Game Art: Tacit Group's "Six Pacmen", "Loss", and "Drumming" (2014)
Six Pacmen, the latest performance from Tacit Group (Game Over, Space, Maze Scoring), is a performance based on Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) and Steve Reich's Six Pianos (1973).
Tacit Group describe the project as follow:
"Performers need to collect items provided, by steering each given packman. One level is complete once 6 performers collect all the items, thereby going to the next measure of the piece. In some levels (or measures) appears a ghost that disturbs the performer. Performers can finish the game by playing all measures. This shows a significant feature of Tacit Group that has been applying games like Tetris and puzzles to pieces of art." (Tacit Group)
Even more fascinating is LOSS:
“LOSS does not have performers. There only exists the system (universe) made by Tacit Group, and 6 performers, at the stance of gods, create 6 sounds which are combination of many genes and come down from the stage. Created sounds live by given rules. Basically, they consume food, meet the other sex, marry, and give birth to new sounds. And as time goes by, they grow old and become extinct in the end. Sounds with fast moving style genes consume much food, grow larger, meet the other sex more frequently, and leave many offspring. When these big sounds and their offspring dominate the system (universe), other remaining sounds are relatively deprived of their opportunities and become extinct quietly after wandering the system around. Maybe the system might remain in monotonous peace along with many sounds." (Tacit Group)
Steve Reich returns in Drumming, originally composed in 1970 and reinvented by Tacit Group:
"The original piece is for percussion and voice, but Tacit Group has changed it into electronic sounds and visualized the score in geometrical way. When computers mechanically play notes, performers improvise rhythms and tones. Audience will intuitively recognize these changes through images. This is to say that when bar falls from the upper level of screen its corresponding note is played, with the matching texture of bar, falling speed, and size. Thus rises unique taste of Tacit Group, from mechanical sound of computer and improvisation of performers." (Tacit Group)LINK
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti