Art, Videogames, and Play

Douglas Edric Stanley

2006.06.01

I will be speaking again at the Friche bel de Mai, this time about my work in relation to video games, their langage, their culture, and their influence.

It all started when I made a selection for the festival Arborescence of artistic reappropriations of video games. These ranged from more recent works such as Unreal Art to older significant works such as JODI’s Untitled Game. Mixed in there were other classics, such as Painstation, C-Level, Pong Mechanik and Super Mario Clouds. Somehow this selection got back to the people at the Friche Bel de Mai who were looking for someone with some knowledge about video games. But instead of talking about that subject (which I don’t really have the time to prepare), we ended up with the proposal to simply present the gaming aspect of the abstractmachine project. I will of course post the previously mentioned list on this blog once I’ve cleaned them up, and in time for the talk. I am also hoping to have an early prototype of « Plot », my machine for making Gameboy fun.