Gaming Response Research Foundation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"GRRF" is the name of a is the name of a fictional software development company which is, in reality, a performance art troupe, specializing in a new genre termed "Demo Noir". They began in 2004 at the University of California, San Diego, in conjunction with the Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts (ICAM) department. The group has one permanent member (Tristan Newcomb, writer and lead performer) and a revolving membership of student "employees", who generally act in the role of abused, bewildered underlings. The format of a GRRF performnce is that they pretend to attempt a demonstration of their latest software project to a live audience, but the "interactive software" being projected behind them is actually prerecorded video footage, and all of the group conflicts, perpetual failures, innumerable glitches, existential crisies, and conflicts with the professor are all scripted and rehearsed in advance. The performances are filled with enough absurd content to make the fictional aspects known, but are offered in such a straight, deadpan way that it most often "hoaxes" the students into believeing it is all real, leading to audience discomforts and, in some cases, angry exits of the student audience (as most notably happened on May 19th, 2008).
The first piece was presented under the guise of "seeking student employees" for a new game company, and was usually performed to large audiences of student freshmen. What actually occurred was a gradual 22 minute meltdown of glitches, meandering game play, and escalating drama that results in conflict among members, desertions, damage to hardware, and, finally, harsh vocal condemnation from a professor, all of this causing maximum audience discomfort. The game being "played" was projected on a large screen behind the performers, and at the end of the 22 minutes, end credits scrolled up the screen, letting the audience finally know that what they have been watching is not a LAN gaming display at all, but a prerecorded hoax of edited game footage and faked glitches. The many "accidents" and frustrations having all been all been written in advance. In addition to Tristan, the cast for the first piece was Cy Cary, Lance Miyamoto, Huong Ly, Jesse Chapo, Jamilla Mahfudh, and Gary Wong. The professors who were in on the act, but whose role was to feign shock and dismay at the incompetence of the demonstration, have included Brett Stalbaum and Ricardo Dominguez, both of whom are current professors at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Dominguez's most famous contribution to the performances was his own improvised meltdown in 2007, in which he unleashed a blizzard of four-letter anger at Tristan for "wasting his class' time" and being so unprepared to successfully demonstrate his software.[1]
After being performed roughly a dozen times over a period of three years, the project received nationwide attention when, in September 2007, PC World magazine named the GRRF highlights video[2] as one of the "Ten Greatest Fake Science & Tech Videos"[3] of all time.
The second project, titled "The Road to Nowhere", debuted on May 19th, 2008, again with the advance complicity of Professor Brett Stalbaum, who had a scripted role. Tristan was leading a new group of student performers: Ross William Campbell III, Jared Hinkle, Ben Ng, Jason Kwan, Lilia Hu, Kelley Kim, Fernando Gonzales and Cecily Madanes. The large student audience they presented to was not told beforehand that it was a theater piece, and were again under the idea that the presentation would be a genuine. The software being presented was declared to be part of the University of California, San Diego's new "mandatory GPS tracking of every walking student" policy, due to the high death toll from automobiles hitting student pedestrians. This was an absurd fabrication that did not even make sense as a cause-and-effect campus policy scenario, but the (fake) technical problems and (scripted) disputes between Tristan and his student group were so intense, that not even the inclusion of such elements as songs from the The Muppet Movie and clips from The Simpsons "Hit & Run" video game were enough to reveal the utter ridiculousness of the presentation, and the audience continued to believe the demonstration was authentic. Some of the students began to leave in hasty protest once professor Stalbaum made his angry (and scripted) departure from the room, in which he loudly kicks open a rear exit door in the process[4]. This is how GRRF has obtained it's peculiar dual reputation as "successful performance art satire" and "bitter software development team", since many who attend the presentations leave early in dismay, not learning until much later that they had been duped by a postmodern theater piece.
