Mediating the environment

Open on a shot of a kid walking the street with a black backpack, followed with a handheld videocam. He reaches his destination and unzips the bag. Spraycans? Homemade bombs? Surprise, sliding out of the bag is a digital projector. Snaking a cord to a nearby lamppost, the kid's just created a 50 foot screen - and an audience.

Years ago you'd have to know these guys personally. With the internet they can share it with interested artists and activists from Sydney to Paris - 8 in-depth steps on Instructables, including all the gear, best locations via Google Maps, and open-source code written in C++.

What's interesting here are not the tags themselves (sometimes juvenile or straight digital translations) , or the illegal buzz associated with it. Look past that, and you'll find kids mediating their environment - 'growing' generative graphics on slick corporate hotels, talking back to patronising billboards, humanising concrete with colour and line.


In the past this took the form of physical modifications. Modernisms famous whipping boy is the story of Le Corbusiers houses for factory workers in Pessac. Almost as soon as they were built, workers added shutters, paint, and knick-knacks to personalise their 'machines for living in'. In the future, this might be more abstract - students escaping their 30 square apartments in Auckland for a simulated or gaming world which is more expansive, both conceptually and in terms of 'space'.

Under the radar: Cybercafe culture

"Oh. My. God. How is he not flashbanged?" A young kid throws up his hands in disgust, staring at his now dead body and a respawn timer. It's Sunday night, and while the rest of Auckland's central city is cold, rainy, and deserted, Mid City cyber cafe's two floors of computers are packed with gamers.

They range from young to old, experienced to noobs. The kid currently whining to his monitor is just finishing up a round of Counter-Strike or one of it's myriad variants - all hardcore shooters where a good player can detect an enemy in the shadows and headshot him at distance. Downstairs a group of young chinese 20 somethings lounge on arm chairs, taking a break and half-watching two flatscreens - one showing a golf tournament, the other a Warcraft 3d animation. WOW (World of Warcraft) is by far the most popular game, a MMORPG set in a huge, diverse universe with a player base over 6 million worldwide. It's combination of fantasy role playing, constant leveling up and rich environments means it's very accessible - and as addictive as crack. Upstairs, two children rush towards me, pushing chairs around, playing hide and seek and screaming. Their dads around - somewhere. A Korean couple take turns watching each others' virtual conquering. With lychee drinks in hand, they're here for the long haul.



I find a friend, sit down, chuck on some headphones and logon. We play Battlefield 2, a large scale tactical battle game - me very badly. For me it's more of a chance to catch up, get out of apartment, and see something different. And I'm not alone. While Korea is renowned for videogames as a social phenomenon, it's apparent, but under the radar, in New Zealand. In Orewa on a Sunday afternoon, two teen girls sit next to each other in another packed cybercafe, updating their MySpace accounts, adding friends, responding to comments. And while some benefits are reported on, most of the time it's negative press for the spaces. Previous headlines have included 'Korean gamer die after marathon session', 'China to set three-hour limit on MMORPG's', and 'Cyber cafes a homeless haven'.

So how many cafes are there, how many people are hitting them? Here it seems no one knows, or no one reports on it. The closest site with statistics was Australian and repeated the finding. "There is no global or national register of LAN cafes. Authoritative directories or guides are unavailable. Many cafes do not use large-scale print/electronic advertising, instead relying on word of mouth. Some are short-lived." Yellow pages reports 18 entries in the “Internet Cafe” category for the whole of Auckland. I'm guessing the real number is at least 3 or 4 times that. If cyberculture exists under the radar in most of the West, it's seems almost invisible here in New Zealand.