Digimag Article

[vesicular]

Here's the Digimag article on ROM Color. It's in Italian so if you wanna read it you can try Bablefish (it almost works ;). This is going to be in an upcoming book on game aesthetics, which should be printed soon.

This is the second time I've had someone write a didactic about my work. They're always fun to read, and so far have been very well written. Though I felt a little weird about the Andy Warhol comparison. Either way, I'm really looking forward to the book.

Comments

[fishie-flop-oog.livejournal.com]

Cool stuff, congrats.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

I just printed the article, and haven't read it yet, but the first bit I read (forgot why), sparked a question in my head...

Oh yeah... I've known you since kindergarten, and I know you do all these art things (and have been way more successful at such projects than I'll ever be), and yet I don't particularly see you as "an artist"...

Do you? How do you see yourself in relation to your projects? As an artist? A Hacker? An Engineer? A Coder? Designer? Developer? Theorist? All of these? None? What sort of mix of these do you see yourself if any of these apply?

I don't know why I don't see you as an artist, because you DO make art and are internationally recognized, really... but yet... Maybe because you don't really fit the stereotype, to me? I dunno. It's just an interesting thing... I'm not trying at all to say what you do isn't art, but just that my perceptions through the years don't lead me to see you as an artist (even though you had Art all through school)

[vesicular.livejournal.com]

I guess I just see myself as someone who likes to play with things. In my head from time to time I have ideas of things that usually start with "What if..?". What if I took a ROM music file and changed the hex values in it? Would it still play? What would it sound like?

They're just random thoughts, and sometimes I'll actually try it and it'll turn into something I'd like to share with people. I don't go into any of them thinking that they need to have deep artistic merrit or social relevance. I learned a long time ago that I just need to do what I find interesting, and if others like it then cool, if not, oh well.

That doesn't mean that in someone else's mind they don't see something that's larger than what I originally intended. Take my arcade cabinet. I just wanted to make a cabinet to play games. Steve Dietz (the curator for the show I was in) saw it as a proof-of-concept on how to properly archive digital media (which technically it is as well), and decided to fund the project.

Similar to ROM Color. I just wanted to expand on what Ben Fry did and see what the entire contents of an NES cart looked like, instead of just the sprites. Domenico at Digimag made the comparison of the work to Warhol, which I feel slightly uncomfortable with, but in some ways has merit. It's POP art with video games. I've never looked at it as such, but it's interesting to see people draw their own parallels to art concepts in the work I've done.

I think there's two things at work here on how you view me in relation to art and artists. One, you've known me forever, so I think it's hard for me to become anything different than myself. For example, if Tony were to become a famous rock star in Droids, I would never think of him as famous or a rock star, just as Tony.

Two, is the stereotypical bit, which I would say doesn't fit me either. Mainly because I'm an analytical and fact based person, and not conceptual or anything. But I think you'd be surprised how many artists don't fit the stereotype. That's not to say I want to be labeled as one, but I have no problem with others interpreting what I've done in thier own way, if they find merrit in it. I actually encourage it, whether it be understanding it as "art" or wanting to understand the code behind it. It's the one way that I know I'm different than the stereotype, I'm not guarded in my secrets of how I made things, and I'm not pretending to change the world with my work. I just do it because I find it fun.