On Game Art, Circuit Bending and Speedrunning as Counter-Practice:

 'Hard' and 'Soft' Nonexistence

 ~Seb Franklin~

 In _The Exploit_ Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker speculate

 that "[f]uture avant-garde practices will be those of nonexistence."

 [1] This extraordinary claim is a response to the current ubiquity of

 digital technology and its impact on cultural politics; if existence

 becomes a question of being classified informatically, the avoidance

 of this classification, or nonexistence, becomes of paramount

 importance. The discussion of nonexistence in _The Exploit_ opens

 with a question, one that forms the basis of this essay: "how does

 one develop techniques and technologies to make oneself unaccountable

 for?" [2] Directly following this question comes a specific, material

 example through which a crucial distinction between "unaccountable

 for" and "invisible" or "absent" is made -- the use of a laser

 pointer, aimed into a surveillance camera in order to 'blind' it. In

 this situation, the camera is not destroyed nor is the individual

 shining the laser actually hiding, or invisible; instead, they are

 simply not present on the particular screen or data set  recorded by

 the camera in question. [3] The same is true of the tricking of a

 server, causing it to record a routine event when one goes online.

 These kinds of tactics, "tactics of abandonment", are "positive

 technologies" for Galloway and Thacker. They are entirely distinct

 from absence, lack, invisibility and nonbeing because they are "full"

 or rather, because they "permeate." [4] The practical consequences of

 Galloway and Thacker's formulation of nonexistence are clear: It's

 not a question of hiding, or living off the grid, but of living on

 the grid, in potentially full informatic view, but in a way that

 makes one's technical specification or classification impossible.

 As the "Tactics of Nonexistence" section of _The Exploit_ progresses,

 Galloway and Thacker speculatively suggest some broader practical

 approaches through which nonexistence can be executed by the

 individual actor, from "nonexistent action" to "unmeasurable or

 not-yet-measurable human traits" and "the promotion of measurable

 data of negligible importance." [5] In each of these examples, it

 must be noted that the key terms are positive, or practical; action,

 traits, and promotion. Once again, nonexistence is not a retreat

 from, but a "fullness," or a pushing beyond. The purpose of this

 article is to examine some of the ways in which these practical and

 conceptual versions of nonexistence can be explored in relation to a

 single specific classification, made later in the same book, between

 "user" and "programmer." Becoming unmeasurable, or nonexistent, in

 relation to this particular classification, which is created through

 a subject's relationship to technology, represents a productive way

 of thinking towards counter-practice under contemporary digital

 culture.

 As Gilles Deleuze states in his "Postscript on Control Societies",

 "[i]t's not just a question of worrying or of hoping for the best,

 but of finding new weapons." [6] In examining the distinction between

 "using" and "programming", and specifically the ways in which one can

 become nonexistent in relation to this distinction, it becomes

 possible to identify and highlight some practical strategies that are

 emerging from within the "control society" or "gamespace", the

 present era of distributed, informatic control that is widely

 documented from Deleuze to McKenzie Wark. This particular distinction

 is essential because it concentrates the two crucial aspects of

 nonexistence, the rendering-unclassifiable of a particular identity

 and the technical means by which this can be carried out, in a single

 set of practices. Examples of which are provided in later sections of

 this article.

 Galloway and Thacker, in the "User and the Programmer" section of

 _The Exploit_, briefly speculate on a possible response to the

 cultural, social and legal implications of proprietary technology.

 This passage is extremely short at only twenty-six lines of text over

 two paragraphs, but contains some crucial speculations on the

 avant-garde as common practice in the control era, centred on the

 following: "[f]reedom of expression is no longer relevant; freedom of

 use has taken its place." [7] This statement is clearly a response to

 proprietary thought not only in its most obvious sense, as in

 proprietary software, but transferred into a broader relationship

 between subject and technology, art and politics. The user-programmer

 classification is crucial in the contemporary era because it defines

 a distinction of access, or use. The individual actor, who finds a

 way to manipulate a given technology without creating a trace of

 their action from the perspective of the machine's input or executive

 processes, is becoming nonexistent *technically*. At the same time,

 by directing their actions in this way -- between the expected (or

 surface) use of a technology and the exploitation of its possible

 unexpected functions -- they become nonexistent *culturally*,

 impossible to classify in terms of the user-programmer distinction

 that is definitive of identity in the digital age. Viewed in this way

 the user-programmer distinction becomes a potentially fruitful point

 at which to concentrate tactics of nonexistence.

 After their opening statements on the distinct, predominant freedoms

 related to particular techno-historical periods, Galloway and Thacker

 go on to clarify the breadth of their user-programmer distinction in

 moving beyond the specific connotations of computer and software use

 into broad cultural existence. This is concentrated in their

 definitions of "'[u]ser' as a modern synonym for 'consumer,'"

 designating "all those who participate in the algorithmic unfoldings

 of code," and programmer as a "modern synonym for 'producer,'"

 relating to any individual who is able to "participate both in the

 authoring of code and in the process of unfolding." [8] This

 particular pair of definitions is in need of some development in

 order to become fully aligned with the counter-practices of

 nonexistence that Galloway and Thacker earlier propose. The type of

 programmer that is proposed in _The Exploit_ is at the interface of

 user and somewhere between user and 'professional' programmer, since

 they participate in both authoring and unfolding. This in-between

 state is essential to the concept of informatic nonexistence, but

 requires a consideration of the distinction between the professional

 programmer who participates in the politics of proprietary technology

 and Galloway and Thacker's programmer, who may be engaged in the

 possibly illegal opening up of technology. It is in locating means

 and applications of programming in directed, but non-professional

 areas, away from the commercial knowledge industries that Alan Liu

 documents at length in _The Laws of Cool_, [9] that contemporary

 cultural-political possibilities may lie.

 Critical Art Ensemble offers a solution to this problem of two

 programmers in the introduction to _Digital Resistance_. CAE make a

 critical distinction between the professional, whose work is

 officially recognised or existent, and the amateur who may attain the

 same technical proficiency while avoiding this recognition; "[h]ere

 may be a final link to invisibility: these participants favour access

 over expertise, and who really cares about the work of an amateur?"

 [10] It is notable that CAE's statement almost perfectly matches one

 made by Giorgio Agamben, and referenced by Galloway and Thacker in

 the "Tactics of Nonexistence" section of _The Exploit_. "A being

 radically devoid of any representable identity would be absolutely

 irrelevant to the state." [11] The programmer that Galloway and

 Thacker call for every user to become is the type of amateur

 described by CAE, an individual who cannot be primarily classified

 according to the prospective value of their technical skill, but who

 is nonetheless able to take an active role in their relationship with

 technology.

 If attaining access to the underlying form or code of a technology is

 a move towards programming, while retaining a relationship with

 surface effects is definitive of using, then finding a way to

 articulate both possibilities at once is the key to nonexistence. It

 is for this reason that the categories of game art, circuit bending

 and speedrunning, each based in the technical but non-specialist

 reallocation of a given technology's programmed properties, are of

 interest beyond their apparently modest, hobbyist appearance. As

 Galloway and Thacker point out at the end of the "Tactics of

 Nonexistence" section, "[t]he nonexistent is that which cannot be

 cast into any available data types. The nonexistent is that which

 cannot be parsed by any available algorithms." [12] If individuals

 are defined as belonging to either the "user" data set or the

 "programmer" data set in relation to a particular technology, then

 attaining the impossibility of being definitively placed in these

 sets is nonexistence in practice. Furthermore, as this process can

 always only take place through technical modes of opening up

 limitations, the acts an individual carries out in avoiding being

 parsed through this particular algorithm are themselves acts of

 nonexistence at the machine-user level, comparable to the laser

 pointer aimed into the camera. This double articulation is definitive

 of nonexistence as counter-practice, containing both the cultural

 unlocatability of the nonexistent individual and the technical

 methods they execute in order to take up this undecidable cultural

 position.

 Viewed in this way, there are many practical ways in which the

 distinction between user and programmer can be intermediated, leading

 to nonexistence. An extreme example: in 1994, a seventeen-year-old

 schoolboy and boy scout named David Hahn attempted to build a fast

 breeder nuclear reactor in the shed of his mother's house. [13]

 Possessing no specialist education in chemistry or physics, and

 equipped only with a copy of Robert Brent's _The Golden Book of

 Chemistry Experiments_, Hahn extracted radium from fluorescent watch

 and clock faces, americium from smoke detectors and lithium from

 batteries, amongst other elements harvested from everyday household

 goods, assembling a reactor that emitted over a thousand times normal

 background radiation. Frightened by the high amounts of radiation

 emitted by his successfully constructed reactor, Hahn began to

 disassemble it, but not before attracting the attention of the FBI

 and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Despite the technical skill

 required to carry out his teenage experiments, Hahn subsequently

 found it impossible to secure employment as a nuclear specialist. The

 questions that result from this incident are closely related to the

 idea of user/programmer nonexistence. Since Hahn possessed no

 specialist training or higher education when he made his reactor,

 does this exclude him from the role of programmer? Since he did not

 put his reactor to any useful purpose such as generating power, can

 he be definitively be classed as a user? This is only one example of

 the way the programmer's supposedly elite technical knowledge is both

 attainable and employable by the supposed layman without official,

 formal access to it, and the problems of classification that this

 type of action creates. This is not to say that people should take up

 the handling of dangerous materials in their home as avant-garde

 practice; the applications of this attitude are incredibly broad. As

 Galloway and Thacker state, "[i]f a person installs a game console

 modchip, he is programming his console. If she grows her own food,

 she is programming her own biological intake." [14] The value of this

 project lies less in the specific tasks that programming allows, and

 more in the value of reclaiming a breadth or freedom of use from, or

 programming, technologies designed to work in only one, directed way.

 In thinking about practical ways to program, in the broad sense

 proposed by Galloway and Thacker, it becomes essential to think about

 the significant obstacles that proprietary technology places in the

 way of doing so. These obstacles are definitive of the need to break

 down the user-programmer divide in the first place, representing an

 ever-decreasing freedom of use. Friedrich Kittler's "Protected Mode"

 sets out, in no uncertain terms, the significant increase in

 user-obfuscation masquerading as user-friendliness that begins with

 the removal of op-codes from the operating manuals of Intel's 80286

 microprocessors of 1982 in favour of higher-level commands. This

 marks, for Kittler, a key moment in the gradual process of hardware

 becoming culturally, if not technically, inaccessible, buried under

 layers of software and high-level programming languages as outlined

 in his earlier "There is no Software". It is notable that both of

 Galloway and Thacker's programming examples, the installation of

 modchips and the growing of food, operate at the level of hardware.

 Through this, alongside Kittler's technical accounts of the

 relationship among hardware, software and control, it becomes clear

 that this is the level at which practices of user-programmer

 nonexistence must be located. In achieving nonexistence it becomes

 essential to find ways to productively manipulate hardware at as few

 levels of abstraction as possible, but with a level of technical

 expertise that can rival that of the programmer. As if to illustrate

 this necessity, Kittler actively derides the hobbyist, or

 non-professional programmer, as well as the user, as "stupid." [15]

 It is at this point that a shortfall in Kittler's theory lies, in

 what Geert Lovink describes as the casting of "aspersions." [16]

 Despite the sternness of Kittler's tone in "There is no Software" and

 "Protected Mode" it may be that it is exactly a quality of this

 "stupidity", as a cultural distinction from the commercially

 recognisable and therefore classifiable talent of the programmer,

 which defines a particular application of nonexistence as counter-

 practice when harnessed to the ability to make technical

 interventions.

 To move towards a position of nonexistence between user and

 programmer it is not enough for the user to become a programmer

 through the learning and exact reproduction of his or her technical

 expertise. What is important is not the technical specifics, but the

 intended effect of these processes, the what and why instead of the

 how. The figure of the hacker must inevitably come into play when

 considering the application of technical skill that can be

 distinguished from official or industrially recognised uses; this is

 clarified by Robert Graham, who traces the etymology of the word to

 the golfing terminology, referring to an individual who is

 "inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity," before going

 on to specify the distinction between the hacker's procedure and

 industrially-recognised talent. As Graham states, "[i]n the 1970s,

 the word 'hacker' was used by computer enthusiasts to refer to

 themselves. This reflected the way enthusiasts approach computers:

 they eschew formal education and play around with the computer until

 they can get it to work. (In much the same way, a golf hacker keeps

 hacking at the golf ball until they get it in the hole)." [17]

 The idea of playing around at the technical level is a crucial

 distinction between user and programmer, which is borne out to

 varying levels in each of the forthcoming examples. There is,

 however, an emergent conceptual difficulty in the simple equation of

 hacker with contemporary counter-practitioner in the current period.

 The 1970s concept of the hacker has undergone a near-continuous

 change in the intervening years. McKenzie Wark, in _A Hacker

 Manifesto_, expands the role of the hacker from electrical

 engineering and computation to all cultural and technical fields

 where information is processed and turned to new applications. Wark

 defines the contemporary hacker as someone who "creates the

 possibility of new things entering the world. Not always great

 things, or even good things, but new things." [18] Throughout Wark's

 book a struggle is played out between the hacker as informatic

 creative, irrespective of discipline, and the third-party ownership

 of their output by a vectoralist class. "While we create...new

 worlds, we do not possess them. That which we create is morgaged to

 others, and to the interests of others." [19] This depiction of the

 hacker demonstrates a significant problem in the application of

 practices that move towards both technical and cultural nonexistence.

 The production of definably new things represents positive,

 recordable data, or a state that exists. The hacker that Wark depicts

 creates the possibility of new things entering the world, and as such

 tends towards existence. The practical application of nonexistence,

 by contrast, lies in this "possibility" remaining latent, always on

 the cusp of spilling out but always remaining unmeasurable.

 Nonexistence reappoints the functionality of that which already

 exists without addition, leading to an individuated application

 between underlying and overlying levels that cannot be effectively

 classified. The task of the undecidable, and therefore nonexistent,

 user/programmer intermediate is the location of alternate

 applications, uses and functions of existing objects that avoid the

 production of any surplus as can be defined by a new object or

 technology.

 One possibility for the user to move towards programming without the

 creation of any quantifiable surplus can be found through the

 redistribution of already existing functions in a given technology.

 Sean Cubitt, noting the military, scorched-earth origins of the term

 avant-garde in an interview conducted by Simon Mills for the journal

 _framed_, comments that "[t]he built-in obsolescence of digital

 culture, the endless trashing of last year's model, the spendthrift

 throwing away of batteries and mobile phones and monitors and

 mice...and all the heavy metals, all the toxins, sent off to some

 god-forsaken Chinese recycling village...that is the digital

 avant-garde." [20] It may be in finding practical ways to recycle,

 reuse and reallocate the intended functionality of technology that

 the user/programmer intermediate can be located; in the uncovering,

 through non-professionally acquired technical skills, of alternative

 uses, states and practices for the "junk" produced by digital

 culture's "built in obsolescence." This is where the core concept of

 digital technology, what Kittler calls its radical reprogrammability,

 [21] takes on an essential role in potential counter-practices. If

 historical avant-garde practices relate to opposition, conflict,

 sabotage and destruction, it may be that their contemporary

 counterparts reverse the equation, pushing beyond, extrapolation,

 extension and the location of an unproductive creativity.

 In "There is no Software" and "Protected Mode" Kittler highlights the

 way in which, irrespective of levels of abstraction, all programming

 equates to hardware manipulation, since it eventually reduces to the

 movement of electricity through logic gates. [22] To this end, the

 productive manipulation of hardware is achievable through a number of

 different processes, relating to programming, interface or direct

 alteration of circuitry. Through the remainder of this article I will

 work through three of the possible ways in which such hardware

 manipulation can be executed in ways that redefine the uses of the

 existing technology, creating new possibilities without any

 definitive addition that can be classified as such. The videogame, as

 the only new media technology resulting from control

 society/gamespace and perhaps the most obvious example of proprietary

 hardware and software, obsolescence and supersession that

 characterises commercial digital technology, is a perfect frame for

 examining potential praxes. If alternative uses can be eked out of

 such a market-driven, closed medium as the console-based videogame,

 possibilities in other media and forms may become apparent at the

 practical level.

 Game Art

 --------

 Much of the work of the artist Cory Arcangel involves the direct

 manipulation of hardware, or more accurately two distinct

 manipulations, one of hardware and one of code. In creating works

 such as ~I Shot Andy Warhol~, (2002) ~Super Mario Clouds~ (2002), ~F1

 Racer Mod~ (2004) and ~Super Mario Movie~ (2005) he removes a chip

 from a cartridge, most often for the NES console, burns manually new

 assembly code to a new chip and resolders it into the cartridge,

 allowing the final work to be projected through the original system.

 The choice of the NES is interesting here for a number of reasons;

 firstly, because it is an obsolete format whose reinvigoration

 through art objects highlights the industry-driven, enforcedly

 premature disposability of digital technology; secondly, because as

 Critical Art Ensemble note in the chapter of _Digital Resistance_

 that recommends similar projects for the Gameboy platform, due to

 "Nintendo's obsession with stopping piracy and reverse-engineering of

 its products" such projects "help demonstrate that no product is

 perfectly fortified, no matter how many precautions are taken;" [23]

 and finally, because the games are written in assembly language, in

 this case 6502 assembly, rather that a high-level language. What is

 crucial about assembly languages, compared to more common programming

 languages, is that they consist of sets of mnemonics that correspond

 directly to the binary variations of 1's and 0's that the system

 hardware reads as voltage differences. As Arcangel states, "I tend to

 prefer assembly because it gives me control over the machine and

 assures me that aesthetic choices are based on the hardware of the

 machine and not, say, some dupe at Macromedia." [24] To write, as

 Arcangel does, in assembly is to come in as close proximity to the

 computer hardware as possible while programming, without writing

 binary. He does not create the possibility for a new type of gaming,

 or a new commercial application of the NES, but instead a homespun

 reapplication of its existing functions. His work approaches the kind

 of hardware manipulation that Kittler defines as essential practice,

 while refusing the addition of definably new properties through his

 programming.

 What is primarily interesting about Arcangel's work is the way in

 which it highlights the materially closed nature of commercial

 hardware-software technologies that Kittler bemoans in his writing on

 computers. The presence of the original system in the gallery space

 at exhibition, along with the detailed documentation Arcangel

 provides on his website, makes it clear that in the primitive 6502

 assembly language of a Nintendo cartridge there is no extreme way of

 reading the original game that changes the fact that ~Super Mario

 Clouds~ cannot exist without the expression

      asm

      .inesprg 2 ; 32k program memory

      .ineschr 1 ; 8k chr graphics

      .inesmir 1 ; standard mirroring

      .inesmap 0 ; NROM mapper....aka no mapper...

      .org $8000 ; 32 k cartridge

      clouds_start: ; include cloud hex file

      .dw clouds_start_addr

      clouds_start_addr:

      .incbin "clouds.hex"

      [25]

 This is why process is central to the execution of user-programmer

 confusions; in avoiding the user position it is essential to begin

 manipulating form. Each NES cartridge contains a CHR (Character)

 chip, which contains all of the graphics, and a PRG (Program) chip,

 which tells the graphics where and when to appear. By replacing

 either or both with his own, newly written chips, Arcangel is able to

 make the game act in novel ways without any tampering with the

 designed functionality of the hardware. ~Super Mario Clouds~, for

 example, relies on the pre-programmed graphics contained within the

 CHR chip of the commercial game cartridge, with Arcangel's PRG chip

 simply telling the game console to put these graphical elements in

 particular orders. This technical process is as important as the

 visual output of the work. As Arcangel himself admits, "to make

 something that looks similar [to ~Super Mario Clouds~] on a modern

 computer would take about 3 minutes in PhotoShop." [26] It is the

 kind of technical virtuosity that is not recognised industrially as

 talent that underpins his work. He is influenced by net artists such

 as Jodi, but also by hobbyists, home programmers who hack supposedly

 closed systems to make new things.

 In my opinion these are the true heroes of contemporary computer art.

 Out of the hobby scene have come portable PlayStations, Dreamcasts

 that boot LINUX, and even hard drives that play music by spinning at

 different speeds. [27]

 Arcangel's approach can be seen moving beyond the early videogame

 into a more recent set of pieces that address the relationship

 between technology that is designed and constructed to behave in one

 specific way and its users. For the video piece ~Sans Simon~ (2005)

 Arcangel presents a camcorder recording of a televised Simon and

 Garfunkel performance in which he places his hands between camera and

 screen in a vain attempt to keep Paul Simon covered throughout.

 ~Plasma Screen Burn~ (2007) exploits a technical flaw of plasma

 screen monitors whereby any non-moving image left on the screen too

 long becomes physically burned onto the surface due to the

 light-emitting phosphor compounds that enable the technology to

 function losing their luminosity through over-use. ~Two Keystoned

 Projectors (one upside down)~ (2007) exploits the characteristic of

 screen projection whereby, if placed too low on the vertical axis in

 relation to the projection surface, they become keystoned, resulting

 in the rectangular aspect ratio being distorted into a trapezoid.

 Each of these recent works reflects a simplification of Arcangel's

 central concern, the hierarchical relationship between form, medium

 and user. They highlight simple ways in which misuse, or non-designed

 use, of technology that is designed to function in only one way can

 result in new creative possibilities. These later works are

 particularly effective alongside the older hacked videogame works

 because there is a functional analogue between the light in a

 television or projector and the code of a piece of hardware or

 software. In both cases an invisible language underpins a visible

 one, and in collapsing these distinctions Arcangel suggests a

 possible future where manipulating code is as simple and accessible

 as placing ones hands in between camera and screen.

 It is this intended ease of potential participation that underlines

 much of Arcangel's work. As well as giving away both the method and

 the assembly code for most of his coded works, he makes it clear on

 the ~Super Mario Clouds~ documentation page that the code is itself

 borrowed and modified from the website of a hobbyist programmer,

 Chris Covell. Covell is an example of the hobbyist who lies between

 user and commercially defined programmer; he exhibits a great level

 of technical virtuosity, but gives away not only the resultant

 products but also the methods and source code of his work. He writes

 programs, games and hacks for obsolete systems such as the NES, and

 it is from the free sharing of his applications and source code that

 Arcangel is able to obtain the crucial elements to build ~Super Mario

 Clouds~. This kind of free accessibility of method and code shows one

 possible movement towards the intermediating of user and programmer,

 the making available of programming methods and structures to the

 non-programmer. Significantly, the specific platform he manipulates

 in each work can register no definitive technical difference as a

 result of his tampering; by replacing chips in NES cartridges, he

 allows the system to function as normal, in every technical sense,

 while producing an output that is distinct from that intended by the

 game designers. In terms of the games system, running ~Super Mario

 Clouds~, ~F1 Racer Mod~ or ~I Shot Andy Warhol~ is no different to

 running any regular, commercial cartridge. It is this avoidance of

 being registered as measurable technical difference that makes

 Arcangel's work suggestive in relation to accessible tactics of

 nonexistence. There is, however, still a level of technical

 difficulty associated with such work that creates an obstacle to its

 broad application. Ultimately, the practical distinction between

 assembly languages and higher-level languages for the user are

 limited, despite Kittler's insistences, since both require learning

 and, at the bottom line, execute physical action at the hardware

 level. There remains a gap between the everyday ability to place hand

 between light source and projector screen and the everyday ability to

 write low or high-level programming languages that is a current

 impediment, and it is essential to find ways of traversing this gap

 in order to execute technical nonexistence. The movement towards

 direct hardware manipulation that circuit bending demonstrates is one

 way to think towards this process.

 Circuit bending

 ---------------

 Circuit bending is the practice of creatively altering the circuitry

 of electronic items to produce new outputs that were unintended at

 the product's original design and production stages. As a broad

 movement it is defined by its accessibility, the ease of basic

 procedures and cheapness of basic components that make it practicable

 by individuals with no technical training or specialist knowledge.

 Reed Ghazala, the artist credited with formalising the practice in

 1966/7 [28] after discovering a 9-volt transistor amplifier shorting

 out against a piece of metal in his bedroom desk drawer, has stated

 of circuit bending that "[n]o theory is needed. No knowledge of

 electronics. It's probably the easiest introduction to electronic

 design to exist. I use pictorial diagrams rather than traditional

 schematic symbols. This turns people into designers, literally,

 overnight." [29] This use of pictures or diagrams in place of

 schematics remains the predominant manner of information sharing in

 the circuit bending community, with archives such as "experimental

 list anonymous" [30] using annotated photographs to demonstrate

 possible bends in a variety of items. Crucially, the basic

 accessibility of circuit bending is a modular practice, enabling a

 broad scale from simplicity (the bridging of two points on a board to

 create a single effect) to complexity (the installation of multiple

 controls and interface elements to create an orchestra of effects on

 a single item.)

 The fundamental exploratory technique employed in circuit bending is

 an intimate connection between user and technology. Beginning with a

 battery powered, audio-emitting device such as Texas Instrument's

 "Speak & Spell" the person looking for bends opens the casing to

 expose the PCB, depresses a key in order to generate a sound and,

 with lightly wetted fingers or a length of wire, systematically or

 randomly connects points on the circuit, noting the resultant

 effects. These can range greatly, from pitch variations to extreme

 distortions and beyond, into the indescribable audio output of

 crashing chips. The next stage in the process is to place control

 components between the points that created effects, from switches and

 potentiometers to light or humidity sensors. Perhaps the most

 interesting types of bend, in terms of the intimacy of the

 user-technology relationship that circuit bending suggests, are those

 involving body contacts, points that are connected by the

 user-programmer's body, employing their body as a variable resistor.

 Eleni Ikoniadou has somewhat dramatically stated, of circuit bending

 in general although clearly in reference to body-contacts

 specifically, that "[a]s electricity flows through the player's body

 and is affected and transformed through the flesh and blood flow, the

 body becomes an active part of the sound circuit that emerges in the

 performance space." [31]

 Recent applications of circuit bending are taking the practice away

 from sound creation into full audio-visual bends of larger, less

 immediately disposable products, both breaking Ghazala's rule of

 never bending direct-current-powered items and broadening the

 possibilities of what can be bent, and what these bends can do. Like

 computer hardware, the majority of electronic devices subject to

 circuit bending are based around integrated circuits, and it is in

 connecting chip pins to other components that many exploits are

 found; as a result of this, it is theoretically possible to reproduce

 the process in microprocessor computer hardware, a process that is

 emergent in current circuit-bending practice. Here circuit bending

 dovetails with the hobbyist, hardware-hacking practices that Cory

 Arcangel cites as an influence on his work, and it is interesting to

 note examples that bear an aesthetic connection, allowing a direct

 comparison across user-programmer nonexistence methodologies. The

 audio-visual bends of NES consoles carried out by Philip Stearns

 (Pixel Form) and Peter Edwards (Casper Electronics) produce output

 comparable to Arcangel's more extreme Nintendo works, most obviously

 ~Super Mario Movie~, as well as the game mods of artists such as

 Jodi, but do so by manipulating the circuitry of the console itself.

 In these cases the interaction between user and technology is at a

 lower level of abstraction than the code work of those artists, doing

 away with the writing of high-level or Assembly languages that

 remains a significant impediment to their methods becoming broadly

 accessible. Alongside the removal of this technical impediment,

 however, a limitation on applicability that is present in the code

 works of the above-mentioned digital artists remains; there is a

 shortage of things it is possible to do with circuit bending. The

 majority of audio bends are confined to the extreme and distorted,

 and the visual, videogame-based bends of Stearns and Edwards add only

 graphical distortions, with no addition to gameplay. These practices

 do not significantly add a programmable layer to the existing,

 intended user functions of technology beyond the introduction of

 aural or visual noise. In terms of videogames, the consumer medium

 that unites the practices examined above, there must be an injunction

 at the level of play, an extension of intended action, in order to

 fully implement a confusion of user and programmer.

 Speedrunning

 ------------

 If the videogame is a primary example of proprietary consumer

 technology, central to the user-programmer distinction that defines

 contemporary politics for Galloway and Thacker, it might be fruitful

 to focus on ways in which the user can begin programming in the game

 medium through play, the intended use of the technology. Since the

 game, as befits a medium native to the digital era, control society

 or gamespace, is defined by action above graphics or sound,

 user-programming must occur at the level of action in order to be of

 full value. Tim Rogers, in his essay-review of Shigesato Itoi's

 ~Mother 2~ for the SNES, makes a distinction between two types of

 gamer; referring to a passage in ~Mother 2~ where the player is

 confronted, early on in the game in the town of Onett, with a house

 that is far too expensive for them to purchase at that point. "The

 player who thinks within the game's world will never have to buy the

 house. It's the breed of player most commonly referred to as a

 "gamer" that will need to buy the house. This gamer will come all

 the way back to Onett once he has enough money to buy the house."

 [32] The gamer looks to explore every possibility within the game

 world, and as Rogers significantly notes, this is because he does not

 only "think within" this world, which would entail the completion of

 only essential components of the story, but considers every

 statistical possibility as a component of the game, irrespective of

 impact on its plot or completion. The speedrunner, in contrast to

 both player and gamer, thinks the game world from outside the

 technology, or rather sees the technical makeup of the game, both

 interface and code, as part of the overall diegesis. The speedrunner

 sees the game as coded space, not only seeking every conventional

 diegetic possibility, but every exploit that is achievable through

 the game's standard control interface and that can redefine the

 possibilities of gameplay.

 Broadly, speedrunning refers to the practice of completing games as

 quickly as possible, documenting the process through videos posted

 online at sites such as "Speed Demos Archive" and "TASvideos" [33]

 and then attempting to supersede them. As a practice it generally

 entails procedures and courses of action that lie outside of the

 intended gameplay -- especially the reverse engineering and close

 examination of source code. While there is a class of speedrunning

 that is based in the conventional ways intended at the design and

 programming stages, usually involving the negotiation of the game's

 various stages and challenges with level of skill and ruling out the

 use of shortcuts, exploits or bugs, it is the class of "tool

 assisted" runs that are of particular interest here. Tool assisted

 runs involve the use of emulation software that, alongside allowing

 the paying of a game intended for any console platform on a desktop

 computer, allows for the manipulation of the running speed of the

 game as well as the close examination of its code for potential

 exploits. Ironically, for a practice that ultimately involves the

 fastest possible completion of a game, the production of a

 high-quality run is an extremely slow and painstaking process,

 involving reverse engineering and the close examination of source

 code and algorithms followed by the assembly of sequences, often

 frame-by-frame. Despite this, the runs themselves involve nothing but

 the emulator, which stands in for the original gaming platform, and a

 regular game controller input such as a joystick or control pad. They

 are an extension of the intended use of the game, which is to

 complete it by jumping through its various algorithmic loops before

 buying the next one, but an extension that both exposes this

 procedural makeup and exploits its shortcomings.

 In examining the various techniques and constituent practices of

 speedrunning it is worth concentrating on Bisqwit and Finalfighter's

 run of ~Mega Man~ (~Rockman~ in Japan) for the Nintendo Entertainment

 System. [34] The reasons for choosing this particular run are

 threefold; firstly, because older games such as ~Mega Man~ do not

 demonstrate the code obfuscation found in newer games due to being

 written in 6502 assembly, allowing for direct examination as seen in

 the work of Cory Arcangel; secondly, because they generally contain a

 higher amount of obvious bugs and exploits; and thirdly, because the

 "Rockman Tricks" and "Rockman Data" websites maintained by Bisqwit

 document the full breadth of the techniques and their underlying code

 and mathematics respectively. [35] The description of Bisqwit and

 Finalfighter's run on the "TASvideos" page sets out the fundamental

 characteristics of speedrunning, and the reason why it is of interest

 when thinking about nonexistence, the user and the programmer, and is

 worth quoting at length:

      ...this movie sacrifices a lot in the playability of the game.

      Full of tricks to pass through walls, tricks to avoid mandatory

      battles, tricks to pass through enemies relatively unharmed,

      tricks to acquire weapon refills in little time -- there is very

      little in this movie left that resembles normal playing. Even

      death is used as a viable playing strategy that saves time. All

      of the tricks are still performed by the means of mere

      controller input, even though portions of the input were

      calculated by a computer program. [36]

 In speedrunning, "normal" play is virtually absent, but what does

 occur is performed with a "mere controller input". This is at the

 centre of the way in which it intermediates the user and the

 programmer, adding nothing new to the total content of the game but

 allowing for a creativity that is against both algorithmic

 limitations and programmed obsolescence.

 On the "TASvideos" site Bisqwit and Finalfighter's ~Mega Man~ run is

 listed as "abus[ing] programming errors in the game" and

 "manipulat[ing] luck." [37] These tactics are described at length on

 the "Rockman Tricks" and "Rockman Data" sites, and give clear,

 material insights into speedrunning practice. Amongst the most

 obvious examples of the abuse of programming errors can be found in

 the way the runners exploit the game's zipping mechanism. This is in

 place to prevent the game character becoming stuck in a wall, which

 would make the game unplayable, and takes the form of a function of

 the walls in the game, ejecting the player in the direction they are

 moving if they somehow enter them. Triggering this mechanism

 intentionally allows areas of the game to be traversed extremely

 quickly, making the discovery of ways to enter walls or ceilings

 important. One way found by the runners to execute this exploit is

 through a function of the ladders, whereby if the character grabs a

 ladder too high to climb it, or holds both up and down together on

 the top of a ladder, they are automatically elevated twenty-four

 pixels irrespective of the position of the ceiling or nearby walls,

 forcing wall entry and triggering the zipping mechanism. [38] The

 combination of these two technical aspects of the game are exploited

 throughout Bisqwit and Finalfighter's run, producing the vividly

 distorted, glitchy passages of which the section from 12:17 to 12:41

 on the video is amongst the most extended examples.

 The manipulation of luck is much less obvious through watching the

 run documentation video, but nonetheless is highly instructive in

 terms of the speedrunner's approach to gaming. Since games are played

 on a computer, which always produces the same output from a given

 input, many events which appear, even through long observation, to be

 random are actually predictable. As the "common tricks" section of

 "TASvideos" states, "[g]ames are purely deterministic and depend

 solely on user input." [39] As such, when a seemingly "random" event

 such as the dropping of an item by a killed enemy occurs, it is

 always determined by a number of numeric variables drawn from the

 game's inputs and outputs. These variables could be the game clock,

 the pixel position of the player or non-player characters, the

 direction and speed of movement or many others. Through examination

 of the assembly code, alongside trial and error, it becomes possible

 for the runner to collect optimal items at all times and trigger most

 desirable (i.e. least troublesome) enemy behaviour, allowing for a

 reduction of overall play time.

 In speedrunning it is understood that, beyond Kittler's comments on

 all software being reducible to hardware manipulation, all

 interface actions are essentially hardware manipulation. This

 understanding allows for a creative undecidability between

 user/programmer that removes many of the obstacles posed by definable

 technical expertise; while the game is being clearly manipulated at

 the hardware level through a direct technical comprehension of the

 way in which it functions, resulting in often highly abrasive,

 glitchy and distorted graphics and sound alongside unintended

 gameplay elements, this manipulation is attained through no actual

 programming whatsoever at the conventional, code-based level.

 It is clear enough that, in the same way that David Hahn's homemade

 fusion reactor is an extreme example of an individual applying

 technical knowledge outside of official, commercial recognition, the

 examples of game art, circuit bending and speedrunning discussed

 above appear modest when thinking about the broad contexts of

 becoming-nonexistent in the informatic sense. It could well be that

 this appearance of modesty is essential to the ways in which these

 approaches to technology can point forward, always assuring a

 indistinct position in relation to the definable fields of user and

 programmer. Regardless, in both instances, extreme and modest, two

 central concepts emerge in relation to nonexistence as

 counter-practice. The first is that nonexistence is always a

 technical process, relating to the manipulation of code and hardware

 even if this only involves copying and pasting assembly language,

 creating a contact between two circuit components, playing a

 videogame, scraping tiny amounts of radioactive material from a

 luminous watch face or shining a laser pointer into a camera. The

 second is that processes of nonexistence are always engaging with,

 and pushing beyond, attempts at informatic control whether through

 the coded parameters of a game or the preset sounds of a toy

 keyboard. Each of the practices discussed in this piece reflect what

 Galloway and Thacker describe as "positive technologies". This means

 that rather than placing limits, as hiding, absence or invisibility

 would necessitate, they leverage possibilities and escape limits at

 all times. It is this close proximity to creation that defines the

 effective nonexistent act, allowing for the prospect of measurability

 that causes "incongruent or ineffective" control responses. Beyond

 the specifics of the examples given in this piece, there is an ethics

 of both technology use and technology theory that emerges from the

 tactics these distinct but related practices employ. The extension of

 these tactics into broader applications, at the level of both

 practice and theory, can only result in increased opportunities to

 avoid classification as user or programmer. As it stands, the

 appearance of modesty is no impediment to the critical possibilities

 that the above approaches to technology suggest; these technical

 moves of pushing beyond contain within them a multitude of ways to

 mobilise nonexistence -- "the purest form of love". [40]

 Notes

 -------------------

 [1] Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker. _The Exploit_,

 Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, p.136.

 [2] Ibid. 135.

 [3] Ibid.

 [4] Ibid. 136.

 [5] Ibid.

 [6] Gilles Deleuze. "Postscript on Control Societies", in

 _Negotiations_, trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Columbia University

 Press, 1995, p.178.

 [7] _The Exploit_, p.143.

 [8] Ibid. 143.

 [9] Alan Liu. _The Laws of Cool_, Chicago: University of Chicago

 Press, 2004, pp.23-72.

 [10] Critical Art Ensemble. _Digital Resistance: Explorations in

 Tactical Media_, New York: Autonomedia, 2001, p.4.

 [11] Giorgio Agamben. _The Coming Community_, Minneapolis: University

 of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. 86.

 [12] _The Exploit_, p.137.

 [13] See Ken Silverstein's book _The Radioactive Boy Scout_, New

 York: Villard Books, 2005, and the British, Channel 4 Documentary

 ~The Nuclear Boy Scout~, 2003, for further accounts of Hahn's

 experiments and subsequent life.

 [14] _The Exploit_, p.143.

 [15] Friedrich Kittler. _Literature, Media, Information Systems_,

 Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997, p. 157.

 [16] Geert Lovink. "Dracula's Vermachtnis Technische Schriften",

 trans. Jim Boekbinder, _Mediamatic_ 8 no. 1, at

 http://www.mediamatic.nl/magazine/8_1/Lovink=Dracula.html. Last

 accessed 09/01/09.

 [17] Robert Graham. "Hacking Lexicon", at

 http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resource_files/documentation/hacking-

 dict.html. Last accessed 09/01/09.

 [18] Mckenzie Wark. _A Hacker Manifesto_, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard

 University Press, 2004, paragraph 004.

 [19] Ibid.

 [20] Sean Cubitt, interview by Simon Mills. _framed_

 http://www.framejournal.net/interview/10/sean-cubitt, last accessed

 05/01/09.

 [21] Paul Virilio and Friedrich Kittler "The Information Bomb: A

 Conversation", ed. John Armitage, _Angelaki_ vol. 4 no. 2, New York:

 Routledge, 1999, p83.

 [22] Friedrich Kittler. _Literature, Media, Information Systems_,

 Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997.

 [23] Critical Art Ensemble. _Digital Resistance_, p. 134.

 [24] Cory Arcangel "Super Mario Clouds": 2005 rewrite,

 http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/Things_I_Made_in_2003/. Last

 accessed 09/01/09.

 [25] Ibid.

 [26] Ibid. In a separate interview at 'Digital Tools' Arcangel

 outlines his incapacity with using Photoshop, creating an odd reverse

 of the expected user/programmer distinction in commercial software:

 "I have such a hard time with it, and can barely accomplish anything

 with it. It's always telling me some layer is locked or needs to be

 rastered or whatever there is. Half of the time the things I am

 trying to accomplish don't happen 'cause I am so stupid and bad at

 it. I am serious here, but I can't figure out how to draw a line. I

 don't think I have the right "line module" so every time I try to

 draw a line it comes an arrow. And when I try to switch the line

 preset it says I only have the arrow available." Interview by Martin

 Wisniowski, at

 http://digitaltools.node3000.com/interview/interview_cory_arcangel.

 php. Last accessed 09/01/09.

 [27] Cory Arcangel ~Super Mario Clouds~, at

 http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/Things_I_Made_in_2003/. See also an

 interview with Arcangel, at

 http://www.petitemort.org/issue01/02.shtml, in which he discusses

 home mechanics that modify the chips in their cars to improve

 acceleration and speed, and attending a lock-picking conference. Both

 represent parallels to not only Arcangel's own work but the broader

 ethics of hacking discussed above that may suggest technical

 practices of nonexistence. Last accessed 09/01/09.

 [28] See Jason Gross' interview with Reed Ghazala from Perfect Sound

 Forever, http://www.furious.com/perfect/emi/reedghazala.html, 1998.

 Last accessed 09/01/09.

 [29] Joe Gavin. "Reed Ghazala: the father of Circuit Bending",

 http://www.anti-theory.com/texts/rva/index.html, 2006. Last accessed

 09/01/09.

 [30] See

 http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/diy/Schematics/Circuit%20Bending

 %20and%20Modifications/ for a directory of such diagrams. Last

 accessed 09/01/09.

 [31] Eleni Ikoniadou. "Microsonic Sensibility: the Phantoms of

 Affects to Come", http://ypsite.net/pdfs/microsonic_sensibility.pdf.

 Last accessed 09/01/09.

 [32] Tim Rogers. "The Literature of the Moment: a Critique of Mother

 2", http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=mother2. Last

 accessed 09/01/09.

 [33] See http://speeddemosarchive.com/ and http://tasvideos.org/

 respectively. Both last accessed 09/01/09.

 [34] This run can be downloaded as an AVI file from

 http://tasvideos.org/726M.html. Last accessed 09/01/09.

 [35] These sites are found at http://tasvideos.org/RockmanTricks.html

 and http://tasvideos.org/RockmanData.html. Also see the section on

 common tricks and exploits at http://tasvideos.org/CommonTricks.html

 All last accessed 09/01/09.

 [36] http://tasvideos.org/726M.html

 [37] Ibid.

 [38] This exploit is illustrated in the "Grabbing the top of the

 ladder too high" section of ~Rockman Data~. 24 pixels is the height

 of the sprite representing the player character.

 [39] http://tasvideos.org/726M.html.

 [40] _The Exploit_ p.137.

 ----------------

 Seb Franklin is a DPhil candidate and Associate Tutor at the

 University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, and a Visiting Lecturer at the

 University of Westminster.

 _____________________________________________________________________

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