Prisoners Dilemma (1974)
By Richard Serra
This is a rare Richard Serra Video from 1974 using the concept of "The Prisoner's Dilemma" from game theory as a video experiment to, in Serra's words, "expose the format of commercial TV." The video features Leo Castelli, Bruce Boice and Spalding Gray, among others. 40:11min The host of Serra's 1974 parody game show, Prisoners' Dilemma, explains that the loser will spend six hours alone in a basement - "that's about the length of the average boring artist's videotape". Cue knowing chuckles from the studio audience. The rules are simple. Or are they? Derived from game theory, Prisoners' Dilemma is a casual exercise in arbitrary power. In the first part of Serra's tape, before we meet the studio guests, an enjoyably clumsy amateur cop show dramatises how the prisoner's dilemma works in real life as a New York detective isolates two hippies and makes each an offer: sign the prepared confession. If you sign and the other "prisoner" doesn't, you will go free, and the other prisoner will get 50 years in Sing-Sing. If the other signs and you don't, you will get 50 years. If you both sign, you'll each get 10 years. If neither of you sign, you'll each get two years. What to do? The gues…
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