Arcangel's Game Pop Art Gets Book
Eager GSW readers may remember the work of Cory Arcangel, who has been producing often video game-inspired art for a few years now - here's a neat gallery of some of his work.
Anyhow, the Videoludica site, which is for the line of game criticism books curated by Matteo Bittanti, has been talking about a book featuring Arcangel and his work, and simply named 'Beige'.
[EDIT: There was some confusion here, and Bittanti has posted in comments to explain: "The monograph on Cory Arcangel is already available, and it is published by a publisher called JRP/Ringier. I bought a copy at Kid Robot in San Francisco a couple of days ago and it simply rocks tempo grande. However, I'm now working with Italian publisher Johan & Levi on various Game Art projects. The first one will be announced next week and it's pretty juicy." Neat!]
It's explained: "Arcangel, who is 27 this year, is a full-fledged member of the generation that grew up on home video games. With Beige, a collective of fellow programmers, he has embarked on a hacker's nostalgia trip: his return to Super Mario Brothers removes all of the action to leave a landscape of blue sky and puffy clouds; Shoot Andy Warhol is a working video game in which viewers gain points for hitting Warhol and lose them by accidentally shooting Colonel Sanders, the Pope or Flavor Flav instead."
And, lest we forget: "Arcangel's work was shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial" - making him by far the video game artist most accepted into the mainstream art world. Will there be more in the future? Hopefully so.
Comments
I had a chance to meet Cory Arcangel when he came to Bard to speak, but I chose not to go because at the time I didn't know who he was. I also missed a chance to meet Julian Dibbell under similar circumstances. You'd think by now I'd have learned a lesson.
Arcangel's work is pretty phenomenal, but like all game art, it poses a potential threat to designers who wish games to be seen as art because of their interactivity, and not just because of illicited nostalgia or aesthetic appeal. I took classes under a professor who believed that game art was a process of appropriation (ie: using Mario sprites or footage from Half-Life as part of an art piece). It often concerns me that popular culture might believe that this is as far as "game art" can go.
Posted by: Scott Jon Siegel | September 17, 2006 11:21 PM
Hi Simon, thanks for the post. However, there's a misunderstanding here. The monograph on Cory Arcangel is already available, and it is published by a publisher called JRP/Ringier (http://www.jrp-ringier.com/pages/index.php). I bought a copy at Kid Robot in San Francisco a couple of days ago and it simply rocks tempo grande. However, I'm now working with Italian publisher Johan & Levi (www.johanandlevi.com) on various Game Art projects. The first one will be announced next week and it's pretty juicy. In a sense, you really are like a pre-cog ;-) By the way, Johan and Levi published a funky monograph on Italian Game Artist Mauro Ceolin [http://www.videoludica.com/news.php?news=313]. Thank you very much for the post and keep up the great job. Ciao, Matt
Posted by: Matteo Bittanti | September 18, 2006 12:35 AM