Mashup: John Klima's "Jack & Jill" vs. Dodge Ball

Game-based play engages a range of physical, social interaction to an defined digital user-computer relationship. These games often enable users to "purge our emotions and then allow us to return, unchanged, to an unchanged society." These relationships between the body, the game and the defined languages/rules allow for an open and undefined sensory experience.

Within John Klima's V.B.A. based game "Jack & Jill", he stereotypes socially defined gender roles in the form of if-then statements, taking on a binary form of zeros and ones rather than our cultural meaning of male and female. His initial code indicates that the outcome of Jack and Jill's location are dependent on the leader and ending in a result of either Feminist or Chauvinist. Although, his final code uses three variable outcomes (indecisive, reluctant, willing) as a commentary on social norms of gender and their relationship to these characteristics. With three variables, Klima demonstrates programming code's influence on their behavior and the possibility of miss-mashed emotional outcomes. The male and female take on a newly defined role as interchangeable and inconsequential of their social meaning, now defined strictly through code. Therefore, these if-then statements control meaning and emotion of Jack and Jill rather than any rational or "realistic" envision of their actual role in our built culture.

Similarly, the game of dodge ball reacts to determined social norms placed on gender, age and physical strength. When beginning the dodge ball, there is a pause before everyone involved is able to run to the center, retrieve a ball and begin throwing them at their opponent (enemy). This game can been seen as a binaural experience, your team versus opposing team. Although within this game, your individual input determines your future as a winner or loser and the language of this game becomes your physical input and output (as a team and individual). The roles within the game are interchangeable, although your physical speed, stamina and strength determine your length of play, rather than executions of if-then statements. Like Jack and Jill's outcome as a social commentary, the player's conclusion to dodge ball reflect a more direct relationship. If the user is hit first, you are seen as weak physically or mentally and exit the game immediately. Likewise, the last players or team standing is portrayed as the 'winner', void of physical or social punishment. The user's relationship to the dodge ball game becomes an if-then statement, in that the outcome is based on a series of decisions made by the individual, or in Jack and Jill's case, the computer. Although in dodge ball the individual may feel more in 'control' of their condition, your physical body becomes the medium of language repeating a series of do loops until the end of the game. Therefore, regardless of medium, outcome and conclusions are based on series of events, often interchangeable and defined by the user's interaction with the game-base play.