(Above) Cao Fei's COSplayers is part of an expansive show to start 2010 at FACT
Exhibition: Space Invaders: Art and the Video Game Environment, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), Liverpool, until February 21 2010
When Bill Viola was looking for inspiration for The Night Journey, his art project placing the viewer on a mystic journey towards enlightenment, he looked to the spiritual heights – Islamic and Spanish poets from the 13th and 16th centuries, an 18th century Zen Buddhist poet and Plotinus, a 3rd century philosopher.
Most respondents to YouTube footage of the renowned video artist’s collaboration with gaming giants Electronic Arts found the Blair Witch-style black and white digital footage faintly creepy, but it’s entirely in keeping with a packed show launching a season of computer game-based exhibitions at FACT.
The Night Journey, Bill Viola's meditative trip into ancient mysticism. USC Game Innovation Lab
The joystick fiddlers will probably favour What it is Without the Hand That Wields it, Riley Harmon’s war-based “sculptural installation” squirting fake blood onto a wall every time players notch a virtual kill, ahead of Viola’s meditative path, passing a variety of retro games cabinets including a giant Nintendo controller on their way in.
Rider Spoke is an entirely more physical proposition, inviting cyclists to pitch up, don a wi-fi headset and be led through the city streets by a soothing voice. In return they are invited to recount the sights and sounds they encounter on their lycra-clad journey.
American artist Riley Harmon's What it is Without the Hand That Wields it creates "a physical manifestation of virtual kills". rileyharmon.com
This version is specially commissioned for the surrounding Liverpudlian delights, previous incarnations having visited locations as exotic as the Brighton Festival and Australia since pedalling off at the Barbican in 2007.
Elsewhere, installations step outside the box to reflect on the politics and culture of games themselves.
Blast Theory's Rider Spoke
Acclaimed young Chinese artist Cao Fei reveals the East Asian subculture of arcade game role-playing in real life, and Ubermorgen’s Chinese Gold goes inside oriental sweatshops to expose how the consequences of producing World of Warcraft can be even more dangerous than the bad skin and demolished social lives prevalent in the western adolescents obsessed by it.
Michael Pelletier’s CuteXDoom II also promises to replace vicious console violence with all things “super-cute”, and Michael Johansson diagnoses himself with “Tetris Syndrome”, visualising the haunting alignment of blocks from the game in everyday objects.
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