The depiction of space, which characterized this level, had been the Holy Grail of academic computer visualization at the beginning of the nineties. Because of «Doom» and «Quake,» this technology came into children’s playrooms—and into artists' workshops. The possibilities that computer games offered their creators did not remain hidden for long, especially from artists who worked with new media or the Internet. The first attempt by an artist to use a computer game[5] as an artistic medium appears to have been «ars Doom» by Orhan Kipcak and Reinhard Urban. Their game, which was shown at ars electronica in 1995, was a crude satire on the art business, obviously in the tradition of context art of the early 1990s. Verena Kuni writes about the game in Blitzreview[6]. «No one helps anyone,» growls the player’s alter ego as it stumbles through catacombs as Nitsch, Baselitz or Beuys, armed with either a shotgun, paint brush or another tool. These catacombs are easily identifiable as being a digital model of the Bruckner House (the location where the ars electronica took place—see footnote) whose somewhat stiff 1970s' charm rather unwillingly couples with the characteristic SS prison aesthetic

typical of «Doom.» A report for ORFOnline describes the work as follows: «After getting on board via the Internet, a user receives a character mask, perhaps that of Georg Baselitz, Nam June Paik or Arnulf Rainer. Then, with their tools—Baselitz' thumbs, Paik’s remote control or Rainer’s paint brush—works of art and artists can be destroyed.»[7] The article in the catalogue of the ars electronica names, among others, Ecke Bonk, Heimo Zobernig, Jörg Schlick and Peter Kogler as belonging to the opponents, among whom were other artists and critics as «involved inner circle artists.»[8] The favourite victim of «ars Doom» players was said to have been exhibition director Peter Weibel.[9] The work started a certain tradition. Afterwards, artists like Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson (see below) as well as Florian Muser and Imre Osswald (with a level that was created after the example of the Hamburger Galerie für Gegenwart[10]) strived to introduce computer games as a commentary on the art business and its institutions. Among the first artists to deal with games as a medium was the artist-duo Jodi, who, however, blazed a completely different aesthetic trail. In 1999, as guests of the Budapest Media Art laboratory