The winners of Ars Electronica are out. I’m not extremely excited by all the winners of the Interactive Art category. Lovely Milk Project won the Golden Nica in that category and even better Benjamin Fry and Casey Reas got a well-deserved Golden Nica in Net Vision for Processing.

Back to Interactive Art.
Waco Resurrection got an Honorary Mention. It is the first chapter of Endgames, a 3D multiplayer computer game series which incorporates elements of subjective documentary and speculative fiction with interactive technologies to create a visceral gaming experience focused on extreme psycho-social phenomena.

Revisiting the 1993 Waco tragedy, gamers enter the mind and form of a resurrected cult’s leader David Koresh through headgear, a voice-activated, 3D skin. They are Koresh who must defend the Branch Davidian sect against intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival Koresh and government agents.

Players are bombarded with a soundstream of government “psy-ops�, FBI negotiators, the voice of God and the clamor of battle. Players voice messianic texts, wield weapons from the Mount Carmel cache and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents by radiating a charismatic aura.

Ten years after, in 2003 (year of the game creation), the spirit of Koresh has become a paradoxical embodiment of the current political landscape – he is both the besieged religious other and the logical extension of the neo-conservative millennial vision. Waco is a primal scene of American fear: the apocalyptic visionary – an American tradition stretching back to Jonathan Edwards – confronts the heathen “other” – in Waco Resurrection, the roles are anything but fixed.

By: Team Waco (Michael Wilson, Eddo Stern, Jessica Hutchins, Brody Condon, Peter Brinson, Mark Allen) (US).