I keep the night as a vigil. The hours slowly strip away the company of friends, of family… of reality. The practice carries the air of worship. One remains at their post, repeats the same narrow trail and each time, without fail… ends up lost, as though the same familiar forest reveals some new clearance. Here, more than any other hour, I can learn the weight of small decisions. The ego, so eager to arrange the outward, loosens its grip and allows the inward a path forward.
Game Theory's artistic study examined the visual language of mid-1980s to mid-1990s 2D video game culture, with particular focus on original Nintendo titles and early MS-DOS games such as Contra, Golden Axe and Lemmings. Emphasis was placed on the side-scrolling perspective, primitive pixel art, tiled environments, and the technical limitations that shaped the aesthetic identity of that era. The study materials also explored the relationship between these games and youth culture of the period; revisiting Harmony Korine's Gummo, the pirate floppy-disk culture of the era and HEX 00816; a nod to MS Dos Green. I made an effort in pitting the illusion of permanence common to adolescence; that ignorant disregard for health every kid had back then…against a backdrop of men walking towards their deaths. The flattened 2D world, at least to me, is a kind of compressed memory of that era. An attempt to preserve artefacts from an era I was once convinced would never end.
Click any artwork below to view on OpenSea
Each of the 4 remaining Vigils will be released in short order. Below are analog glitch previews of each of these works; each distorted until revealed.
The Next Vigil is: “Addagio”.
