There’s politician’s of all stripes to shoot at from this bicycle

Grand Theft Bicycle (GTB) is an interactive, media-based work that puts a new twist on the popular video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Created by Steve Gibson, Justin Love and Jimmy Olson, the video game is designed to generate physical activity while simultaneously providing the player with an outlet for political frustrations.

The viewer is mounted on the Borgcycle — a stationary, sensor-modified bicycle that operates as a joystick with any PC game — that he or she can pedal through “Baghdad” (which bears an uncanny resemblance to Las Vegas), or shoot Invaders and Insurgents.

By using San Andreas’s original codes, which are programmed to cause two main gangs to fight each other with the assistance from secondary gangs, GTB is able to portray a somewhat un-biased representation of political war (rather than good versus evil, the gangs are fundamentalist versus fundamentalists). On the invader side, characters are designed to represent key leaders in the “war on terrorism.”

The primary invader gang consists of George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, and Tony Blair while Dick Cheney, Condaleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and several other western political figures (including Ralph Klein) make up the secondary Invader gang. On the insurgent side are political leaders from various rogue countries and fundamentalist groups, such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong-Il with secondary characters: Yasser Arafat, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Each character is equipped with their own personal audio track with sound clips extracted from Internet and television sources.

This video game/artwork is geared towards gamers who have grown tired of the monotony of mainstream offerings. Rather than having predictable motives like the average game — killing for points or other incentives — modified game artworks often present underlying conceptual and political agendas. Even though the point system has been removed from GTB so that the player cannot die, and there is no motivation to kill aside from one’s own political biases and digital blood lust, I am hesitant to say that this video game presents a drastic alternative to the typical mainstream options.

One of my biggest criticisms about gaming culture is the lack of female representation, particularly when it comes to main characters. If a game allows for the player to chose an avatar from a selection of representational characters, there are usually fewer female characters to choose from and they are generally weak, with crappy moves (plus girl characters are usually dressed in sexy outfits that are less than practical for intense physical activity).

However, like San Andreas, the player doesn’t get to choose the main character in GTB. In this version of the game, the player is automatically a white dude modelled after Gibson.

Olson did bring up a valid point though. When modifying a pre-existing game, designers are stuck with certain limitations present in the original design. “The only female characters in the original game were prostitutes,” he says. “Condaleezza Rice was wearing a tube top in the original and I covered her up with a tuxedo.”

Each character in the game was designed by copying textures and wrapping new skins around the prototypes, which explains why Yasser Arafat’s keffiyeh is tied in a similar fashion to the trademark Tupac Shakur bandanna.

Like many other aspects of popular culture, video games — whether intentional or not — often reinforce stereotypes and political ideologies associated with race, gender and class. Like San Andreas, which profited from playing on American racial stereotypes, certain aspects of this game (even though there is a fictional disclaimer at the beginning) encourage false and common misconceptions about Islamic culture. There are several billboards that have been modified with absurd and mostly humorous slogans like “buy freedom cola,” or “Halliburton,” but others could have used a bit more thought and research. At a guns and ammunition store, the sign advertises “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “Burkas,” which could imply that all Afghan people are fundamentalist terrorists.

If you desire a deep and intellectual experience while engaging with art, this might not be the exhibition for you, but if you can look beyond some problematic elements, this game is entertaining. And you get a good workout.