It’s no surprise that Jay Hoffman writing about The Analog Web caught my eye, not for nostalgia, but something that circles forward. I’ve been following Jays History of the Web writing since, well I can’t remember when, and am pleased to see he has gotten federated. Of many points I could grab as a Gardner […]
This web exhibit centering on the tragic story of Teena Brandon was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum a year before Brandon’s story was popularized in the movie Boys Don’t Cry
Keith Bunting and Kayle Brandon’s project challenged ideas of boundary crossing in the physical world (supposedly made freer by formation of the European Union) as well as the online world (supposedly made freer by open, global access). But this freedom is not equitable, it comes with social and economic privilege, and not for activists or those seeking asylum.
A project conceived by Engineering PhD students Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki at Trinity University (Dublin), UMBRELLA.net experimented early with networks operating with real objects that changed based on proximity to other similar objects.
The umbrellas, connected via Bluetooth and what was then miniature PCs, and thus become a public performance art
Natalie Bookchin created this interpretation of Jorge Luis Borges story The Intruder (1966) —
 a grim tale of prostitution, fraternal jealousy, and violence against women in which two brothers fall in love with the same woman, share her, and sell her to a brothel. The narrative ends with the woman’s murder and the brothers’ reconciliation.
Technologies: ART EEPROM burner, DASM 6502 BSD, data projectors, NBASIC BSD, Nintendo Entertainment System, RockNES, Super Mario Brothers Nintendo cartridge, video distributor
Current URL: http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/SuperMarioClouds
Wikibook Chapter: https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Cory+Arcangel
Not a web-based art form, but yet a compelling example of hacking a console game, Super Mario Clouds presents an example of creation by deletion.
It’s just clouds scrolling by, WTF? But check out what Cory Archangel did to make it
To make Super Mario Clouds, Arcangel hacked Super Mario Brothers, a classic video game that made its debut in 1985. He replaced the program chip from an old Nintendo Entertainment System game cartridge with a new chip that he programmed himself (by borrowing code he found on computer hobby scene Web sites) to erase everything in the original game except the clouds.
Just look at the jagged cuts to get to the chip, and the masking tape labels!
I cannot speak much to the artistic references in the book chapter:
Arcangel’s process of visual subtraction evokes Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), in which the artist famously erased a composition by Willem de Kooning to create a new work of art. Super Mario Clouds suggests a similar sensibility, simultaneously conveying a stripped-down aesthetic and a rebellious, bad-boy attitude that challenges conventional notions of artistic integrity and authenticity.
but the notion of creation by deletion is intriguing for the way it runs 180 degrees to our assumption of what creativity means- making stuff, right? But look at Austin Kleon’s Blackout Poetry– its not just haphazard erasing to make a poem from existing works by erasing portions (maybe easier than hacking a NIntendo cartridge).
While many new media artists fetishize emerging technologies, Arcangel eschews the graphic realism of contemporary game titles like Grand Theft Auto, celebrating instead the crude “dirt style” imagery of early video games
The same might be said today about the environment of Minecraft (which spawns in the world and derivatives elsewhere).
Cory Arcangel provides a detailed illustrated guide to his hack — like
The first thing you will need to get is an original Super Mario Brothers cartridge. Not a “Duck Hunt+Mario Brothers” cartridge, but just a plain old Super Mario Brothers cartridge. Next you should unscrew the plastic back on the cartridge, and inside you will see a circuit board like the one you see below. There are two chips on this board. The CHR chip, and the PRG chip. We are interested in the PRG chip for this project. Also please make sure the cartridge says NES-NROM-01 (01-05 in also fine). This let`s us know it is a 32k Nintendo circut board.
And in a modern spirt, also shares via github the code he used to modify the game.
Even more timely or i time, in reference to the GIF above:
when I originally posted this on the Internet in 02, the web wasn’t actually able to contain video (it sounds funny now, but remember youtube didn’t start making waves till like 05ish??), therefore I made a gif of the video. Of the gazillion bootlegs of this project, most are from this gif.
What’s a video game without the character, action, and scenery? Dreamy?
The LAST thing I should be doing now is tossing out another unpaid project to work on, but oh well, I cannot help myself. cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine I was in Cambridge MA in 2010 for a meeting, and visited the MIT Press bookstore where I got […]
In an era of privacy paranoia, government spying on its own citizens, identity theft as a familiar problem, the idea behind Life Sharing may be more radical today.
Was this such a naive time? Maybe less titillating, Life Sharing creators Eva and Franco Mattes went far beyond the voyeuristic camera eye view into student Jennifer Ringely who launched JenniCam in 1996, posting regular still images every 3 seconds to the web, stopping in 2003.
Revisiting the early net art… where are they now? This is what I hope to do here.
35 web art sites from the 1990s and early 2000s- HTML, perl, flash, shockwave, wired plants, linux radio… from 0100101110101101.org to Jodi to RSG to Torolab, I will explore each site, or what remains of it, in a new post.
