Soviet Unterzögersdorf. The Adventure Game. Sector 1.

Exhibition Opening:
August 5, 2005.

Exhibition:
August 5, 2005 – September 14, 2005.

Forum Stadtpark, Stadtpark 1, A-8010 Graz, Austria.

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Exhibition?

In the past years we have been witness to the take-over of computer game logic in museums and exhibitions everywhere. The infrastructure has changed completely: ethernet and plug sockets have become a necessity, exhibition spaces have darkened and museum staff have become system administrators. Works of art can suddenly «crash», and above all visitors are constantly asked to do something somewhere and be interactive. These are all massive interventions with the schedule and movements of the art viewer, who is no longer able (as in the decades before) to ponder quietly, flexibly and with an unlimited amount of time upon his/her thoughts and perceptions, but instead has to costantly be a player or «art user».
Can an art form devoid of any historical awareness persist? These days programmes that were being used for every day entertainment 25 years ago are just as forgotten as the computers and game consoles they were run on. The compatibility of formats used on up-to-date PCs and an old Amiga is comparable to that of a VHS tape and an old film projector.
The current generation of players and game developers only knows about earlier products from stories of older colleagues. This could explain the popularity of one-dimensional, action-orientated structures of narration such as those used «Tomb Raider», which developed during the second half of the nineties. The principal of skilled movements and fast shots is the same as the one being used in «spacewar», a game programmed for a giant computer system by students working at MIT in 1961.

(According to Claus Pias)