Game Art: Tabor Robak's "Free-to-Play" (2013)

With Free-to-Play (all works 2013), Brooklyn-based artist Tabor Robak emulates Candy Crush Saga's visual aesthetics to create a one-hour installation celebrating distraction, visual stimuli, and multi-tasking. Mimicking interactivity, Free-to-Play shows overlapping columns of game-like icons, collapsing into exploding, colorful bursts of digital clutter. The work is displayed on four screens, all vertically installed. Above is a 10 minute excerpt.

Tabor Robak was born in 1986 in Portland, Oregon, and graduated with a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2010. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work explores the symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology using an arsenal of software-based tools traditionally used in the production of video games, special effects, and motion graphics. Recent exhibitions include Smart New World(curated by Elodie Evers and Magdalena Holzhey) at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany, 2014, and the 2013 La Biennale de Lyon (curated by Gunnar B. Kvaran) in Lyon, France.