Running until 18 April 2010, the galleries features the work of artists from the former Eastern Bloc. The installations range from ‘Star City’ itself – a 4 channel video presentation of a secret location near Moscow, where you witness the ruined remains of the Russian space race, including the practice modules used to train cosmonauts and the tattered, once luxurious accommodations around the facility – to a plentiful supply of propaganda posters of the era. One poster features smiling children, marching for the great cause clutching rabbits, flags and a basket of yellow chicks, proclaiming “Let’s Be Deserving Sputniks of the Seven-Year Plan.” Others proclaim “The Creative Forces of Communism are Endless!” or that a “Soviet Artificial Planet Runs Around the Sun in Honour of the XXI General Meeting of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1959″ – with supporting images of Russian rockets and heroic cosmonauts.

One wall features various proclamations and declarations around the great future that lies ahead under Communism, with an interesting timeline of developments from the end of the 1960s through to 2100 that singularly failed to deliver beyond 1969 – after which there should have been communication with dolphins, creation of artificial lifeforms, perfect weather control, bases on the Moon and Mars, and generational voyages beyond the Solar System (half of those I’ve listed fell in the timeline prior to now).

Some of the more ‘interesting’ installations include electrical appliances running on a variable current staggered by a morse code rendition of a Fidel Castro speech, a modular cinema – including integral seating arrangement – made out of wood and cardboard tubes, and images influenced by Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris”.

Undoubtedly, the most impressive works for me had an incredible sense of mechanisation in decay. One, an as yet untitled work by Robert Kusmirowski, was a 1:1 scale replica of ‘futuristic’ machinery and control interfaces from facilities long since abandoned, a wall of dark green metal scabbed with rust, with glass-faced dials and great metal switches.

My personal favourite was “Elsewhere” (2008) by Micol Assael, a cabinet of electrical components, the door swung open and the unit leaning forward, sat at the centre of a dark pool of water. Live with electricity, microphones picked up sizzling, crackling and bubbling, as water trickled occasionally from long thin pipes extending from the top of the cabinet. Bizarrely brilliant.

While the whole ‘Star City’ exhibition provides an interesting source of imagery and perceptions for use in PARANOIA, I think “Elsewhere” alone could make for a great encounter. Imagine, the Troubleshooters enter a room to find the middle of the square space dominated by a towering stack of crackling machinery and the recessed floor filled with water. A strong smell of ozone fills the air. Near the stack lies a body, lying on one side in the water, dressed in a full body suit, shining gold in colour. The team have been told to come here, so they believe they have to do something. However, touching the water deliveries a powerful shock… so, what to do? In fact, they’ve been sent to the wrong place and this room contains an artistic installation funded by a slightly ‘touched’ ULTRAVIOLET. The artist is in the suit, but the material protects him from the electricity. A slave to his art, the guy has simply fallen asleep in pose.

“WHAT’S HOLDING UP PROGRESS, CITIZEN?”
“Oh, nothing Friend Computer, just heading into the Briefing Room now…”
SPLASH! CRACKLE! SIZZLE! POP! SPLASH! POP! HISS! BIG SPLASH!
“Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”

[Installation view: Altrove – Elsewhere, Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw, 2009]

“We have established the minimum irradiance to cause a sensation and have characterised where thermal injury begins … But the exact operating irradiance which balances a useful military effect with a conservative margin of safety has not been nailed down yet.”

I’m wondering where the margins of safety come into the use of other military gear – rubber bullets, for example, shouldn’t cause permanent harm, but they do.

Opponents have raised concerns that weapons that inflict pain without external evidence can only make it harder to identify signs of abuse. Dread to think what someone might do with one of these in a detention centre!

Would a Troubleshooter have a stream of messages to contend with from friends, associates, contacts, spammers, managers, peers, underlings, blackmailers, blackmailees, strangers, recruiters, entertainment celebrities, administrators, tech support, automated services, The Computer, Troubleshooter handlers and more besides? Could they cope? Would housekeeping – whether manual or automatic – present a risk of deleting something – or everything – of importance? Would a Troubleshooter deal with ninty-nine innane demands for their attention before reaching an overdue imperative from an irrate executive officers, IntSec interrogator or YELLOW Clearance jobsworth?

I fear clever software solutions wouldn’t be enough – indeed, if the Troubleshooters experience mirrors my own, they’ll have a dozen different message handling clients that do almost all they want, but not quite. Will one client make orders from The Computer clear at a cost of complexities in searching for anything else or tracking message threads?

Would you use the C-net Wideband Interaction Trans-protocol or just not bother? Nobody likes a Cwitter!

(If Allen got here before me somewhere in the recent/distant past on the Dev Blog, I can but apologize for the repetition. If not, of course you can post a link, Allen.)

However, it might be tempting to allow R&D the occasional flash of brilliance, jury-rigging ancient technology and software to restore some level of this location-obsessed madness. Bringing Street View to Alpha Complex might manifest as hovering cambots making kamikaze dashes around fixed corridors, generating a 3-dimensional environmental feed that complicates the lives of an average traitor. How can you make contact with a Secret Society informant when the chosen destination lies at a crossroads monitored by a higher than average number of CompCam hoverbots. When an error in patrol pattern uploads means a technican has set a dozen bots circling the same stretch of corridors at slightly different intervals, how can you make a vital drop without looking incredibly suspicious. On the other hand, Troubleshooters might ponder how they can put the cambot corridor survey to their advantage in framing and screwing over their colleagues…

Latitude could provide an interesting take on Aliens-style motion sensors, allowing you to know the location and movements of almost any citizen – but also allowing them to see where you are. Briefing officers might hack the software to record them as present in the briefing room, despite their staying in bed halfway across the sector, a sub-routine shifting the locator dot every now and again to keep the Troubleshooters guessing before they finally reach an empty room. Records will show the briefing officer was there, while the Troubleshooters face the wrath of IntSec or The Computer because they utterly failed to achieve their objective (due to complete ignorance of whatever they were supposed to be doing!).

Perhaps stealth technology intended to drop Troubleshooters off the network might fail just when they’ve located the Commie Traitors, spoiling the element of surprise and allowing the enemy to make plans for an ambush or a clean getaway. Or, The Computer might send the team in hot pursuit of a rogue group of Troubleshooters across the opposite side of the sector, only for them to discover that the markers on their map are in fact their own – but someone uploaded the sector map upsidedown…

Google grows ever closer, it would seem, to some kind of subliminal Big Brother, mapping our every movement and checking out how well we tend our back gardens under a guise of innocent progress. Seems a shame not to take advantage of the same kind of breakthroughs in Alpha Complex too…

Paranoia 2nd Edition WEG West End Games Traveller Space Opera SciFi Dark Comedy Auction Bid Now Buy

It is forbidden to disobey the Computer. Now as a lowly, Infra-red troubleshooter who is a traitor to Alpha Complex and the Computer; how will you survive?

More books than just the box set…

[snip... snip...]

The Paranoia Sourcebook – The Return of the Computer; its back and badder than ever. Gives subdivisions of Alpha: Alpha Complex, Alpha Base, and Alpha City. Explains Treason, Commies, Mutants, and Clones in Reboot Alpha. New equiptment from R&D (Oh No!)

Too Hilarious! Paranoia is a Dark Comedy set in the futuristic underground complex of Alpha.

Batteries and dice not included. Bid Now and Win!

Possibly it’s just me. In fact, it definitely is just me; but, it amuses me no end, like an R&D experiment gone wrong (Oh No!)

Like translating humour in stand-up comedy, just how easy is it to translate some aspects of a setting like PARANOIA, especially considering so many of the foundations of the back story come from English literature and Western film.

Perhaps I’ll see you there. Or perhaps I’ll be hiding prepared to ambush you…

I can envisage the core of the generator hanging above the platform in the first picture, while the second image provides a great idea of the immense size of the dome. Indeed, I think it probably isn’t large enough. The third image adds to the range of tunnels and passageways suitable for inclusion in ‘The Underplex‘… a conveyor belt that seems to vanish off into infinity somewhere, it provides a sense of the industrial combined with a notion of the ‘what the heck do all these red things do?’. Well, it does for me.

Images © Panos

…because physical components of the machines expand and contract in response to temperature changes, the amount of time a machine has been running, or even the time of day, might affect calibration—which could explain why the problem didn’t show up in later attempts to reproduce the error.

After the last presidential election, you’d have thought the tech firms responsible for touchscreen voting systems would have used the intervening years to make improvements. The iVotronic machines implicated in the voting problems of Florida in 2006 have come under scrutiny again, as people voting Democrat find the selection jumping to the Republicans.

Not only can the environment and time of day impact the performance of the touchscreen calibration, but also the height of the user and how long the device has sat in storage. The opportunities in PARANOIA for confusion and bewilderment seems endless, as R&D constantly mothball and then recycle technologies. That nifty touchscreen control for the ActivePeril Plasma-fusion Multi-load Missile Launcher worked a treat in the lab, delivering multiple ordnance types against a range of test targets… but, out in the field, in a corridor with functionally-challenged air conditioning or traitor-sabotaged strip lighting, will it work with the same streamlined functionality?

What about other control interfaces, from auto-medication dispensers and elevator controls, to vending machines or automatic bank tellers?

CITIZEN NICK-R-LSN – YOU HAVE INPUT A REQUEST TO WITHDRAW 1,000,000 CREDITS. YOU HAVE INSUFFICIENT FUNDS TO MEET THIS REQUEST. DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE UNDERVALUED, CITIZEN NICK-R? I NOTE YOUR EQUIPMENT OFFICER HAS IDENTIFIED SEVERAL ITEMS OF GEAR NOT RETURNED ON MISSION COMPLETION. WOULD YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT, CITIZEN NICK-R? IS THAT A NEW JUMPSUIT YOU ARE WEARING?

Uh, no. No, hang on. I input a request for 100 credits. Not a million. I… uh… this jumpsuit isn’t new… I just…

ARE YOU LOGGING A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE INPUT INTERFACE OF THE AUTO-TELLER, CITIZEN NICK-R? ARE YOU (A) QUESTIONING THE EFFICIENCY OF TECH SERVICES MAINTENANCE PROTOCOLS? (B) LOGGING A REPAIR DETAIL INADEQUACY REQUEST AGAINST…

Uh… No. Look, I…

I AM SORRY, CITIZEN NICK-R, YOUR RESPONSE DOES NOT MATCH THE SELECTION OFFERED. I AM DESPATCHING A VULTURE SUPPORT, COUNSELLING AND RIOT SUPPRESSANT SQUAD TO ATTEND TO YOUR REQUEST. PLEASE REMAIN AT THIS LOCATION UNTIL THEY ARRIVE.

Oh, sh…

The basis for this intrusion? That the misdeeds of the few outweighs the privacy of the many, apparently. With a dozen terrorists crouching in our midst, knowing what illicit sites Mr Sidnham of Ipswich visits of an evening will make all the difference. Next time a bomb doesn’t go off, remember it’s because the Government know exactly when Mr Sidnham did.

The Government want the right to access almost anything that might allow them to defeat terrorism, taking it out at the root. Existing laws allow the Government some leverage in extracting the information they need, but they want more. They want a database with all that yummy email, web and phone call information on it. Remember, this is the Government that loses laptops and contracts to companies that lose DVDs and hard drives like anyone else might mislay keys or loose change. Would you trust the Government not to accidentally hand this database over to a herbal medication peddler or the loyal retinue of a Nigerian prince?