"Game Art Worlds: The Early Years" is an ongoing series curated by Mathias Jansson on the pioneers of Game Art. It features interviews with seminal artists that changed the landscapes of Game Art. 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 Felix Huber took place in February 2011 via email.
Felix S. Huber (b.1957 in Zurich) lives and works in Berlin. He started his career as a photographer, but in the late Nineties he discovered computer graphics and the Unreal engine, which he used to create some seminal artworks such as “Reality Check One” (2001), "Psycho Park" (2004), Wolfsschanze (2004), “Ops Room” (2005) and “Ego Alter Ego” (2008). His works as been showed in several exhibitions in German and aborad, including Game Art-specific events such as “TRY AGAIN” at La Casa Encendida, Madrid and “Next Level”, Kunstverein Wolfsburg. Huber no longer works as an artist, but remains one of the pioneers of Game Art.
Felix Huber, Psycho Park, computer mod/installation, 2004
Felix Huber, wolfsschanze, computer mod/installation, 2004
Game Scenes: What was the genesis of "Reality Check One" (2001)?
Felix Huber: It was my first game-based artwork. I began using computer graphic in 1999, after a friend of mine, Florian Wenz curated the show "Game Over, 1997" in Zurich. Before that, I was working with the medium of photography, and, in 1995, I got involved with some Internet travel projects, like "Arctic circle and tropic of cancer" with Philip Pocock, Florian Wüst and Christoph Keller. I bought my first computer, a Power Mac 8100 in 1995, before that I was worked 100% analog. I have to say, I never played computer games till 2000. At that time, I was 43 years old.
Felix Huber, Reality Check One, installation, 2001
GameScenes: What was the German Game art scene at the beginning of the Zeroes like?
Felix Huber: I knew very few artists working with games around that time. I was aware of practitioneers like Jodi and some Swedish artists such as Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson. I exhibited "Reality Check" One in my gallery Michael Zink in Munich and at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. The reaction was from somehow tepid. The visitors did not seem to understand what I was trying to accomplish. The idea of using games was considered problematic.
GameScenes: Why did you use the Unreal engine for your game-based artworks? What was particularly appealing about that tool?
Felix Huber: Simply put. back then it was the best game engine to use, period. I tried different egines, e.g. Quake and Half-Life, but Unreal had the best resources and a very lively community.
Felix Huber, Alter-Ego, installation view gallery, Zink Berlin, 2008
GameScenes: Your workk “Ego Alter Ego” (2008) concludes the series which includes Tunnel, Rooms and Platforms. In these works, you were working with opposite pairs as reality and simulation, interaction and isolation. What was the leit-motiv of the trilogy?
Felix Huber: The trilogy deals with minimalism. If you think about it, commercial games are based on basic emotions like, aggression, success, loneliness and control. What I tried to do with my series of works was to reduce these emotions to their basic, most fundamental forms. In my Trilogy I use abstraction and simplicity to express, metaphorically, three different concepts: individuality (Tunnel), societal norms (Rooms) and refusal to conform (Platorm). I stopped completely working as an artist after Ego Alter Ego. I had some problems with my eyes and all that screen time and rendering stressed my vision. Trilogy is my last game-based artwork.
Felix Huber, Ops Room, 2004, mod
Link: Felix Huber
Text by Mathias Jansson
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