Robert Praxmarer | Austria

Mindbending - Robert Praxmarer and Florian Berger
Conditioning and brainwashing software is the future of both gaming and education, according to Mindbending Software. To quote the official website: "Mindbending Software Inc. is a company specialised on psychological conditioning software packages for children. With the newest technologies our products infiltrate the computer games of your kids and mingle various subconscious or concious conditioning messages and images in the game contents." Bestsellers are the Selfesteemizer™ which fools your children into believing they are popular at school and loved by everyone around them, and the Intellectualizer™ which increase your kids' IQ through subliminal math lessons hidden inside commercial games.
The scariest part is that some parents thought this all was a very good idea and contacted Robert Praxmarer and Florian Berger , the Austrian-born multimedia artists who programmed the aforementioned softwares then mocked-up the existence of Mindbending Software Inc., a company that would shamelessly sell these to any interested parents. This work is both a critique of the influence of contemporary games on kids, which promote Sims-like capitalism-oriented lifestyle, as evidence of the blind trust people have in technology to resolve all of their issues.

(t)Error
AUSTRIA 2003 ROBERT PRAXMARER
Is terror the trademark of error ?
In this installation – originally designed as a video game – the player can slip into the role of a George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden or Tony Blair and haunt the (game)world with the respective identity. By recording outlines and movements of players via camera and projecting it in real time and size onto the wall, the voluntary players become pieces of the game - their task is either to avoid contact with tanks, submarines or warships of the enemy, to collect oil refineries and Dollar bills or to fight desperate civilians to get to the next level of the game.
On one the hand (t)error depicts the cynical discourse on events and the doubtful motives of the war in Iraq on the other hand the piece of work by Austrian artist Robert Praxmarer is an attempt of critisism on today’s game and media culture, characterised by consumption and fun. Using the medium computer game is an irony in itself. The consumer is actively included into the action through a strong identification with his chosen character and experiences the combination of fun and violence in a much more direct and instant way than with any other medium.

Robert Praxmarer is a computer science engineer and media artist, who worked 7 years for the Ars Electronica Futurelab. In this time he was collaborating with well known traditional artists as well as emerging media artists. He used the Futurelab as a platform to create his own artworks and expands his knowledge in science and technology. He did various international exhibitions for instance Ars Electronica Festival, Electrofringe Australia, CynetArt Germany, LiquidMusic Austria, New Forms Festival Canada, RebelArt Festival, Madrid Experimental Art Festival, Electrohype Denmark, BEK Norway, Stuttgarter Filmwinter Germany, Interferenze Festival Italy etc.) and received various awards and grants, like national youth creative programming award, honorary mention from UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2003, upcoming artist price from Madrid Experimental Art Festival, Machinista Best Works Nomination, Memefest Finalist and in 1993 he participated in the international Olympiad in Informatics, Mendoza Argentina. Currently Praxmarer is exploring the artistic possibilities within the technology of mixed- and augmented reality, respectively computer vision and realtime 3D graphics. His work is often a pointed critique of society and media culture he calls his art socio-political media pop art.

Florian Berger has studied physics at university in Linz Austria. He is a very gifted programmer and objectivist thinker with a main focus on 3D and Virtual Reality. He is involved in a lot of open source projects and works mainly on Linux. Since 2001 he works for the Ars Electronica Futurelab and is contributing his research and creativity to art work in new media. Since 2005 he is senior researcher for realtime graphics. He plays the harp and likes the Blues.