GameScenes is conducting a series of interviews with artists, critics, curators, and gallery owners operating in the field of Game Art, as part of our ongoing investigation of the social history of this fascinating artworld. Our goal is to illustrate the genesis and evolution of a phenomenon that changed the way game-based art is being created, experienced, and discussed today. The conversation between Mathias Jansson and Paul Steen took place via email in December 2010.
Paul Steen, "Art Assault", 2010, game modification,- All images courtesy of the artist
GameScenes: You latest work, "Art Assault", is a bold, full-frontal attack on the art establishment. How did you come up with the idea? What does the title mean?
Paul Steen: "Art Assault" is a mod of the open source FPS Assault Cube, set in a caricature of the art world, hence the name. It's about hierarchies and the struggle for power. The levels are all modeled after real life galleries and museums, with textures based on photos I've taken myself at the various spots. The bots are named after the most successful living artists according to artfacts.net. They are parted randomly into the teams Outside and Inside, a picture of social boundaries and the struggle between establishment and wannabes. They even shoot their own team members if they stand in the way. Every time someone falls a new bot spawns in his name: Fame is fickle and there is always someone there to take your place. No one side ever really has the upper hand for long.
I am always looking for materials and means of expression on the one hand that fit different concepts I'm mulling on the other hand, and I thought the way I could edit Assault Cube made it a fitting platform to make a picture of things I wanted to say about the art world.
One thing that fascinates me with the FPS genre in games (Although you find it in other games like RTS) is that you can discern two different tactics for survival described by Gilles Deleuze in A Thousand Plateaus: The sedentary farmer and the nomad who masters mobility. This corresponds to how FPS online players often resort to either "camping" or "ramboing".
I made a somehow similar smaller game several years ago that was gracefully lost in a computer crash before I could show it: Art Counter-Strike. It was a slightly minimalist and cartoonish third person shooter made with Coldstone. "Art Assault" is the realization with better means of many things I wanted to say back then.
Paul Steen, "Art Assault", 2010, game modification,- All images courtesy of the artist
GameScenes: The "modded" art-gallery is a recurrent theme in Game Art. The idea of going berserk in a sacred space, devoted to art, is very popular among the enfant terribles experimenting with games. One early example is "Museum Meltdown" by Palle Torsson and Tobias Bernstrup. More recent artworks include Michiel Van Der Zanden's "Museum Killer" (2008) and Chris Reilly's "Everything I Do is Art, But Nothing I Do Makes Any Difference, Part II Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gallery". Are you familiar with such works? Is "Art Assault" an homage to these previous efforts?
Paul Steen: Palle Torsson is an old acquaintance of mine that I have great respect for, for his entire work, not just his game related stuff. I am familiar with other contemporary artists making use of FPS or games in art and I'm happy to inscribe myself in that context, but my greatest iinspiration has to be the Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström and his Cold War Monopoly games. His example showed me in the first place that it was possible to construct simulations or a set of rules and to present them as a work of art, an interpretation of the world, a metaphor.
Paul Steen, "Art Assault", 2010, game modification,- All images courtesy of the artist
GameScenes: What lies ahead for "Art Assault"? Will you continue to develop the game in the future, adding extra levels and features? Are you planning new exhibitions?
Paul Steen: In December 2010, I'm showing a live game play projection of "Art Assault" at the opening of #RANK, an alternative event to Art Miami. Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida are organizing talks and showing artists making work related to power and hierarchies in art at the Seven art space. I will surely make more levels for "Art Assault" but not necessarily another FPS. Other games for sure, but I don't feel like I necessarily need to use a computer to make processual art.
Paul Steen, "Art Assault", 2010, game modification,- All images courtesy of the artist
GameScenes: You were born in the early Seventies, like the medium of the videogame itself. It is safe to assume that you grew up playing digital games? How did videogames affect you personally, and as an artist?
Paul Steen: Growing up in the '70s and '80s it's clear that arcades and computer games played a big role. I used to play Space Invaders with pebbles and pieces of wood in the forest in Sweden where I grew up. Later I had a Spectrum 48k and made my own crude programs in BASIC long before I went to art academy and learned to paint properly. It was a way of creating your own world. I think that the openness of creating your own rules and modifying them to see what happens, the whole idea of the freedom of play was a lasting experience that I somehow missed later on in the classical form of painting I was taught.
Paul Steen, "Art Assault", 2010, game modification,- All images courtesy of the artist
GameScenes: What are your thoughts on the Swedish new media art scene, especially in relation to video game-based interventions?
Paul Steen: I think Sweden has a long and interesting tradition of new media and game art. Sweden has a relatively big games industry which I think is the result of a general openness and curiosity towards new media that has been there for decades. Video games have been referenced in art by many in my generation who may not be known for that in particular. Johan Thurfjell for instance. We have as a country been technologically advanced for a long time and there has been a great openness to new media in the cultural sphere. There has both been an iinfrastructure of available technology, a willingness among many artists to use it, and a political will to encourage it and fund projects. In an art context this might not always be known to the outside world since much of the structures of the art world are still built on face to face meetings, and Sweden simply has an unfortunate geographical placement. It's a schlep. Unfortunate really, because there are some really world class Swedish artists.
link: Paul Steen
related: Art Assault, House to House
Feature: Game Art Worlds: Contemporary Practitioners (interviews)
Text by Mathias Jansson
Comments