Play on

The museum trade got very excited by PokemonGo. The British Museum even claimed that hordes of Pokemon searchers rushing through its doors constituted an exciting ‘increase in visitor numbers’ (#deluded). Meanwhile at the Dowse the staff noticed a mass of players in the square outside their building. Turns out it was a major PokeStop and day (and night) groups of players were scurrying about trying to catch Pokemon. With a rainy weekend coming up recently the Dowse figured it needed to take some action as power hungry players coming in to recharge their phones were blocking up the entrance. In place of the usual  DO NOT sign they went for let’s-help-out option. Extension cords offered power outlets on the forecourt and the WiFi levels were pumped up so play could continue.

Hidden truths

Existential game maker Pippin Barr has dipped back into the art world, this time visiting Marfa, the Texas HQ of Donald Judd’s enterprises. The game is VR2 (you can catch VR1 based on Gregor Schneider's Ur House here) explores Judd’s greatest installation 100 untitled works in mill aluminum and asks you to believe that each cube, in fact, contains an object ranging from a fountain of glowing particles to the model of a horse. How hard can it be to believe that these hidden tokens actually exist? It was a challenge for David Rudin so find out for yourself as you wander through the two halls of sculptures. As we’ve all come to believe that Judd didn’t have to actually make his work for it to be his art, surely…..
 
You can download VR2 or play it on your browser via Pippin's website

Bang on

We are going to be in the US and Canada for a few weeks so posting may be intermittent. In the meantime here is a link to digital game artist Pippin Barr’s latest work A series of gunshots. It’s not hard to play but has a real punch to it. You can read a rave review here on Boingboing. #parents

Missing

Pippin Barr’s latest look at the art world via games is in 3D. It takes off from the FBI National stolen art file (worth a look in its own right) and where stolen art might not be found even if you found it. You can move around The stolen art gallery by going here and read some background on the game here. Maybe, while you're inside you could even try to nick one of the labels when no-one’s looking.

Reflecting on art games

If you follow Pippin Barr’s games (and we do) you’ll be interested in this post on his web site. Pippin had an exhibition of prints made from screen grabs of his games late last year. They looked pretty sharp when we saw them at Andrew Baker’s Gallery in Brisbane but for an artist who’d chosen interactivity as his platform, the static nature of the prints obviously left him uneasy. Pippin takes up the story -

“When I went to the exhibition in December 2014 I had the very odd experience of confronting a game (such as the Prometheus scene) remediated as a screenshot remediated as an artwork framed and behind glass on a wall. That was interesting to me because it’s such a strange direction for a game to go in: from movement to stillness, from interactivity to passivity, from jokey meme to official art-on-wall, etc. I actually had a bit of difficulty thinking about the exhibition and my relationship to it, frankly, because of that odd remediation going on. (Although of course the games themselves were on display too.)
 
So an obvious way to react to this, in my book at least, was to re-remediate the game-as-painting back into a game. I’d taken photographs of the various prints in the show and chose to turn the photo of the Prometheus scene back into the Prometheus scene game. Such that it goes from static photograph of framed print back over to playable game. To complete the strange feeling of standing in front of an “art” I slaved over getting a webcam “reflection” of the player in the “glass” covering the game. So you end up with an attempt to meld the two ideas – it’s still framed and on a wall and “art”, but it’s also a weird playable game.”
 
And so it is. You look at the image of the print and via the game you are reflected through your computer’s camera and are able to play the game in the print (this is where in the old days you would put a couple of exclamation marks). Read more here and if you want to try it out go here.

Living the dream

The mega game Minecraft allows you to create worlds using simple (well not so simple these days) building blocks, sort of like LEGO online (#sorrytoeveryonewhoplaysforthatgrossgeneralisation). Tate has used the Minecraft platform to deliver the holy grail of every art educator: a 3D walk through paintings. You can get the links here at Tate and mine away this Saturday.

Images: top left, The Pool of London painted by André Derain in 1906 and right, in its Minecraft version. Bottom, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson’s 1920 painting The Soul of the Soulless City (New York - an Abstraction) and right in Minecraft

The sound of one mind counting

Here’s a chance to while away Saturday, and maybe Sunday too, quietly separating the rice from the sesame seeds. This game was made by Pippin Barr in collaboration with Marina Abramovic to support the funding of her Institute the MAI

Snap happy

There's hardly any need to beat the why-no-photography drum in art museums anymore. Slowly but surely they're accepting the inevitable and releasing their collections to snap-happy visitors. In places like the Dowse there's still the familiar camera shape there in the dos and don’ts signage but now it’s as a do, as in, do feel free to take a photo.

A bit late to the game is this…er…game. It’s a two-player (you can be either a photographer or a security guard) that let’s you outwit guards as you snap stuff you're not supposed to. And yes ,you can use your flash to blind the guard for a quick getaway. It’s not quite on the market but if you like reading lots of instructions, you can see how it works here.

Time to play

So you build a game that lets players enter the Museum of Modern Art in New York and join a line to sit opposite Marina Abramovic. In a serious nod to the real world, you only allow the game to be played when the Museum is open in real time. No playing on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day, after hours or on Tuesdays when the MoMA is closed. What happens though when MoMA changes its opening hours to every day of the week? Do you change the hours for the game or leave them as they are as a bit of history?

While you are pondering this existential question, along with the game’s creator Pippin Barr and at least one bemused player, you might like to visit the games he made in collaboration with Marina Abramovic. They are now available here, and you can play them any damn time you like.

Image: top the mineral tablet room in the virtual MAI and bottom Marina Abramovic's mineral tablets spotted on a very wet day in Tachikawa, Tokyo (the same set that was used to model the virtual set #insider knowledge)

Tunnel vision

In terms of strange-looking architecture a nine or ten storey rusting monolith takes some beating. When we got to the front door it turns out to be a huge gaming centre with the exterior replicating rusting steel and the entire interior designed to give the effect of being inside a first person shooter game. The centrepiece is an elaborate (although somewhat overwrought) recreation of the walled city of old Kowloon in Hong Kong complete with washing lines, rickety staircases, neon and grime. It's amazing how quickly this environment captures and convinces you and no more so than on leaving. After carefully picking your way across stepping stones in a pool of lurid green liquid, doors slide open and you are abruptly dumped out into a car park. A real world car park in Kawaksaki, Tokyo, that is.

Spot on

Now you can have Damien by your side every waking hour. The new free iPhone app Dots lets you muck around with Hirst-like colour combos and, you guessed it, join the dots. The Hirst lookalike has been a hit on the app store with a million copies downloaded in its first week out in the world. The game itself is Tetris meets um…join the dots. Any dots joined at right angles vanish and your score goes up.

Ceci n'est pas un video game

LEGO artists no longer have the monopoly on reproducing artworks in their games and entertainments. We've already posted on the art galleries on Second Life but how about these Super Mario / Magritte mash ups? Mix Koopa (the turtle) Troopa with René Magritte’s Unexpected answer 1933 or Mario nemesis Bullet Bill with  Magritte’s famous 1938 painting Time transfixed or even the artist's name Racoonda for Magritte’s signature work Golconda of 1953.
 
Regrettably these images haven’t made it into their own game yet and are simply stored on Tumblr but if they did, watch out for Super Mario's lawyers to step in.

Son shine

If you’re a parent or happen to be someone’s child and don’t need to hear about how amazing someone else’s is, you might want to skip this post and come back tomorrow.

Regular readers will already know that Pippin Barr #son made a game based on performance artist Marina Abramovic’s famous work at MoMA. His game like her work was called The artist is present and released on the internet. Abramovic played it (never got to sit with herself for those who've been there) and got in touch with Pippin. They spent some time together in Toronto during the opening of the opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic and talked about a collaboration. 

Now Pippin is making games as part of the rewards on a just launched Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds for the Marina Abramovic Institute. For a $5 donation you will be able to enter a virtual Institute and play three games inspired by her performances. The games based on the titles of Abramovic performances still manage to have a definite Pippin Barr ring to their titles: a rice counting exercise, stepping on grass, and complaining to a tree. The digital version of the Institute will open soon, but in the meantime you can visit it on Kickstarter and read more about the Institute here.

Showing off on Saturday

Some of you may recall and perhaps even played Pippin Barr’s game based on the Marina Abramović survey exhibition at MoMA The artist is present. It turns out you were not alone. The other day Pippin got an email from Abramović saying she had played the game but lost her place in the queue when she left her computer to make lunch. She summed up the experience, “so I never got to sit with myself”. Now, following a meet on Skype, she and Pippin are going to collaborate on some more games. If you find that impressive, join the queue.

Pippin Barr’s Art game.

The Art game (review here by Huff Post) puts you in a studio ready to make work for inclusion in a big museum show. It also comes complete with a picky curator and an audience not shy of making their opinions known. Can you get your work into the show? How will it be received? Will you get the sort of recognition you deserve? Only one way to find out. Play it here.

Game boy

Our all time favourite art game maker Pippin Barr is in the middle of a new epic. This time you get to be an artist. The game is in testing at the moment but will put up the link when it leaves the studio.

Not so lookalike

The history of artists writing inscriptions on their paintings is well established in New Zealand and never more needed than on the streets of Dunedin. A OTN badge for the first reader to identify which one of the two figures in this Ivan Hill painting is Justin Paton.

The game maker is present

You may remember the why-shoot-at-things-when-you-can stand-in-a-queue-for-five-hours computer game based on Marina Abromovich’s performance. The artist is present caused an internet buzz resulting in around 150,000 people joining the virtual queue to sit with virtual Marina in its first month. Now, as part of the increasing interest art museums are showing in digital based work, Pippin Barr (did we ever mention that he is our son? Possibly) has been invited to join a two-day symposium and to talk about his game at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. You can check out the other panellists and details here.

Image: MoMA is closed. The artist is only present during the museum’s opening hours.

But wait, there’s more

It is the tradition of the great newspapers of the world to champion the rights of the oppressed, maintain a close vigil on the political and expound directions for the future. Blogs are somewhat different choosing instead to offer instant opinions, prod institutional power, advocate the importance of cuteness in cats and shamelessly promote those near and dear to them.

In this spirit we must tell you our son Pippin's book How to play a video game has just been published and is in bookshops now (or near as dammit). This means that the perfect Christmas gift has appeared right before your eyes. 

For everyone who was left behind when the PlayStation controller hit the scene as well as those who despair of their partners, parents or work mates ever understanding the joy of gaming, this is the book for them and this is the book for you. 

… don’t just take our word for it:

‘A fabulous insight into how video games work’

Simon Morton

‘Passionate, insightful and full of easy charm, this smart, informative, funny guide to the gaming world is a great read for ardent fans, the uninitiated and sceptics alike’

Derek Lockwood, Worldwide Director of Design, Saatchi & Saatchi

‘Pippin Barr is an emissary from the flourishing civilisation of video games. His book is the perfect introduction to a global movement becoming ever more influential and all-consuming’

Toby Laing, trumpeter, Fat Freddy’s Drop

Second life

Who would have thought that a independent Sierra-style game based on a performance art work would be downloaded by over 90,000 people worldwide? And all so they could virtually queue up for hours on end to sit opposite an eight-bit Marina? And yet that’s what has happened to Pippin Barr's game The artist is present. There have also been hundreds of blog posts, tweets (including one from the big MoMA herself) and stories in the Village Voice, Der Spiegel, Slate and The Huffington Post. The opportunity for a second life for exhibitions on the internet will come with its own questions, but clearly there's potential there. Game on.
Image: the end of the line, a virtual visitor gets to be present with Marina Abramovic. 
You can see a week of the game site download stats here