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nybble-engine-toolZ

[nybble-engine-toolZ home] - [A radical meta-art system shooter] -  [Narratives of the code] - [home]-[credits]

The motto is to provide a cybern-ethically reasonable gamepad statement tool. The applications features are ACT NOW with action-bots and comission anti-war mails by shooting. Its roots are the culture of Moding, of modifications of existing game classes and hardware manipulations. A game-engine was converted. By playing you construct your environment,  you collaborate. By moving inside the engine the rules are inverted, the tournament becomes situationist tournement: attack is collaboration, shoot is communication, playing is editing code! For a short disambiguation we have to say that a nybble is the unit of half a byte, or four bits, which is the basis of every digital conversion. As the numeric equivalent of binary code, it exemplifies the internal logic of a software that transforms codes and protocols on a server into various representations. The nybble-engine-toolZ are also a work about the interdependency between proprietary and non proprietary standards. By not just making a patch but modifiying the c++kernel of the unreal-engine and providing this modifications, the engines are opened and the discourse on its reuse is triggered. To clarify this, see some commented examplary files as a logfile of the nybble-engine, a dll.file, a python file and a unreal class file, that are alltogether modificating the engine.

screen1:traceroute konsum.net screen2:nslokup & action-bot screen3:incomming e-mail & cleaner daemon

The cognitive interest is the rise of separate display formats in man-machine perturbations on the level of group- interactions, which were not expectable just by its programming. Its appearance are objects and action-bots inside an audiovisual multiplayer-environment. Realtime activities from the networks outside the engine are displayed. The online context of related online servers is brought into the running game by traceroutes to crucial hosts going out from the engine. Its technological features the display of live broadcast messages and simultanously generated objectiles, which indicate and translate data-events. Such are for example incoming e-mails, outgoing mails by shooting, pings by playing and cleaning up logfiles by running in a game-environment. Linux commandos are embedded into a game-engine. Its first site was a installation at the DEAF exhibition at Las Palmas in the harbour connected to showroom Mama in the center of Rotterdam from february till march 2003. Ddepending on user-bot actions in the installation on line and on site a number of peace messages to presidentatwhitehouse and pings to several gov-servers were sent out. Nybble-engine-toolz by Margarete Jahrmann/Max Moswitzer was developed in cooperation with the V2_lab Rotterdam and first installed at the exhibition "metadata" at the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival 03.

DEAF03 rotterdam: installation view

Interactive/interpassive-changeant becomes evident in the installation on site. The kernel of the experiment is a peer-to-peer servers network. The installation software converts network-processes into three-dimensional abstract movies and projects these onto a 180 degrees circular screen in an interpassive cinematic situation. The view of the machine, concrete the server in spectator-mode is shown. Participants in the experiment are seated on a sofa as in a living room in the installation.s lounge, in the opto-acoustique center of the installation. The surround sound is closing the circel of the installation acoustically. Visitors can get active in front of an additional small triple-monitor on the couch. Here they see their individual navigation view, that is different from the big surround screen with the server-view. Players use a ordinary gamepad to log onto the installation.s network and enter the jump`n run shooting environment, where data-objectiles, action bots and other gamers are flying about. By navigating you co-generate the server-movie. With each bump into a data-object you trigger networks-processes. You can not navigate easily when you want to enjoy the server-film, the .machinima.-movie of a different kind. There are several choices for the spectator: 1st enjoying the surround server movie run by other players and action-bots, 2nd becoming a active spect-actor and concentrating on the small .gameboys. style monitor or 3rd having a fluctuating attention between the game-control monitor and the represenetative server screen, combining both different views those of the man and this of the machine. This experience of the simultanous view in different windows of the same running application is challenging for the visitors to intervene into the machine communication, that is also going on, when nobody is sitting in front of the installation. Then action-bots are performing. Each bot or player avatar carries a data-objectile instead of a weapon. The data objectiles are representing commando-lines and processes. The data-objectiles as laser-sintered print are a further part of the installations interface. In its purely code-aequivalent form and as discourse-piece it can be considered as interactive/interpassive object. This threedimensional freeze frame out of the application is the art-coded interface to the data-world. In reference to Bernard Cache, Gilles Deleuze defines an .objectile.as .a very modern conception of the technological object: it refers neither to the beginnings of the industrial era nor to the idea of the standard that still upheld a semblance of essence and imposed a law of constancy . but to our current state of things, where fluctuation of the norm replaces the permanence of a law; where the object assumes a place in a continuum by variation. the object here is manneristic, not essentializing: it becomes an event.. Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis, 1992

data-objectile:laser-sintered print

The applications volumes are following Felix Guattaris notion of the machinic, but recombined according to contemporary code-moding cultures. The definition of engines as algorithmic machines is the projects startingpoint. Software texts as game engines are reflected. Is a engine a machine? The work focuses on the differentiations and theories of the machinic towards the actual status of the machine as engine in coding-cultures. Machines and engines are here not considered as tools but as media, as modification material for the arts. In the interrelation of different media-layers the application as part of the complete engine becomes a tool run by action-bots interpreted as nonlinear software and human players in mutual exchange. What counts are the man-machine and machine-machine interface effects and their circular and causal feedback mechanisms in the techno-social system environment. 

 
nybble-engine-movies:machinima, gamemodding (NEMS) 2000-03

The nybble-engine-project  is generally presented in a pop-coded form as a live modular lecture. It can also develop into a lecture concert for people and action-bots, where guest musicians are using the nybble-engine-toolZ for sound generation! When the tetrad is considered within the given framework of structural coupling, it is logical that the various generative factors, which are based not only on biogenic but also on technical programs, have an impact in socio-technical ensembles, starting at the program level, for instance action bots, game-engines, authorship of the machine, continuing at the level of specific social contexts, as in the case of the networked multiplayer environment and the .modular lecture., which is executed in the interrelations of different media levels. (images transmediale 02)

parkhuis las palmas rotterdam 03

nybble-toolz disclaimer
The Creators of Nybble Engine Toolz aspire to make an artistic statement. However, the creators of Nybble Engine Toolz are not responsible for any eventual harm done by the misuse of the toolz provided in this arts-application. The creators of Nybble Engine Toolz can not be kept responsible for violation of internet privacy issues or damage of third party systems caused through its users. Enjoy Nybble-Engine-Toolz!

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Glossary: http://www.climax.at/nybble-engine/

Action-bots are subprogramms executed in a game-engine. These are nonlinear software-tools with a recurring class of experience, having certain behaviours, reacting and adapting there action according to the circumstances. Some unpredictable situations can occur, unexpected effects can emerge.

Book & DVD: Nybble-Engine, A nybble is four bits or half a byte.Ed. climax, Margarete Jahrmann/Max Moswitzer, Vienna 2003.
The DVD is treated as storage set for all the project-data plus a directors cut of realtime generated software movies, with scene selection for  NEMs plus an endless audiovisual party-loop. The book contains a compilation of texts and software-images related to the nybble-engine-project, for example the founder of the austrian institute for nonlinear studies Gerhard Grössing talks with cybernetics pioneer Heinz von Förster, net-literate Heiko Idensen reflects on theory engines, independent theorist F.E. Rakuschan analyses radical meta-art and the discourse theoretical framing of the nybble-objectiles.

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