Game Art: Patrick LeMieux' "Coin Heaven" (2013)
Patrick LeMieux pwnd Cory Arcangel.
"In Coin Heaven an invisible Mario walks on invisible ground, looping endlessly in a cloudscape where a cinematic sequence once took place between World 1-1 and World 1-2 of the original Super Mario Bros. Beyond the speed, and the pattern of the clouds, the colors, and greater degree of repetition, something is very different. A lone coin remains blinking in the menu. To the chagrin of many ROMhackers, the coin, known as “Sprite 0” must be redrawn as an integral part of the 21-frame process running the game’s engine. Time does not move without money and making it invisible crashes the game. All that is solid does not melt into air as Sprite 0 symbolizes not the formal autonomy of games, art, and capital--but the desire for a type of utopia in which these practices operate without material base. The coin, then, only appears to offer the player a “coin heaven,” the name of three specific bonus zones in Super Mario Bros. devoid of enemies and filled with money. This bit coin is not merely digital, but reveals the intimate and intractable relation between software and hardware. The fantasy of an infinitely-editable digital space is challenged by the irrepressible materiality of the platform--the gold coin standing in for coltan, capital, and the global circuits through which the Nintendo Corporation operates. While Arcangel’s piece is famous for its erasure of the gameplay from Super Mario Bros., it also effects an erasure of the game’s medium specificity, depicting Super Mario Clouds as a utopian autonomous zone that renders invisible the game’s history of money and materiality. By contrast, Coin Heaven refuses this portrayal, demonstrating the deep history that is hard coded into the game’s electrical circuits." (Patrick LeMieux)LINK
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti