Game Art: Marnix De Nijs' "Exploded Views _ Remapping Firenze" (2008)

"Exploded Views is an interactive installation whereby three participants run on individual conveyor belts. They physically move themselves through both an interactive audio-environment and interactive imagery projected at the front of the belts. The action of the observer’s body is the determining factor for setting the 3D images into motion. This physical effort made by the viewer in turn reveals several cityscapes from all over the world.

Exploded Views is pre-eminently an installation in which the artist’s personal interest in urban and global developments is combined with a local request for site-specific work. The development of Exploded Views is subdivided into phases. During the first stage, the soft- and hardware platform and the first game level was developed specifically for the city of Florence.

Depending on the location where the installation is exhibited, the general topic 'globalisation and metropolitan life' is openly suggested. By keeping this theme in mind and furthermore, zooming in on the local appearance of the city where the exhibition takes place, a rich composition of cities will be assembled after a period of time. Every city becomes a ' level ' or chapter of the collection. In Florence, the focus was on the incessant growing number of tourists that violate public life and especially the beauty of this Renaissance city in its entirety. Due to this increased transient mobility, the city has been transformed into a sort of express-tourist Disney World and correspondingly, scaring the locals away from the city centre. Florence has 12 million tourists per year compared with a meagre population of 355,000." (Marnix De Nijs, 2008)

Link: Marnix De Nijs

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Submitted by Maytteo Bittanti