Interview: Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson, ”Museum Meltdown” (1996)

Tobias Bernstrup, Palle Torsson, "Museum Meltdown" (1996) 

In 1996, two Swedish art students created what is now considered the first example of an artistic modification of a videogame in Scandinavia, if not in the world. Palle Torsson and Tobias Bernstrup started their artistic career with a scandal and continued to push the boundaries of art with “Museum Meltdown”, a piece where the relatively conservative conventions of the art world imploded when they collided with videogames. “Museum Meltdown” was shown at the biennale “Borrealis 8” at Arken Museum of Contemporary Art outside Copenhagen in Denmark. It generated a stir within the artworld and was soon imitated.

 
 The exhibit catalogue of “Borealis 8: The Scream”, lists such artists as Vanessa Beecroft, Peter Land, Olafur Eliasson and Tony Oursler. Then your eyes encounter the names of two art students from Sweden who just created an hyper-violent videogame titled “Museum Meltdown”. I guess the question here is: How did you mange to get invited to “Borealis 8: The Scream” with a videogame?

After causing some minor scandal and debate with a censored internet piece in 1995 titled 'Joined Hands', curator Kim Levin became familiar with our work. After receiving an official invitation to join the show, we suggested a radical idea: creating a computer game based on the Arken Museum, which was hosting the event.

 
 Were you at this time aware that other artists also were working with videogames? For example Orhan Kipcak brought ArsDoom to Ars Electronica 1995?

Our main source of inspiration was the game Doom. We learned about ArsDoom some years later. Even if these two projects share a similar logic, they are also significantly different; ArsDoom focuses on the concept of the artist and the conventions of artistic practice by replacing the weapon with a paint brush. For our project, on the other hand, it was important not to alter the narrative of the game and its arsenal in order to polarize both the game world and the artworld.

 
 “Museum Meltdown” was created by hacking Duke Nukem 3D. Why did you choose this game instead of Doom? 

Duke Nukem 3D was the first game bundled with a level editor called 'Build' and it had a more advanced graphic engine, that gave us more possibilities to recreate the somewhat complex architecture of the museum.

 
[all images courtesy of the artist] 

How did you work together to create “Museum Meldown”? 

We had some earlier experience in writing games for the old Commodore machines back in the 1980s, but none of us had ever modified a 3D game up to that point. It took us one month of playing and researching and one month to design the level. We were working in shifts, the level editor was running 24/7... 

Is it true that it was a guest teacher who introduced you to the art of modding?

Correct. That was the animator and artist Richard Wright who was a guest teacher at the Royal College University of Fine Arts in Stockholm. We started discussing Doom after he had seen us playing it day and night...

You made two sequels. Can you tell me something about the reactions from the public, critics and curators?

The curator Kestutis Kuizinas at The Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius got really excited and invited us to do a new project for the exhibition 'Funny vs Bizarre' in 1997 at the art center. In 1999 David Elliott who was the director at Moderna Museet also liked our project and wanted us to do a version in Stockholm. Then later the French curator Laurance Dreyfus invited us to the Lyon Biennale in 2001. But it took quite some time before the actual discussion on the potential of video games as an artistic medium actually began. I can think of an article published in late 2001 by The New York Times  and an exhibition that took place at the San Fransisco MoMA in the same year... These two events kind of marked out the path. After that, other writers, curators and critics slowly started to notice the phenomenon.

“Museum Meltdown” is a landmark in the history of interactive art. But did any art museum or art gallery purchase it?

Good question, our dealer at that time have suggested the Moderna Museet to buy the fantastic piece twice, but they deemed it as too expensive... Or maybe they have not understood the unique quality of this piece. Its aura, if you will...

Finally, are there any Easter eggs in the game?

Would have been a really nice idea. There are some hidden rooms with surprises though. 

The interview took place in November 2009. Text by Mathias Jansson.  

Link: “Museum Meltdown – Arken” 

Link: “Museum Meltdown – Moderna Museet” 

Related: Interview: Oran Kipcak 

To experience “Museum Meltdown”

• Install Duke Nukem 3D on your computer.
• Download the new levels from the artists homepage (http://www.bernstrup.com/meltdown/old/download.html ).
• Unzip the files “Arken” and “Vilnius” on your computer.
• Drop the unzipped files in the main Duke Nukem folder.
• Launch Setup.exe, select “Use Level Selection”, find and choose one of the new levels.
• “Save and launch Duke Nukem 3D”.
• Works with XP, but Vista doesn’t support the full screen mode.

 To cheat type “dnkroz” for eternal life and “dnstuff” for all weapons, key, item etc.

Comments

[jonCates]

i also have an interview that i did w/Bernstrup and Torsson on the Art Game Studies platform which i introduced here:

http://bit.ly/apCkM8

my interview is from 2007 for an essay of mine called Running and Gunning in the Gallery: Art Mods, Art Institutions and the Artists that Destroy Them, which will appear in From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art, edited by David Getsy. my interview is similar to yours, crossing technical and conceptual concerns and involving questions of Institutional Critique, site specificity and Media Art Histories...