nOtbOt is an automated game-player which is controlled and deranged by reactions to its own virtual environment, caught in a vicious force-feedback loop…

The installation consists of a hacked up human-computer interface in which the feedback system, originally intended to provide tangible interaction for a human player, is now used as input data to control a “first-person” videogame. Human interaction with the game/controller becomes obsolete, resulting in a completely erratic form of [art]ifi cial intelligence. The observer of the installation, however, can literally try to “get a grip” on taking control of the system…

“Walter Langelaar’s n0tb0t antagonises conventions of games as slave to our control. n0tb0t decouples the user-agent from the input chain, leaving just a joystick thrashing about in response to every twist and turn of a bot rampaging through a stock QuakeIII level. My fi rst impression of n0tb0t was of a haunting: an AI that would take no more, fighting back at the input device in an urgent attempt to disenfranchise itself from a history of bondage. What is actually going on however is a little more complex, a feedback loop of sorts where the bot is driven by the input device and the input device by the bot.” (Julian Oliver)