Videogame art exhibit in LA

[o2william]

hopefully this hasn't been posted before; I searched but didn't find it.

A friend just sent me a link to this Wired News article (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67251,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3) about a new art exhibit at Los Angeles' Gallery 1988. A group of over 100 artists created works inspired by '80s videogames. The name of the exhibit is "i am 8-bit."

Pretty neat stuff. Here's a link to the exhibit's web site (http://www.iam8bit.net/).

[I Am Humanoid]

That is GREAT stuff. The gallery has some great classic gaming art!!! Seth is playing tonight at the opening reception too.Too bad it's in L.A. - Ooooh look! - Gerardo is the host! Too bad I can't go. I just got a new man purse and I could have shown it off to Gerardo and *his* crew.... @_@

Yeah, right.

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Cool!!, i just love that Excite bike art...

[blissfulnoise]

I don't know about this exhibit. It doesn't help that I tend to lean more towards the inherent beauty in art. (Which doesn't mean pretty just flowers and landscapes. Beauty in art can even be found in Bacon's pieces.) And I just don't see anything "beautiful" in any of these works.

They look as though video games were an afterthought to the piece (Pac-Man... IN SPACE! :P ). There's nothing inspiring here, just a vague attempt to meet a theme requirement... Just like most of our papers in 10th grade English class.

I've actually seen at least two of those pieces in other places. And I've seen the Excitebike image as a Lego project somewhere else.

Granted there are only eight or so samples up out of a gallery of 100 pieces so my conclusion may be premature. But from what I've seen, it looks like a waste of time.

It's also bad form on their flash animation. It's all Atari sprites / mockups but it's "I am 8-bit"?

In short, this thing misses the point and sets back the video games as art argument. One critics opinion...

[Kilik Kurosawa]

these shows always remind me of Thomas Kincaid, but for gamers. I agree with the above post its neat for the niche audience it serves, but no real artistic value to be found.

[Jorpho]

I am suddenly reminded of the artist who thought it would be cool to take dialog boxes (like Netscape's Preferences, as I recall), distort the images, and call it art. Strange.

[NESaholic]

That is very cool indeed, i like the 3d lego kinda style.
It would be great to have one of those.

[nildem]

That looks rather interesting. Something to checkout while I'm in LA for E3.