RESET/PLAY in Austin

RESET/PLAY
September 6 – November 2, 2008

Cory Arcangel
Beat the Champ (Sega Genesis Championship Bowling: Dana), 2008
installation with hacked Sega Genesis game controller
dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery, New York, NY

The video game as a medium and a style of life has reached its middle age along with the first generation of people who grew up playing them. The non-linear, interactive, processor based narratives, which at first mimicked Hollywood and struggled to convey their simple content with 8-bit processors, gradually became the largest entertainment industry in the history of electronic media. RESET/PLAY is an exhibition attempting a critical exploration of contemporary art inspired by video games. Questioning the history, control mechanisms, political and art-historical implications of electronic games, RESET/PLAY assembles a formidable group of international artists who made a significant impact on this growing post-game artistic sub-genre. Artists include Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, Mike Beradino, Brody Condon, Alex Galloway, JODI, Guthrie Lonergan, Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Michael Smith, Eddo Stern and Keita Takahashi.

Brody Condon
Judgment Modification (After Memling), 2008
self-playing video game
Courtesy of the artist and Virgil de Voldère Gallery, New York, NY

Talking Art with RESET/PLAY guest curators Marcin Ramocki and Paul Slocum

Saturday, September 6, 3:00 pm

RESET/PLAY is organized for Arthouse by guest curators Marcin Ramocki and Paul Slocum, both of whom are practicing media artists who also run independent spaces in Brooklyn and Dallas, respectively, that focus on media art. The exhibition will be accompanied by an 8-bit music and film festival co-organized by the Austin Museum of Digital Art.

"BITMAP: as good as new" & "8 BIT" in Philly, Thursday June 26th

"B I T M A P: as good as new" is proud to feature:

Cory Arcangel, Lee Arnold, Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Christine Gedeon, Kimberley Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI, Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, Jim Punk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and CJ Yeh.

The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery
Drexel University
33 and Market St.
Philadelphia PA 19104
215 895 2548

Opening reception:
Thursday, June 26th, 5-7pm + special screening of "8 BIT" @ 4 pm.

please note the reception/screening is not on the first day of the exhibition.

Wall Street Journal: Andrew Lavallee about blogs and art

Today's Wall Street Journal contains an article by Andrew Lavallee featuring works by Guthrie Lonergan, Marcin Ramocki, Paul Slocum, Cory Arcangel, Marisa Olson and commentaries by Lauren Cornell and Paddy Johnson. Check it out on the front of the Marketplace print section (also running in our Europe and Asia editions) and online.

image: Guthrie Lonergan, "Internet Group Shot"

B I T M A P opening

"B I T M A P: as good as new" opened last night with 31 artists from 12 countries, well over 40 playback devices and amazing house-chiptune performance by xik. vertexList is still recovering from this unprecedented 4 day long installation:)


Thanks to the awesome art, NY Times, free wine hunters and Thanksgiving we had somewhere around 400 visitors.



xik doing his set : 2 modified NES, laptop and a mixer.


Performance audience... yes, it was rather packed! I can't wait to see the Blip crowd!



Glomag, Bit Shifter and xik.

We are working on a little online catalogue of the show, stay tuned!

"Two Keystoned Projectors" by Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel's new piece exhibited at Galerie Guy Bartschi in Geneva is perhaps my second favorite of Cory's work (after the Nintendo Clouds). It is basically two projectors used as light sources, keystoned and partially superimposed.

Somehow Cory manages to reference the "materiality" of a projection, and produce an image which exists both as light and picture... The image projected originates from the inner workings of the gear itself, but the gesture of mixing light areas goes beyond modernist "structural", medium-self-referential work and becomes poetry at its best.. The fact of placing the projectors in the path of gallery visitors declares that it is the light beam which is the content of the installation.

This work is about the projector as medium, its technological limits, spatial geometry and light as a sculptural material. And of course the fine memory of minimalist art from the 60's;)

I would put the "Screen Burn" piece into the same category of sculptures about the presence and impact of light filtered through technological devices. These pieces are different from all previous works, a shift from punk DIY to definite philosophical exercises, much more sophisticated than Nintendo hacks and way more interesting than the "subtractions, modifications, addenda, and other recent contributions to participatory culture"

It is fun to see an artist open up a whole new area of thinking and research in his work... there has been a lot of discussion about Cory's post video-game work both on and off-line, lots of (sometimes loving and sometimes harsh) peer scrutiny ... as far as I am concerned "Two Keystoned Projectors" is FUCKING awesome (and this is the official art-critical terminology).

Paul Slocum and Cory Arcangel perform at vertexList

Paul Slocum and Cory Arcangel (two artists featured in 8 BIT) performed last saturday at vertexList. Paul was opening his first NY solo show in conjunction with Rhizome 10th anniversary party. And indeed a party it was!

Cory played glockenspiel parts he added to Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" (which was funny as hell for those who figured out what was going on, and an interesting pairing with Paul's "Last Chair")


Paul Slocum played some old and some new Commodore 64 pieces; it was amazing stuff and some folks started dancing (which was not easy considerning the room was absolutely full). The music was as usual accompanied by
8 BIT syle demos.