Game Art: Coll.eo's "FOLLOWING BIT" (2013)
"I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. [...] The way I thought of pieces like Following Piece was, there’s a city out there. I attend to this city. How do I key myself into this city. How do I tie myself into this city. I can pick out people in this city to follow." (Vito Acconci, 2013)FOLLOWING BIT is a reenactment of Vito Acconci's FOLLOWING PIECE, originally performed in New York City between October 3 and 25, 1969. FOLLOWING PIECE was part of “Street Works IV”, a series of performances and conceptual events sponsored by the Architectural League of New York between October 1-31, 1969. Acconci followed a person for a few minutes, if that person entered into a private space or a car, or for several hours, if the person went to a cinema or restaurant. Acconci carried out this performance everyday for a month. He typed up an account of each 'pursuit', and, the following month, he sent a report to a different member of the art community.
FOLLOWING BIT is a performance that took place in Liberty City, the setting of Grand Theft Auto IV, between July 3 and July 25, 2013. Each day Coll.eo picked out a different a non-player character (note 1), at random, in the street, at different locations. Coll.eo - controlling a specifically designed avatar of Vito Acconci - followed that character as long as possible, until he or she entered a private place – home, office, etc. – disappeared or died.
Coll.eo’s FOLLOWING BIT is presented today to a broader audience via different media, in the form of tweets, machinima, digital photographs, prints, maps, and diagrams. The month-long performance generated an enormous set of data, consisting of 23 digital videos in high definition over 118 GB in size; 13300+ digital photos; 60 digital prints; 23 written accounts sent in Tweet form (archived), plus several typewritten pages of notes, framed, and mounted to wall and to a board.
: Coll.eo
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti