Manager´s Civilization

Eduard Piňos interviews Eastwood

The Eastwood Group follows the research of relations between contemporary communication and information technologies and cultural practice. This project, consisting of two Yugoslavian software experiments, is trying to reach an understanding of principles and changes in our information society. Eastwood then tries to widen their findings about the evolution of new social order by games and other software applications. The authors themselves have no big artistic ambitions but their work, especially considering its substantial forms, transcends to art practice.

Where, in your opinion, is the border between art and just entertainment? Do you even think that these two things must be separated from each other? What does your team produce - art or entertainment?

Well, art is a construct and fight for power, which is also the case with the entertainment industry. It’s irrelevant if art and entertainment is separated or not. We produce games that are trying to show the nature of military entertainment and present humans as economic beings. The US Army produced the game American Army, and they regarded it as a work of art, probably also entertaining.
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Your games Civlization IV and MCTE focus on negative aspects of contemporary human society. Do you see yourselves as an art-activist? Do you want to change things through your work, or do you just use the problematic themes as subject matter with no further meaning.

In Civilization IV we wanted to emphasize the nature of economic relations in today’s society. The creators of previous Civilization games (Sid Meyers, Firaxis) put a certain matrix what civilization is and its developmental phases in very vague way. With our Civilization IV we presented the notion & idea about how economic interest sees the future of human relations, as deeply managerial, just in time. The idea about the equation between social and economic relations pushes further ideas about managing human resources, which means managing capitalistic values. The military structure of previous games we moved into the contemporary military environment of IT companies. MCTE modification of the popular Sims game is an example of a crisis of interactivity where you refuse to play the game under the rules that are already preset.
We don’t know if we are art activists, but we do know that Information and communication technologies are becoming a battle frontier of contemporary information capitalism, and we also notice that its growing power of rightwing extremism among youth and teenagers mixed with consumerism + domination of speculative capital which reminds us of the 1920s in Europe and we know what happened in the 1930s. That especially applies to game communities which are still of low interest to sociologists. It’s interesting to see how militaristic agenda in the majority of contemporary games is connected with children and youth. After almost 70 years we are tracing these notions back to organizations like Italian fascist youth Balilla and its more known follower Hitler Youth.

What is the future of art? Will it merge into new technologies and will the old-fashioned art styles be forgotten? Would you regret this kind of development? What is more important for you sense or design? - In your work, in the works of others?

Well, if you invest a lot of money, create a good engine, do your algorithms, set parameters, you might forecast the future of art. Actually we are in the process of creating such an engine in the future.
Regarding old-fashioned art styles, it’s quite difficult to say what is old fashioned in post-modern conditions. We had experience from the 80s when the art market reinvented paintings that people regarded as obsolete and as you say old-fashioned, although in the 70s almost everybody thought it’s dead, and that conceptual art would rule forever. And for sure old-fashioned art styles will be not forgotten. Actually it seems that for the art market the best are artists who are dead, they don’t ask strange questions. They are just dead. Can you imagine Malevich attending his own auction? Artist Alexander Brenner has some good ideas about it.

What do you think about the attitude that considers computer games as something with no value?
Do you see any value in ordinary computer games? Don´t you think that for example the graphics and the story in the games could be artistically valuable as it is in some films?

It’s the right of everyone to have opinions, also regarding games. The point with the majority of contemporary games is that they are a strong weapon of ideological warfare. The main target are children and teenagers, but more and more also adults. Lots of computer games are virtual boot camps where youth are being recruited in different fields: strategic planning of military operations, hand to hand combat, learning to drive tanks, airplanes, how to navigate missiles, individual or team combat.
There are two ways to treat games: Stop playing games or; create or find different content. It’s the same thing with big media: Stop watching CNN and create or find alternative media. Games are complex responsive interactive environment; it’s also media that is more and more important, with its own laws like film, like painting, like video and it desperately needs content.

Could the flow of information to our society be reduced in the future? How do you view the vision of a person attached to their computer that has no need to go anywhere from the place where they are because everything they need could be reached via internet. Are you afraid of this?


We need to save our position between paralyzed technoludism and schizophrenic techno-fetishism. If computerization and automatisation means that we will have less hard physical work as one of the techno promises, then it seems that old avant-garde or techno utopian dreams of society from the beginning of 20th century are fulfilled. But, along with these promises there is of course technology that is an agent of control regulating bio power. The main idea today around technology is that subject is 100 % mobile, so that they can go everywhere and be available 24/7 with the help of mobile wireless technologies. The idea is that technology penetrates into the body and follows humans everywhere, to the beach, bedroom, and dentist. You already have specified software agents that are replacing human agents. So, if you want to travel, now you need to contact your virtual web software agent, and it will search for flights and communicate with your virtual bank software agent, transfer money and book your flight. You just need to go to airport and fly away. But we see big potential in all these developments since the economy is based on social relations and communication, so we need to use technologies smartly and to rethink social communication.

What are you plans for the future? What projects are you preparing? What latest piece of knowledge did your research of relations between new technologies and cultural practice bring to you?

We are planning to put more focus on the content of games and to raise critical awareness of the importance of content, and why people should take over or at least participate in game creation.
For that, it’s crucial that gaming communities and gamers need to stop searching for imaginary perfection of a game, because it’s no way out. In that case only big guys like Electronic Arts, Blizzard, Sony, and Microsoft are surviving. One piece of advice for game communities and gamers: It is time to search for the content and also to check who the author and producer are: some independent small companies and individuals or big game production corporations.

01.02.2006