’t deserve our time
to be wasted. I love cheaters.»7
(English translation by Jeremy Scott)
Notes
1 F. Cramer, RETROYOU R/C STORY: RETROYOU R/C [paradise] [FCK THE
GRAVITY CODE] [FRAG] class”, in Runme.org, June 2006, available online:
http://runme.org/project/+SOFTSFRAGILE/.
2 In conversation, July 2006.
3 V. Brusadin, “No cheats for the unplayable game”, in CRAC, January 2003,
available online at http://www.crac.org.
4 V. Brusadin, “retroyou”, in d-i-n-a (metagallery), available online at www.
d-i-n-a.net/2002/en/metagallery/retroyou.html.
5 In conversation, July 2006.
6 A. Ludovico, “Videogame hacking. Intervista a retroyou.org”, in Neural, n.
21, 2004, pp. 46-48.
7 In conversation, July 2006.
Biography
In 1999, Barcelona-based artist/programmer Joan Leandre launched retroyou.
org, a “project of manual web reading and soft digesting”. The project debuted
with retroyou, r/c [radio/control series], described as “a hard deconstruction of
a computer racing game”, presented among other places at “OnedotZero”,
Barcelona; “dina digital is not analog”, Bologna; “Arco 001”, Madrid. Since
then, retroyou manipulates and reverse engineers software code for artistic
purposes. Videogames’ code is his favorite field of intervention, especially car
race games and flight simulators. retroyou discovers hidden features of the
code and changes them, including the core rules of games, thus distorting
the ludic experience.

By Domenico Quaranta
From GAMESCENES. ART IN THE AGE OF VIDEOGAMES (John & Levi, 2006) pp. 190 - 195
2003-06
Joan Leandre