Augmented Empathy

During the Tekke Torture Tournament performance (by Eddo Stern, Mark Allen), 32 willing participants received bracing but non-lethal electrical shocks in correspondence to the injuries sustained by their onscreen avatars. Players wore shocking arm straps wired through a hardware/software hack of the world?s most popular fighting Playstation game TEKKEN 3. LINKS: Official c-level Tekken Tourture Tournament Page; TTT release form

Edo Stern was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. His working interests are in structures of narrative and documentary, fantasies of history and technology, cross-cultural representation, and the phenomenological and cultural expanse of computer games. He works discriminately with a wide variety of media?computer games, electronic devices, software, video, sculpture and performance. His work has been shown internationally at new media and film festivals, museums, galleries, and game conventions. In 2000 he started ?C-level,? a cooperative artist-run new media lab and art space in LA’s Chinatown; currently lives near Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/artist/stern/biography/, Florian Zeyfang, Interview with Eddo Stern, Tages Anzeiger, February 2002 and web at http://www.c-level.cc and http://waco.c-level.cc (via)