Super Mario’s Crisis

Artkrush, the online arts magazine, published a new issue today, about digital art. I find myself asking… is this art? The magazine’s editorial tone seems painfully aware of that question:

While the phrase “digital art” used to evoke thoughts of cheesy Photoshopped dreamscapes and clunky animated GIF graphics, it now applies to an ever-expanding, sophisticated field of interactive web projects, mutated video games, and hacktivist interventions.

Confounding critics who have sounded the death knell throughout its development, Net art has continued to thrive as a conceptual medium for artists and arts organizations.

I decided to side with my personaly interest (bias?), to ignore these “confounded critics” and look for myself, to see whether I liked any of this art.

What do you think?

The work of Cory Archangel intrigued me. Admittedly, at first, I didn’t want it to. Cory Archangel makes a pastiche of images from early video games. Hacking as collage, interesting… The artist describes the project.

The projects working title is called “Mario Movie” it is a secret project by myself, Ben Jones, Jessica Ciocci, and Jacob Ciocci (Paper Rad). I’m doin the programming and paper rad is gonna do set design and screenplay!!!! (were gonna do it all over email, of course….) Also maybe there will be some special guest appearances by ???????. cool. it is a hacked 8bit Super Mario Brothers 1 cartridge. i will hack the game cartridge and totally reprogram it… so when you put in THIS cartridge, instead of the game, you are presented with a 15 minute movie using all original graphics from the game [without actually altering the original factory soldered grahics ROM]. This is similar to my cloud cartridge, but 40 times as awesome. The movie is gonna be about how Mario’s world is falling apart. Like mad max, but in 8bits. Picture title screens, messed up fantasy worlds, castles floating on rainbow colored 8bit clouds, waterfalls, underwater dungeon nightmare rave scapes, dance parties, floating / mushrooms level scenes, Mario alone on a cloud crying, fireball flicker patterns, and video synth knitted 60 frames per second seizure vidz. Each scene will also have music. & All being generated by this one 32k 1984 cartridge!!!!!!!!!!! basically it is mario brothers totally rearranged into this amazing impossible 8bit world….

The end result is an installation, where the central feature of the space is that movie.