Death Grips’ is a difficult music group to describe but many like to call them an “experimental hip hop group”, a category seemingly contrived for a group that resists classification through their mixing of different genres. Although the assignation of a genre is sometimes reductive, the “experimental” part is apt for describing the expansive nature of Death Grips’ approach to building an artistic identity that reflects their engagement with different types of media and internet culture. Their website thirdworlds.net hosts self-made videos, graphics, links to their social media, remixes and many of their albums available for free download. The latter has gotten them into trouble when dealing with traditional band management and music distribution. Since their formation Death Grips have often made their music available to fans free of cost, encouraging them to make use of the raw material of their albums for remixing. This broadened their audience but also complicated matters when they signed with Sony subsidiary Epic Records. Death Grips’ mode of self fashioning as an “open collaboration with the world”[1] didn’t mesh well with a traditional model of music distribution and their fraught relationship with Epic came to a breaking point when they leaked their third album ahead of its release date for free. Not only was the album free but Death Grips placed it under Creative Commons CC by 3.0 which means that the album is free to circulate, remix or even sell by anyone. Needless to say, this led to Death Grips being dropped by the label. However a peculiar part of the story occurred before this break, when an Alternate Reality Game allegedly authored by Death Grips appeared on the internet. What emerged from the union of ARGs and Death Grips is a network of connections that implicates media, music, gaming, cultural technique, art and agency.

In August 2012 Death Grips were completing their anticipated third album. Fans on 4chan’s music forum discovered a mysterious post by an anonymous user. A picture of Death Grips front man MC Ride was posted, accompanied by a link to an encrypted archive file on the TOR network. This was the entry point for a five day trip down the rabbit hole[2] of the Death Grips version of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). Interested players decrypted the first file which contained an image and a text file, both of which contained coded messages, upon solving these more clues were communicated by an unknown mediator. The knowledge base required to move forward in the game was extensive, including ciphers, various codes (Braille, Morse) and navigating through different browsers and websites. There was even some telephone tag involved. Players communicated their findings, speculations and strategies on the /mu/ forum and tried to determine if the “Event” of October 23 presaged by the mediator was the release of Death Grips’ third album or something more. The game ended with more of a whimper than a bang when the instrumentals for Death Grips’ second album The Money Store were released without further clues or communication. Players were left wondering if the game even had any direct link to Death Grips although the release of previously unavailable music would suggest they had a hand in it.[3]

Death Grips “Guillotine (It goes Ya)”

The Death Grips ARG is takes its cue from existing ARGs in terms of tone, but differs in that it has less of a narrative thread. One of the most successful ARGs called The Beast had this enigmatic quality but still centered around the narrative of a murder mystery. Players themselves may have no particular intent of becoming story tellers but each code cracked by a player unlocks another clue and contributes to the advancement of the plot. One of the reasons why The Beast is still recognized as one of the best ARGs is because the number and skill of the players was such that they were able to get a step ahead of the narrative. These contingencies may also be unaccounted for by the games creators and puppet masters who lay the foundations for the game but may also have to adapt to the direction the game takes by altering the plot. It’s from these moments of narrative swerve that the game takes on a life of its own, that “the symbolic is incorporated into the real.”[4] The game operates on this “hive mind”[5] principle, which is mirrored in Sebastian Vehlken’s elegant analysis of swarm as cultural technique: “Collectives possess certain abilities that are lacking in their component parts. Whereas an individual member of a swarm commands only a limited understanding of its environment, the collective as a whole is able to adapt nearly flawlessly to the changing conditions of its surroundings.”[6] The mobilization of the players through technique makes categories of agency and authorship more diffuse. Players and game creators work together as story-builders. No one has absolute authority over the narrative of the game; rather the narrative is generated by the minute actions and reactions of encoding and decoding between groups. It’s a narrative mode that blurs the distinctions between author and audience, right down to the techniques used. A player may not know how to tell a story but by picking up a phone call or reading code they advance or complicate the story.

Can an ARG be art? If all art can be said to operate and be constituted by a series of operations, than what are the distinctions that elevate other forms of art such as literature and film above hacking, coding and gaming? Siegert discusses the traditional conception of culture as class and text based and looking at techniques and operations as a way to usurp the “sovereignty of the book”.[7] Why is writing text imbued with a spiritual essence that is seen to be lacking in the signs and codes associated with science and mathematics? Kramer and Bredekamp suggest a perceived unintelligibility in formulaic text, “Language surrenders its symbolic power in its pact with numbers and becomes a quasi-diabolic technique.”[8] For Death Grips, the spiritual and symbolic is strengthened and invoked through the technical and non-discursive. As artists they are interested in resisting the relegation of their work to music, calling themselves a “conceptual art project anchored by sound.”[9]Perhaps this is why an ARG appealed to them as a method to connect with their listeners and involve them in the construction of their project. The alternate reality component demonstrates a dialectical relationship with reality. The appeal of an alternate reality game is that operates from both a willful immersion in the fictive elements of the game and a real life component that allows them to physically interact with the game like a letter, text message or taking a call from a public phone. Players have a saying “TINAG”[10] or “This is not a game” a suspension of disbelief that we would employ while reading a novel and a concept that implicitly acknowledges the artifice of technique in its very utterance. The instances where the game crosses into the physical space incites a contemplation and examination of what we take to be reality.[11]

One of the interesting aspects of ARG gaming is the power dynamics involved between player, creator and game. Players react to each new development or clue but they each play a crucial part in advancing the game without much room for evaluation or understanding the ends of the game. In discussing Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ Sterne suggests the fascistic undertone inherent in organized physical movement in things like marching drills and dances. Although not as extreme, ARGs involve a similar kind of inexorable movement that demands to be enacted before players can fully comprehend what they are participating in. There is a certain disturbing element to this process of creation which moves relentlessly forward, generating itself from repetitive technique. The game is created through what Siegert refers to as “processual”[12]definition. It reproduces itself in game play. So who has agency in this particular field? Who controls the game and to what ends? What kinds of capital influence the game? Although ARGs are touted for their creative, collective approach to social organization and problem solving as well as an integration of art and science, their popularity makes them subject to commodification. McDonalds is one of the latest to recognize a money-making trend and try to capitalize on it with their own ARG. In the case of Death Grips, a group that seemingly cares so little about capital they give their product away it is tempting to see them as rebellious dissemblers of an outdated system. This system has already been fractured by the change in the listening habits of the consumer as the physical interaction with music changes from analog to digital. Although we listen to music we may not see a physical copy of an album anymore or even pay for it. Death Grips could be seen as a wrench in the network of organized actions required to sell records. Rather than fight the current state of music consumption, they adopted the hacker role by releasing their music freely and exposing the limitations of the music by turning the subculture on themselves, getting fans to use their decoding skills to participate in the promotion of their album.

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But is this really a subversive technique if it is used for the purposes of marketing? Is this simple appropriation of internet subcultures for an aesthetic or can it be an innovative example of cultural technique that complicates the ‘habitus’ of the music industry and contributes to Death Grips’ claim to artistic integrity? In the case of Death Grips the ARG is part of their aesthetic, but also a marketing tool for their music which targets an audience that belongs to this hacker subculture. Does this appropriation of cultural technique undermine the subversive spirit of hacking? Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ is described by Sterne as “embodied belief” somewhere between objective and subjective. [13] This is how ARGs as cultural technique operate. When we operate in non-discursive ways does the irresistible forward movement of performing a series of operations limit occasions for critical perspective? Agency? Is it paranoia? Or is it real?

[1] Zach Hill, Pitchfork interview.

[2] Unfiction.com

[3] http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6638/deathgripsnolovedeepweb.png

[4] Siegert, 60

[5] Volroth, 8

[6] Vehlken, 111

[7] Siegert, 57

[8] Kramer, Bredekamp, 22

[9] http://pitchfork.com/news/55781-death-grips-break-up/

[10] Unfiction.com

[11] Siegert, 62

[12] Siegert, 60

[13] Sterne, 375

References

“Glossary” Unfiction.com Alternate Reality Gaming. Unfiction.com, 2011. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

“Death Grips No Love Deep Web ARG.” Imageshack. Imageshack. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Berhard, Siegert. “Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory.” Theory, Culture and Society. 30.6 (2013): 48-65. Sage Publishing. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Clifford, Stephanie. “An Online Game so Mysterious its Famous Sponsor is Hidden.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 1 April 2008. Web. 10 Oct 2015.

Death Grips. “Lord of the Game (ft. Mexican Girl).” Exmilitary. Death Grips, 2011. Mp3.

Death Grips. “Guillotine (It goes Ya).” Online music video. Youtube. Youtube, 26 Apr. 2011. Web. 12 Oct 2015.

Hill, Zach. Interview by Jenn Pelly. Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, 2012. Web. Oct. 6 2015.

Kim, Jeffrey Y., Allen, Jonathan P., Lee, Elan. “Alternate Reality Gaming.” Communications of the ACM. 51.2 (2008): 36-42. ACM Digital Library. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Kramer, Sybille and Horst Bredekamp. “Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques- Moving Beyond Text.” Theory, Culture and Society. 30.6 (2013): 20-29. Sage Publishing. Web. 6 Oct 2015.

Larson, Jeremy D. “Turns out you can make money off of Death Grips’ new album NO LOVE DEEP WEB.” Consequence of Sound. Consequence of Sound, 3 Oct 2012. Web. 8 Oct 2015.

Minsker, Evan. “Death Grips Breaks Up.” Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, 2 July 2014. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Pocketsonswole. “Birds=Beck??” Reddit.com. Reddit Inc. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Sterne, Jonathan. “Bordieu, Technique and Technology.” Cultural Studies. 17.3/4 (2003): 367-389. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Vehlken, Sebastian. “Zootechnologies: Swarming as Cultural Technique.” Theory Culture and Society. 30.6 (2013): 110-131. Sage Publishing. Web. 5 Oct 2015.

Vollrath, Chad. “Mimetic Totem, Mimetic Taboo: Adorno’s Theory Of Mimetic Experience And Alternate Reality Gaming.” Conference Papers — International Communication Association (2008): 1-29. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.