Civilization IV - Age of Empire is a project by Serbia based Eastwood Real Time Strategy Group (Vladan Joler and Kristian Lukuc) that explores and simulates the flow and control of information and capital. This work is based on the Sid Meier’s Civilization III game engine, it displays the relationships between some main determinants of global culture such as the military entertainment complex i.e. militainment, immaterial labor, the pharmaceutical industry and the net economy etc.

The game creates a socio-economical model, mapping the processes, flows, comparativeness and differentiation in the market which simulates activities of some of the world’s top IT corporations.

The name, Civilization IV, is questioning the copyrighting of the word “Civilization” by Sid Meyers & Co.. Usage of Civilization III engine is an act of appropriation of the world famous real time strategy game as universal cultural heritage.

Eastwood creates and uses computer games as tools for new visions of art and cultural practice. They use Civilization IV as a medium to express their attitude towards contemporary social cultural practice and to map and visualize how systems are functioning.

For the 2008 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Singapore AIR exhibition, Eastwood collaborating with G³ Lab will continue the project showing a new modification named Civilization V. The juried show features 16 works arising out of a 3 month residency each selected artist undertook in Singapore, working collaboratively with local organizations.

Breaking free from the industrial constraints of the multi-million dollar videogame industry, the project ironically comments on the ways games are developed and marketed, while revealing how digital art can intersect with the wider world.

via: http://www.isea2008singapore.org/exhibitions/air_civilV.html

Civil V is a game in which self-reflexively addresses the competition for dominance between new media companies working with 2D social community systems, such as Facebook, YouTube, and immersive 3D spaces such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. In order to advance through the game, ‘companies’ will have to use tactics like ‘Emotional blackmail’, ‘Tribal marketing’ and ‘Love bombing’. The artists also created a promo video about the ‘making of’ Civil V, showing how its creation is a global enterprise, involving programmers, designers and artists from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

Humans have 23 years to go

Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens.

PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the “survival horizon” for Homo sapiens - the human race - from “indefinite” to 23 years.

“The survival horizon identifies the point in time after which a threatened population is expected to experience a catastrophic collapse,” GEAS president Audrey Chen said. “It is the point from which it a species is unlikely to recover. By identifying a survival horizon of 2042, GEAS has given human civilization a definite deadline for making substantive changes to planet and practices.”

According to Chen, the latest GEAS simulation harnessed over 70 petabytes of environmental, economic, and demographic data, and was cross-validated by ten different probabilistic models. The GEAS models revealed a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats”, which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks. “Each super-threat on its own poses a serious challenge to the world’s adaptive capacity,” said GEAS research director Hernandez Garcia. “Acting together, the five super-threats may irreversibly overwhelm our species’ ability to survive.”Garcia said, “Previous GEAS simulations with significantly less data and cross-validation correctly forecasted the most surprising species collapses of the past decade: Sciurus carolinenis and Sciurus vulgaris, for example, and Anatidae chen. So we have very good reason to believe that these simulation results, while shocking, do accurately represent the rapidly growing threats to the viability of the human species.”

GEAS notified the United Nations prior to making a public announcement. The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Vaira Vike-Freiberga released the following statement: “We are grateful for GEAS’ work, and we treat their latest forecast with seriousness and profound gravity.”

GEAS urges concerned citizens, families, corporations, institutions, and governments to talk to each other and begin making plans to deal with the super-threats.

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Mario is Born
Space Invaders
Starting a Spacewar

Now I really need to get a PS3. I hope Assassin’s Creed is as good as it looks.

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Second Life 101 with James Au, Linden Labs embedded reporter by technical evangelist Robert Scoble. See more of talking with Second Life’s embedded reporter on the PODTECH SCOBLE SHOW.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PXiNNXUUF8[/youtube]

Spore is a simulation computer game designed by Will Wright that is currently in development by Maxis to be published by EA Games. It is scheduled to be released around April/May of 2007