Author: Dr Implausible

Gaming Machines: Gaming as Allographic Art

(This post concludes the set of examples we began with the Cybernetic Machines and Science Machines over the last few weeks.)

We might call a gaming machine as something where a “game” is a set of instructions written by a “developer (or designer)”* fed into an assemblage (or cybernetic bio-technical machine) called a “studio” that outputs a “program”.

Hmm, that doesn’t quite work.

We need to spend a little more time with our construction here, to figure out what the roots are.

The generic version breaks down to: a Machine is a given Input (written) by a (Creator) fed into an assemblage called a (Mechanism) that produces an (Output).

If we were to extract those terms from the examples in our previous posts, we’d get this:

Machine, Input, Creator, Mechanism, Output
Science, Method, Scientist, Laboratory, Experiment
Game, Game, Developer, Studio, Program
Film, Script, Director, Production Company, Movie
Music, Composition, Composer, Orchestra, Symphony
Building, Blueprint, Architect, Construction Company, Building
AI, Context Model, Prompt Engineer, AI, Virtual World
AI2, Prompt, Prompt Engineer, AI, Experience

So now a gaming machine looks like this:

A “game” is a set of instructions written by a “developer (or designer)” fed into an assemblage (or cybernetic bio-technical machine) called a “studio” that outputs a “program”.

And we can talk about…

Gaming as an Allographic Art

Back when we started with Cybernetic Machines, we brought up the concept of an “allographic art”, from Nelson Goodman (1962). An allographic art is an art that is crafted by others based on a set of instructions. The artist in this case is the creator of the work that is replicated, like a composer or architect.

So by this definition, a game – either tabletop or electronic – would fit as an allographic art form.

Granted TTRPG rules rarely rise to the level of “art”, often seeming content to aim for “technical manual”, but things are improving. A lot of smaller indie games, have been focusing on the presentation and the while package – games like Root, Mork Borg, and others – to say nothing of the beautiful games released within the boardgaming space (Canvas, Sagrada, Azul, Hues and Cues, and a host of others).

But there are competing visions of “art” here, as art in game design may occur irrespective of the aesthetic appeal of the components, and a dry technical manual with pretty pictures may still not make for an engaging or artful design. However, there is no reason why a black and white typed zine might not contain artfully designed gaming systems either.

And while we previously also discussed how a scripted performance like a symphony or ballet would count as an allographic art, gaming as performance – again, either tabletop (e.g. Critical Role, Dimension 20) or electronic (e.g. Twitch, YouTube, etc.) is a different form of art.

To be clear: both design and performance can be art. Both count.

In the same way that Mozart of Composer and the London Symphony Orchestra as Performer are artists, in different ways, of the same work. And while this is commonly accepted in those art forms, in others it rarely occurs.

Take film for example: one of the very instances of this in film is Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Here we have the same script, and much of the same direction, attempting to remake a film in much the same way that we would see with other allographic art forms. Psycho (1998) is a performance of Psycho (1960). Or rather, both Psycho (1960) and Psycho (1998) are performances (or interpretations) of the original script. I.e., allographic art.

But it is so rarely done in that medium. What would it look like if it happened more often?

This discussion of film brings us back to gaming, hopefully. Here we can have artistry in the play, of the code or rules created by others for the gamers to showcase their interpretation to the world, and we can have artistry in the design, in the instructions as they are created, with the elegance or aesthetic appeal of the rules and their presentation showcasing that form of art.

Which leads us to the implied question: is gaming art? Of course!

Though there have been many arguments that video games aren’t art (with some stating that they are incapable of becoming so), these arguments have been always been false. Gaming is art.

And gaming machines can make it.

Science Machines

A “method” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “laboratory” that outputs an “experiment”.

Or something to that effect.

And then the artistry is in how that experiment comes together, much like the orchestra playing a symphony.
And this artistry occurs in the context of science as well. Or in the social construction of science.

The cybernetic machines madlib above show one way this can be constructed; of course there’s more, or other variations on a theme. It follows from the field of Science Studies – that understanding that science is a social undertaking – and so would likely be familiar to anyone aware of that field.

But I wanted to bring it up as it helps illustrate what we mean by “cybernetic bio-technical machine”. Bruno Latour would call this an “assemblage”. So swapping that in to our madlibs would look like: A “method” is a set of instructions fed into an assemblage called a “laboratory” that outputs an “experiment”. Which is much shorter and to the point, but ends up obscuring the details I wanted to focus on. Which in this case is nature of that machine.

By cybernetic and bio-technical, I mean that the machine is a combination of humans working with technology, in highly specialized ways, and those humans working with each other, as each of the examples we’ve used so far are most often done by people in groups.

An orchestra consists of musicians (the bio) each deeply focused on their instruments (the tech) working together to produce a symphony. So too with a film crew, their cameras, lenses, lights, microphones, and all the myriad tools that go into editing and finishing a film. Architecture and science are the same way.

But perhaps we need to add another term into our madlib. Where does the scientist fit into the above equation? Or the composer? Or any of the other creators, in relation to their specific assemblages? (I realized I’m playing fast and loose with my metaphors here; I trust you can follow along).

For a science machine: A “method” is a set of instructions written by a scientist fed into an assemblage called a “laboratory” that outputs an “experiment”.

(We added other creators to the footnote of the original post).

Each of these assemblages comes together under the auspice of a creator who crafts the set of instructions. This is where human agency lies – these things don’t instantiate on their own.

And to follow it back to the previous post, this pattern holds true with AI art as well. An allographic art form that follows the familiar pattern that we’ve seen above. At the time of this writing, there is no sentient AI on planet earth.

There is no autonomous art.

All art, even AI art, is human created, even if there are layers of machines behind the surface.

Cybernetic Machines: AI Art and Cultural Form

A “script” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “production company” that outputs a “movie”

A “composition” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “orchestra” that outputs a “symphony”.

A “blueprint” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “construction company” that outputs a “building”.

A “context model” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “AI” that outputs a “virtual world”.

Perhaps

Or perhaps all of the above.

These are all examples of “allographic arts” as introduced by Nelson Goodman back in 1962, versions of art that is crafted by others based on a set of instructions provided by the artist. this could be the director, the composer, the architect, as Goodman postulated, or a set of instructions followed by the Generative AI at the direction of the “Prompt Engineer”.

Of course “Prompt Engineer” is at once both too banal and too unrepresentative of what is going on in the artistic process here. The slightly more upscaled “Context Engineer” (for when one prompt isn’t enough) is similarly unsuitable here. Engineering has little to do with it at all, though much like our architect example above, engineering isn’t precluded from being a part of the process.

Perhaps it’s because the Generative AI tools are too new in their development to have a singular title, like composer or architect, or Madonna or Cher, and so we’re left with the dual names to describe them, by defining them as a variation on the thing that they are somewhat akin to. Think “software architect” or “3D modeler”. Too new not quite encapsulated in the name, the way “TV Producer” has collapsed into “showrunner” in the 21st century.

Maybe it’s in the name.

Or maybe it’s in what we make with it. The art form hasn’t coalesced yet. Again too new; too recently pulled from the primordial technocultural stew. In the early days of the form, we are left reproducing the elements of older media, the same way early television and film were often stage plays and vaudeville acts. We’re caught somewhere between Pong and Space Invaders in terms of development, with Elden Ring and GTA VI undreamed of in the distant horizon.

With that in mind, what will AI art actually look like? Once it comes into its own as cultural form? I hinter at it with Virtual Worlds above. These can be produced using traditional methods, of course, but maybe that’s but one way a fed set of prompts, of contexts, of world models can be realized. AI Art will almost assuredly look something barely glimpsed or imagined.

But I want to play in the holodeck for a moment.

Because I think that gets close to what we’re imagining here. The holodeck, famously introduced in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation “Encounter At Farpoint” (airdate 1987-09-28) and subsequently retconned and chronologically re-situated as typical with enduring narratives, would allow for the cast and crew to input a set of commands into the computer and allow it to generate the setting, players, dialogue and the like, along a relatively broad range of possibilities. The computer onboard was massively powerful, and generated these holographic simulations with relative ease, but the show(s) always made that distinction between the computer of the ship, and the AI embodied in more ambulatory agents like Lieutenant Commander Data. It stands to reason that the computer of a faster-than-light starship some 250 years in the future would be more that capable at the task at hand.

So perhaps this is what we’re moving towards, where the cultural form of AI art is more akin to an “experience” crafted by an “Imagineer”, though perhaps not in a way akin to a theme park ride held under copyright by the Disney Corporation.

We’re getting closer.

Perhaps we don’t have the words yet because we don’t know what that cultural form will be. It’s had to tell from our Pong-centered viewpoint here.

So let’s try to re-work our formula from above:

A “prompt” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “AI” that outputs an “experience”.

Not bad, though perhaps a little generic. But what it gains in that genericity is that it is divorced from the digital. No “cyber” or “virtual” prefixes are to be found. And that allows for growth, for change, for possibility – for the cultural form of AI art to transcend the digital / material barrier, to allow for an full environment to be developed like within the holodeck, or for humans to interact with material AI agents, like the hosts within Westworld. We’re still bouncing around that “theme park” model, but there is art within that creation, of the building and shaping of a full sensory experience.

And the play is the thing, a phrase that was uttered in the holodeck on more than one occasion, I’m sure. So let’s leave it there, our recognition of the incipient cultural form of AI art, and go out into the world to hunt for new words, new worlds, and discover what the future might be.

Beyond where the robots go

I got out again this last weekend
Far enough away that there was no cell service, no internet
Far enough away that the smartphone might as well just stay locked in the glove compartment
Because it had no use aside from being a backup egg timer or flashlight

And it was good
I was able to touch all the grass
Out there beyond where the robots go

And after a few hours the din of social media faded
And I could no longer hear it chattering in my ears
And as I saw there in the stillness, reflecting in the dark
Much like now
I was left with a single question:

How do we reclaim the truth?

Because that’s what we’ve lost
And I don’t know if that’s the first step
Or the end goal

But I know that’s what we must do

The Mauve Pill

Been seeing a new type of post online, and there’s enough of them that it seems to be part of a trend. This might just be early days of it, but I thought I’d document my observations here, and return back to it as needed. I’m loosely calling it The Mauve Pill, for reasons we’ll get into in a bit.

Examples

Or this rather lengthy blog post:

https://eev.ee/blog/2025/07/03/the-rise-of-whatever

(There’s more, I’ll try and pull them out of the bookmarks shortly.)

What are the points in common of The Mauve Pill?

  • Anti-“content” – not as a style, but as the wholesale rejection of “content” as a meta-descriptor for various media, or thinking it is a new term rather one that has been in use since the 1960s (at least)
  • Anti-AI, either in general or rejecting that it can have good uses
  • Performative “left” politics, but without grounding or reflection (ie “against all”)
  • Uncritical assessment of new technology
  • Adoption of “en~ification” (which is not a new thing, really, just capitalism by another name)
  • A belief in the Dial-up Pastorale – not recognizing that the web was corporate from early on

There’s likely more, but these were some of the constellation of ideas I was observing.

Why Mauve?

Well, truth be told, I needed a color. We kinda ended up here by process of elimination.

Red and Blue are already taken, and Blue has connotations besides.

Red pill: These were people who, in the parlance of the community, had swallowed the “Matrix”-inspired “red pill” and seen “the truth.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/books/review/ellen-reeve-black-pill.html

Blue is staying asleep, stuck in the matrix.

However, maybe there’s another option?

I hear ya, Zizek. What other options do we have?

Black is taken too. Elle Reeve covers this in depth in her 2024 book of the same name, looking at “the black pill of nihilism” and how that has led to the pipelining of individuals to the alt-right movement.

So we need to find another option:

Silver? Would this stand for cyber, all shiny and chrome? Nah. Doesn’t seem to fit with what we’re observing.

Gold? Does this just mean (monetized or capitalized, or maybe just crypto)? In which case, no, this won’t work.

Rainbow? No, Pink, no? These have obvious associations which don’t apply here.

Green would be eco-friendly, perhaps? Brown might be too? Again, not sure either would apply in this instance.

Orange would be labour, perhaps? Or other worldwide movements, and as such it feels that this is taken.

So let’s go with Mauve. It kinda reminds me of old 4 color CRTs, visually close to the magenta provided by the CGA video standard, along with Cyan, White, and the black of the background.

Is it a problem?

A little, as it takes spaces in the discourse about dealing with current problems, but is as divorced from reality as some of those other “Pilled” movements.

There may be points where they (the authors of mauve-pilled content) identify an issue, but the pilling leads them to come to very odd conclusions, or looping in irrelevant examples in their train of thought on their posts.

And I notice that I may agree with some parts of the argument, or even the conclusion, but there’s enough fallacious, irrelevant, or specious reasoning in the logic chain that I feel that the end result is suspect.

So I gotta examine my own facts, knowledge and assumptions (which is fine, you always gotta check yourself), and then I end up questioning what I know?

Except, “I ain’t passed the bar, but I know a little bit”

It’s like: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, which means you (probably) don’t know what you’re talking about”

And it’s a problem because it’s “pilled” – posts along these lines get positive reinforcement from other pilled members of the community, and that leads them to think they are correct in their (flawed) analysis, further entrenching them in their idea and unable to be reasoned out of it by an expert in the area (f’rex me; see above – I know a little bit).

So because it occupies space, it closes off rational discourse about the subject, and we end up endlessly have to talk around whatever the Mauve-Pilled topic is online for the next decade or so.

There are literally bigger issues to deal with right now.

It reminds me of the Dial-Up Pastorale articles I was noticing last year, and I think many of them could fit within this trend. The DUP dialog has certainly continued, gaining steam and more attention as more people seek alternatives to large platforms. There is still a large amount of platform illiteracy involved there too – BlueSky, Surf/Newsmast and especially SubStack are not any better than the alternatives people are fleeing to them from; the switch just hasn’t been flipped yet to commodify the userbase. (Though the time may finally be coming for SubStack due to their current content policies.)

This commodification is one of the things they appear to share in common in another way: they all engage in what I like to call “Commodified Curation”, the provision a non-algorithmic internet experience. Curated, if you will. Right now they appear to be mostly benign, lying somewhat dormant within the social media ecosystems they’ve attached themselves to, but eventually the worm will turn, the switch will flip, and we’ll see the various stages of commodification and monetization take place once again.

We’ll return to both #commodifiedcuration and #platformilliteracy in the near future. For right now, the question is what to do about The Mauve Pilled?

I think for now it’s worth highlighting that it is a thing, and seeing if there are other examples. How much of it is just the zeitgeist, and how much of it is resistant to discussion. Much of what I’ve seen feels non-rational, like the other pilled groups, and as the saying goes: “you can’t reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into”. Give or take; it’s been a while since I’ve read Jonathan Swift.

If there’s going to be any engagement, it’ll likely start small. I’ll let you know how it goes here, and we’ll try and collect it for a future podcast episode.