ABOUT ME


John Paul Bichard

This page is now hosted on Ideal Milk

John has worked as a digital artist since the early 90s, exhibiting internationally with shows in Portugal, the Netherlands, US and UK. Professional positions have included Creative director of two online games studios, Games editor and Head of Development at a mobile software engineering and research company (currently consulting for Virgin Mobile and T-mobile). He has worked for 2 years as part of the core team on Urban Tapestries, a public authoring research project based in London. John has just started collaborating with the Interactive Institute in Stockholm on a major mobile games research project. John and his wife Louisa will be paddling around Sweden in June - July 2005 on their 2220 expedition.

Biography

John Paul Bichard is an artist who has worked with digital media, games, photography and installation since the early nineties. He curated and produced On a Clear Day in 1996, a ground breaking digital game art project that took place around the UK. As Mute magazine's games editor

http://www.metamute.com from 1995 to 2001, Bichard explored and wrote on the cultural significance of the then emerging video game scene and was invited to show work at the Virtual Architecture exhibition at the ICA in 1998. For the past two years he has been head of interaction with the public authoring digital research project Urban Tapestries http://www.urbantapestries.org a joint venture with France Telecom, HP, Orange and the DTI. He is currently starting a mobile game research project Backseat Gaming http://www.tii.se/mobility/BSP with the Interactive Institute mobility studio in Stockholm.

Bichard has shown work in Europe, NY and London. Recent shows include an installation at the International Digital Games Research Symposium 'Level Up' in Utrecht, an online residency with Variablemedia http://www.vriablemedia.info and a first person video game on the ISEA 2004 ferry in the Baltic Sea as part of the ICOLS arms fair http://www.icols.org. Bichard shows at Quadrum Gallery in Lisbon http://www.galeriaquadrum.com. Recent exhibitions, have been from the Evidencia series that explores the relationship between environment, narrative and [game] play through digital games, installation and photography.

Bichard's work picks at the boundary between the 'protected real place' such as the police evidence space or the 'safe European home' and the 'digital made real', where the games space is [re]constructed as a 'real' environment. Through the use of online digital games, their tropes and assets, these works, subvert the player/viewers expectations and assumptions of the space they are engaging with inviting the viewer to re-construct the narrative and re-interpret the place. His photo works and multiples include collaged photo narratives, artist's books and multiple artworks that further explore relationships between physical and fabricated space, narrative and notions of authenticity.

Bichard has produced three online digital games: Lone Wolf (2002) an 80s cold war thriller demo, Staying in to Play (2003) a de-game and Condition Red (2004) a suicide speed boat game for ISEA 2004. He has also published eight artist's books and multiples and has work in several publications.

About the Work

For several years, I have been working on the Evidencia series of works, which explore my relationship between the 'real' and the 'game space'. Since coming across a fatal motorcycle crash, where a busy London street in rush hour was cordoned off, transformed into a silent, macabre 'set', I have been fascinated with the way that the forensic space dislocates the 'familiar'. The resultant sterile space, where every trace of activity, every fragment of debris is given potential significance, where scientists move in to analyse and de-construct the events, is in direct contrast to the First Person Shooter game space where players engage the tropes of massacre and destruction to advance through the level leaving massive evidence trails, but with no apparent consequence. I am exploring what would happen if the game had consequences, what would happen to the remains once the player has moved on.

The first 2 works in the Evidencia series Evidencia#000 http://www.hydropia.org/evidencia03.htm and Evidencia#001 http://www.hydropia.org/evidencia04.htm were installations in the 'real' world, where I used videogame tropes and traces to evoke a hybrid game/evidence space.

With White Room http://www.hydropia.org/middle04.htm , I wanted to carry on exploring this evidence space, but wanted to invert what I had been doing by not only making my work literally within the games space - the in-game photoshoot - but also by treating the games space as if it were real, a space that I was familiar with. So I re-played several games that I know, including Doom3 but settled on Max Payne 2 because I particularly liked the feel of the in-game spaces; the crack house, the construction site the opulent penthouse etc. In addition to the aesthetic concerns, I like the way the designers have tried to tackle narrative in a videogame context. Max Payne is more akin to a comic book so the clichés and settings are more iconic than many similar games and several of the locations really do have the feel of a film set so appear to be very familiar. I played the game through 3 times (at least:)) before setting the GOD and GETALLWEPONS cheats and running BenDMan'S 'bloody mod 1.2' in developer mode, then started afresh looking at the environments, 'painting' the spaces with the carnage and looking for the right shots. It took a lot of time to find the right places, the best angles and the set right scenes just as in a real-world photo shoot and I had to discard a lot of images, but I feel the resultant series has the right balance of emptiness and expectation - hence 'waiting places'.

I have had a lot of interest in the Evidencia series - over 15,000 visitors over the past few months with responses that range from a small minority who thought it was artsy bullshit or that I am just plagiarizing and infringing copyright - to a very positive response from games, art, new media, research and design online communities. Inspirational; Macabre; Dark but clever... Interesting reaction to The White Room piece from Remedy, the Max Payne 2 developers who responded: I am thrilled that you have chosen to use Max Payne 2 as a "tool" for your art. I am impressed and humbled at what you have created." Some people liked the idea of 'waiting places', others, the way that the game space had been altered by documenting what is usually left behind by the player.

I continue to explore videogames through my work - in both the 'real' and the game space. I am currently working with Liselott Brunnberg at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm. We are researching a location based game Backseat Playground http://www.tii.se/mobility/BSP in which the real world acts as a games engine - where game properties are assigned to everyday objects and linking this to episodic narrative game episodes. And I will be carrying on with the Evidência series in the New Year.

What I set out to do with White Room was to play with the boundary between the videogame and the real, what I feel I have succeeded in doing is to subtly change the way in which the video game space is perceived.

e-mail john[at sign]hydropia[dot]org