Has this ever happened to you? For the first time ever you have just reached level 11 of your favorite 3D shooter. You are just starting to explore completely unfamiliar territory, and if nothing happens, your life energy will only last a few minutes more... And then the doorbell rings.
You freeze. What to do? Ignore it? But it’s probably the FedEx package you are expecting. Better get it. Will your game world and all your enemies wait for you? Will your character get into trouble without you?
What will happen if nothing happens, if you just let...your joystick... go?
The New Yorker media artist Brody Condon creates non-interactive computer games that reflect this very situation. His “self-playing game art” titled defaultProperties() is a waiting computer game, a “still”.
It is a game world in which everything works but nothing happens. The trees sway in the wind. Water ripples with the reflection of light. Clouds pass overhead, and the protagonists breathe in and out. The whole scene seems to be poised for the next moment... But the moment never comes. That’s the idea. It’s a “game” that doesn’t even have a joystick or a console—just a simple metal casing for the self-playing CPU.
What is it then that draws us into the game? The computer graphics of Condon’s image are not any more advanced or realistic than current standard gaming imagery. However, his games are significantly more strategic in comparison to most interactive 3D shooters: Condon’s composition is a first-person (i.e. ego) perspective from the 16th century.
defaultProperties() is Condon’s gaming version of a classical composition based on the central triptych of Gerard David’s Baptism of Christ (circa 1508). David’s Jesus at the center of the image has been replaced by a well-fed, balding man of our time. In the heavens Condon renders his version of a particularly admonishing God. John the Baptist and the Holy Ghost seem to be missing, but a stand-in prophetic figure in animal hides holds a threatening flaming sword that seems to signal either impending salvation or death. What is he waiting for? Would he raise his arm in blessing or damnation if the game continued?
The tension is unbearable. Forget the doorbell, because how else will you know what happens, if nothing happens?
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