This Week's Waste of Time

For so many reasons, this isn't going on the refrigerator.

There's a reason I decided not to call this column "This Week's Cheapskate Video Game" or "Your Weekly Video Game Option That Doesn't Cost Any Money." Well, there's two reasons. "This Week's Waste of Time" has the branded ring of something eternally cool (at least in my mind), and the things I cover aren't necessarily games. Case in point, the works of AGJ.

Alejandro Grilli J., a Chilean graphic designer, not only programs games, he makes videos and other non-interactive works of art. For that reason, his "games" are more like audio/visual experiments. Take for example Wirewalk, which grabs a random photo from the internet, throws a mutilated R&B track on top and lets your mouse control both the finely chopped audio and the warped image. You will want headphones for this one as the sound pans with your cursor movement.

The best way I've thought of to describe Prosopamnesia is an interactive phantom photograph. Starting with a simple image, your cursor acts like an air-brush that reveals a photo or illustration of a face (again grabbed randomly from the internet). No matter how vigorously you move your mouse, you will likely only get a facial feature or two before the photo is changed and the air-brushing reveals someone else. What's left is a constantly changing and increasingly layered montage of eyes, noses, mouths, and the occasional shoulder. There's no aggressive audio track on this one.

AGJ's most recent creation, Intervalo, is part short story, part notepad, and part Spirograph. Short snippets of text (in Spanish) are replaced by lined paper onto which you can draw using your mouse as a pencil. With each new page, the way your cursor and the images drawn on the screen relate is altered. Think of it as a malfunctioning robot aiding your sketches.

And remember, they don't have to be video games to be wastes of time.