Essay: [Virtual] Relational Aesthetics by Dorothy Santos, Zero1 Blog, August 25, 2011. Excerpt:
"Joseph DeLappe’s piece, ‘dead-in-Iraq’, utilizes the virtual environment of ‘America’s Army’, which is the United States Army’s recruiting game. The virtual role playing game is open to anyone interested in establishing an online account and perhaps possesses a profound interest and curiosity for the military. The game itself simulates the actions and consequences of war. Allowing for fantastical play where the player has endless lives and has the ability to kill enemies and, perhaps, even soldiers in their own platoons with the absence of admonishment, the end user’s thoughts and emotions translate and weave themselves into a collection of memories that are both real and imagined. A simple game and task at hand, yet, the underlying message remains the same, and you are a machine." (Dorothy Santos)
Article: Mathias Jansson, Videogame Appropriation in Contemporary Art: Racing Games, Furtherfield.org. August 19. 2011. Excerpt:
"Pole Position, Outrun, F1 Racer and Need for Speed are some of the countless racing games that have attracted artists to explore a world of speed and burning rubber. In 2004 Cory Arcangel hacked the old Japanese Famicom driving game F1 Racer and removed, in the same way as he did in Super Mario Clouds, cars and other objects so that the only thing that remained of the game was the road and the landscape rushing toward the viewer." (Mathias Jansson)
Artist Profile: Ian Glover's talks to Aram Bartholl, Rhizome. August 24, 2011. Excerpt:
"In the early-mid 2000s I started building objects like the Counterstrike crates de_dust. It seemed like the next logical step. Will it look like this when virtuality bleeds into real life?! A lot of the works from that time inherit this question. Later this gesture of reenacting/rebuilding computer space became sort of a cultural 'mainstream' on the web. Just search for IRL Super Mario on Youtube. I’m not exactly sure how to put it but it feels like this was an era where we needed to reprocess the digitalization of society, a way to achieve 'post digital consciousness'. The gaming community was one of the first ones to go through this phase of awareness but for a big part of society the process is still going on." (Aram Bartholl)
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti
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