GAME ART: Myfanwy Ashmore's "Super Mario Trilogy" (2006)

"mario is drowning"; "mario doing time"; "mario battle no. 1".

"Myfanwy Ashmore (born 1970, North York, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian artist who has been involved in information art, new media art, video art, interactive art, internet art since 1995.[citation needed] She studied at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, in 1990, graduated from the Sculpture/Installation department at the Ontario College of Art & Design in 1996, and received her MFA from York University in 1998. As well as being an international exhibiting artist,  she currently teaches New Media in the Image Arts Program at Ryerson University in Toronto.  [...] She is also known for the software art work entitled "mario battle no.1" which was made in 2000, distributed by Year01.com and runme.org and was distributed with ROM and emulator on floppies across North America, generally outside the gallery system. The same work, along with two more in the series, appeared in an exhibition at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre. These works, based on Super Mario Brothers, play on typical "rescue the princess" themes." (from Wikipedia)

"mario battle no.1 – nes game rom, 2000

I removed all of the enemies, performance enhancing drugs, money, and architecture from the game so all that you can do is jump, walk, run around and dance in the landscape with the bushes and the grass and the mountains. Eventually you run out of time and die.

mario doing time – nes game rom, 2004

mario doing time is an illegally modified Super Mario Bros game rom where the enemies, performance enhancing drugs, money, prizes, have been removed and the dungeon wall raised to become an impossible barrier – formerly Bowsers Dungeon – now Mario's incarceration facility. All you can do as a game player is jump, walk, run, never being able to jump quite high enough to scale the wall, inside the confinement of this altered game. Eventually, you run out of time and die.

mario is drowning – nes game rom, 2004

I removed all of the enemies, performance enhancing drugs, money,and architecture so the water becomes a lake again, and so all that you can do is jump, walk, run around up and down and swim never quite getting a breath, finding anywhere to hold on, to rest, inside the confinement of the altered game. eventually you run out of “air” and then you die." (Myfanwy Ashmore)

link: Myfanwy Ashmore

link: Super Mario Trilogy (2006)

link: Mario Battle 01 @ Year01

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Comments

[Stephanschwingeler]

Hi Matteo, thank you for reminding me Myfanwy's work. I think this is a great find. Until now I did not notice that she erased Mario's environment 2 years prior to Cory Arcangel. "mario battle no.1" may be described as a kind of predecessor to Arcangel's "Clouds" in my opinion.

I cannot figure out which Rom-version she used, though. If you look closely you will notice that she did not perform her hacking on the original Rom-version of Super Mario Bros. – the graphics look a lot more like Super Mario Bros. 3. But it is not this game either. The titlescreen says "Super Mario Brothers DX" which I am not familiar with...

Any ideas?

Best
Stephan