Trust no oneDeep Throat, The X-Files

“Security” for network communication can basically (at least for our purposes here) be split into two distinct paradigms: Secrecy and verification. Secrecy entails encoding a message for transmission such that if the message were to be intercepted by a third party it would appear to be unreadable; The canonical example is the ROT13 “substitution” cipher. Verification is the process by which the contents of a message can be reliably determined to have not been modified in transmission (for example via a Man-in-the-Middle attack); The most common form of cryptographic verification is the Digital Signature. Digital Signatures are also an example of one type of “Asymmetric Cryptography” in which one of the primary benefits (usually at the expense of speed) is the ability to freely publish one-half of the complete cipher (hence the term “Public Key” cryptography). (more…)

As described here. Now in YouTube form! 2-1.mov (click me!).

Here it is installed at UCSD Open Studios 2009! (click me too!). Here’s the statement that accompanies it:

First in a series of video installations that attempts to break down the narrative style of popular contemporary and classic games. As narrative devices in popular games have moved from story and player-driven narratives toward “open world” designs, it has exposed the current state of artificial life (the computer controlled players, animals, etc) as extremely rudimentary. This was not nearly as obvious in classic games, for instance in Super Mario Bros., as time in these games generally moves forward as the player-avatar (Mario in this case) progresses in space from left-to-right. That is, enemies that are some screens ahead of the player don’t yet exist as the entire world is instantiated by the actions of the player.

As an attempt to explore the notion that the world exists as at the pleasure of the player-avatar, and critique the current state of alife in contemporary games, I have created a narrative that focuses not on Mario, but instead on a lone “Goomba” in world 2-1 of Super Mario Bros. 2-1.avi makes use of a “tool assisted speed run” (a complete play-through of the game assisted by software tools), created by “kimz”, as Mario’s movement through the game world from start to completion in 5:20.