Fission Mailed: The Art of Gaming

As an increasingly ubiquitous entertainment medium, videogaming commands our attention in the form of intense, often obsessive patterns of engagement. But can the other-worldly, utopic/ dystopic experiences of videogames provide authentic experiences of art?

29 Jun 2014, 4pm - 10pm

Free entry

FISSION MAILED  is a one day interactive exhibition at The White Building in association with retrotainment specialist REZtron and CRATE brewery exploring the evolution and creativity of video games and its parallel adoption as an artistic medium. The pop-up exhibition showcases the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the most iconic (and underrated) games ever produced such as Asteroids, Panzer Dragoon, Ikaruga, Rez, Shenmue and Cosmic Smash to name but a few. Alongside these there will also be classic multi-player games open to the public to try out such as Micro Machines, Bomberman, Sonic 2 and Street Fighter II.

Juxtaposed with these iconic and popular games, a parallel history of gaming will unfold through the practices of artists and indie game developers who provide a more pluralistic and subversive approach to exposing the darker underbelly of the gaming industry both past, present and future. Work by some of the most progressive and responsive game developers will be showcased, including work by Anna Anthropy, Merritt Kopas, Ben Eposito and Sophie Houlden.

Video games are an increasingly prevalent and expressive medium within today’s society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the gaming realm has attracted a range of critical and artistic responses. Artists are designing or adapting video games to comment on politics, art, and games themselves. As a mash-up of “traditional” art strategies:  figurative representation, linear and non-linear narrative, sculpture, sound design, and cinematography, the medium of video games offers artists an increasingly compelling means of engaging with a different range of publics. Importantly, the involvement of artistic critical response to the socio-political conditions surrounding the actual production of mainstream gaming has fuelled wider critical discussions about the gaming industry’s role in society itself.