Game Art: Anita Fontaine & Mike Pelletier
CuteXdoom II installation: Gallery of Modern Art, Australia
All images courtesy of the artist
"Anita Fontaine’s fantastical modifications, media interventions and new media explorations radically repurpose contemporary technology to surprising new ends. Her aesthetic can best be described as a technical virtuosity and creativity in mastering the digital idioms of our contemporary visual landscape, infused with a rebellious sense of play and a taste for magic.
Interestingly, Fontaine’s materials are unexpected; rather than the plein air paintings of past, her work is fashioned from commercial, readily accessible platforms; typically entertainment technologies of our day. Some of her tools of the trade include the video game Unreal Tournament 2003—which employs physics engines designed to predict the effects of Newtonian law—the virtual space of second life; or mobile phone technology and GPS. From these diverse contemporary technologies, Fontaine fashions new realms, coaxing these mundane technologies into vibrant expressions in the realms of the unreal. The resultant visual iconography includes vibrant, hyper-colored Harlequin lands marked by a sense of hyperrealism, yet characteristic fancy. Referencing the wonder and potentiality of classic fairy tales, Fontaine instead invents new idioms, drawing on the contemporary digital/visual landscape to spin her mythologies within the grand Metaverse." (Sasha lee, 2008, read more)