The Belgian-Dutch artist duo JODI, Joan Heemskerk (born 1968) and Dirk Paesmans (born 1965), created this work of art by altering the code of the popular commercial videogame Quake. Software-based, Untitled Game comprises fourteen different modifications, or “mods,” each distinct in the visual and interactive experience offered. For one mod in the series, Arena, JODI assigned the color white to every pixel in the game. This has the effect of neutralizing the violent visual content of the original “first-person shooter” (Adang, 2013). At first glance, the world of Arena looks empty, but by pressing buttons on the computer keyboard, one discovers that the game environment is still fully intact. Thus, obstacles limit and at times mystify navigation, while foes lurk ominously within the whiteness—sound and “muscle memory” are the only guides. By eliminating visual content from Quake, just as Paik does in the imageless Zen for Film, JODI transforms interaction with the software, making the game’s elements more apparent precisely because they are invisible. JODI does this by confounding expectations of how videogames should function; by creatively misusing the medium, they call attention to the materiality of videogames. Instead of looking through the videogame at its content, Arena forces players to confront the apparatus of the videogame itself. —LA

Image: Courtesy of the artists.