Video Games? Art and Technology
Curated by Manar Abo Touk, Curator, Exhibitions & Collections
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Video Games? Art and Technology is a group exhibition featuring Pippin Barr, Sandee Moore, and artist collective SpekWork (Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll), that examine video games as an artform for design and self- expression. From computer art to digital art, to animation, web-based art, photography, film, AR and VR, and video games. The Art and Technology movement of the 1960s provided artists the tools to mix technology, art, and science.
As technology advanced and progressed, gaming design grew as an artistic practice. In the 1990s digital artists explored the historical dimension of the computer and its development as a creative medium. Video Game creation allows artists to play with technological tools and game mechanics to question our perception of the physical world. How can Video Games shape and contribute to the way we learn history and understand issues in the contemporary world? such as the representation of female skateboarders, architecture and labour, or philosophical mythology.
Video Games? Art and Technology aims to create a digital artistic experience that reflects on how technology and art are used to examine design structures and societal themes through re-interpreting classic video games and offering a new way of seeing in our digital age.
(Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment game, Pippin Barr, 2011)
(The Mixer: The Ultimate Sk8 Activity Centre, 2001, electronics, sculpture, household paint, modified video game, single-channel video. Photo courtesy of the Dunlop Art Gallery.)
