Cory Arcangel: Beat the Champ

10 Feb-22 May 2011

Overview

Brooklyn-based Cory Arcangel is one of the leading media artists of his generation. He often appropriates, manipulates and subverts new media, including video games, computer software and the internet. Arcangel's project for The Curve, a co-commission with Whitney Museum of American Art, is an installation featuring 14 bowling video games from the 1970s to the 2000s. Using custom manufactured electronics, Arcangel has hacked each unit to play a loop of a game in which the bowler fails to score. Presented chronologically, the games collectively create a collage of sound from the abstract static of Atari to Nintendo's bleeps and bloops to the more realistic simulation of bowling sounds of recent PlayStation consoles. Arcangel also displays the video game console themselves, each with a small computer chip attached, flickering at one end of the darkened gallery.