To create WE BUILD WORLDS, Krista Hoefle appropriated No Man’s Sky by Hello Game and juxtaposed its "seductive imagery" of gameplay with "an unattainable rewards system
(out of reach papercraft gems)". The resulting machinima is fragmented into color fields that have a confusing effect on the viewer. By deliberately obfuscating the goal of the game, Hoefle is renouncing its functional logic while simultaneously emphasizing the lethal nature of the lush environment (“toxicity level 70%”). As Hoefle writes,
The structural grid—projected onto the floor and walls—breaks through the lush scenery as a “healthy sign” (in accordance with Roland Barthes), a sign that “draws attention to its own arbitrariness, which does not try to play itself off as ‘natural’ but which, in the very moment of conveying a meaning, communicates something of its own relative, artificial status as well” (from Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton). WE BUILD WORLDS reflects an isolation and artifice that comes with our technological experiences.
Krista Hoefle is an artist and gamer from the Midwest. She exhibits her work nationally, and is represented by Aron Packer Projects (Chicago). She uses games as a a medium for sculpture and installation, questioning the logic and aesthetics of gaming systems through installations, interactive sculpture and machinima. Specifically, Hoefle turns commercial videogames into
artworks that amplify play-conditions or are directly interrupted, subverted or adapted (through computational means or game-based performance). 3D digital objects and characters are directly extracted from videogames, rebuilt, and reinterpreted for physical spaces. (Krista Hoefle)
LINK: Krista Hoefle (images and video courtesy of the Artist)
