Archive for March, 2006
Pop art, or Neo-Dada art, is a style that employs the use of populist, rather than high culture, elements. Depending on your view of these matters, it’s either an expansion of abstract expressionism, or a reaction to it.
Since early 2005, the 8-Bit Artist has been painting authentic renditions of Nintendo games from the 8-bit era – taking what is considered to be the lowest of all forms of artistic expression, and bringing the iconography of the medium to the canvas. In many ways, this goes beyond pop art even, and well into the realm of postmodernist art, at least in the definition of the form by Jean Baudrillard who wrote that art is not the search for originality or authenticity, but rather the desire for novelty – although, far from being a bad thing, Baudrillard explains that this is an integrated and organic phenomenon.
In this sense, and in the sense that postmodernist art is often a pastiche of what has come before, 8-Bit Artist’s work attempts to make sense of the confusion that exists in a generation who have grown up with this imagery, but have been told that this is not “true” art.
Film critic Roger Ebert recently commented that ” video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic”. The work of the 8-Bit Artist challenges this, though he may not see it that way himself:
“I just do this as a hobby and side gig,” he says. littlemathletics spoke to 8-Bit Artist recently about games as art, and his work.
Jason Cox’s career as one-man-band Xoc hit the big time in August last year when his debut – SMW, a cover of the entire Super Mario World soundtrack done using accordion, acoustic guitars, antique pickaxe, asscheeks, banjo, bike horn, cabasa, Canon Powershot, ceramic toilet mug, children’s drum set, claves, coconut thumb piano, cowbells, cuatro, doublespeed acoustic guitar, doublespeed banjo, doublespeed guitars, drum set, drum sticks, electric bass guitar (Yamaha RBX200), electric guitars, finger cymbals, gooseneck mic stand, handclaps, handmade maracas, jam block, jew’s harp, Korg MS2000B synth, lap steel guitar, maracas, matchbook, melodion, ocarina, pennywhistle, pump organ, PSS-270 keyboard, refrigerator door, ribbon crasher, Roland Groovebox, rototom brace, school bell, shakers, slide whistle, sportshorn, tacklebox, tambourines, triangle, turkey locator, Tyco Hot Lixx, ukelele, upright bass, violin, vocals, woodblock, wood flute, Wurlitzer electric piano, and xylophone – appeared in Edge magazine with the comment that “every track is both a pop gem and a testament to the lasting appeal of [Koji] Kondo’s compositions and XOC’s one-man-band prowess”.
Eight months later, the album -available for free on the Internet Archive – has clocked up in excess of 82,000 downloads, more than 60,000 more than any other open source audio.
Jason’s next project as Xoc was Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album, an double album of covers and originals from a supposed pirate NES game, which, in turn was based upon a supposed movie from 1984 starring Jonathan Brandis, Jill Bennett and Ed Flanders. The concept features an 1,800 word summary, including the history of the movie, it’s producers, and reveals that “all three of the film’s stars would eventually go on to commit suicide”. It’s a mix of fact and fiction that goes into such depth it beggars the senses.
Again, Xoc was featured by Edge, this time on their website, where they called this work a ” twisted conceptual madness”, and Xoc’s “magnum opus”.
Over the period of just over a month, littlemathletics spoke to Jason about SMW, Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album and a myriad of other topics, all through the magic of email.
Since meeting at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne in the late 90s media artists Roman Kirschner, Volker Morawe and Tilman Rieff have been working together under the name fur, a group that, in their own words “stands for the re-staging of computer-entertainment based on multisensory interfaces” – or, in other words, work to decontextualise videogames and other forms of computer based amusements by changing the way they are used.
By changing the interfaces used to interact, the creations of fur go beyond “visual navigation, manual control and massive single-user isolation” to become something completely new, not only within the world of videogames, but also within the world of art. Their most famous work is the PainStation, from 2001- a game of Pong within a specially designed cabinet that would whip and shock players hands, often causing tangible wounds, which fur describe as a ” a contemporary dueling system”.
The team won an International Media Art Award for the machine in 2003, the same year in which the machine was superseded by the PainStation 2, and that by the PainStation 2.5 in 2004. Since then, the six PainStation machines have been touring the world, displayed at exhibitions from London to Mexico City and just about everywhere in between.
Reaction to the machine on the PainStation website’s guestbook is varied, ranging from the good:
“Greatest gaming console the world has ever known. Me and two of my friends visited London last summer after our graduation. We ended up going to the V&A’s TOUCH exibit where we thankfully found the original PainStation. We couldn’t or at least I couldn’t get enough of plaing the game, I believed that I stood there playing various spectators for over two hours.”
To the bad:
“This is so DUMB… are people so bored that they want to get themselves hurt??? Then again, there are movies of dudes hitting eachother with things for FUN so i’m not that surprised people would also find this Painstation thing cool.”
And the ugly:
“Fuck off you stupid wankers, fucking sadomastic pricks, go strangle yourself with barbewire or something.”
littlemathletics recently spoke briefly to Tilman Rieff about the PainStation, the notions of games as art, and their plans for world domination…