I went to see the premiere of “8 Bit” at the MoMA. It’s a movie about videogame art, starting from the early days of computing and arcade games. I was particularly pleased to see artists such as Bodenstandig 2000, Bubblyfish and Glomag in the film, especially since I’d seen some of them perform recently!
Cory Arcangel’s modified Nintendo cartridges are particularly amusing, especially the piece called “Clouds“. It consists of a “Super Mario Bros.” game cartridge, from which he has removed everything except the clouds. What was previously a frantic & noisy game becomes a serene, surreal sequence of cartoon clouds moving silently across the screen. As Rui pointed out, it is also a bridge to the exotic subculture of circuitbending.
This is the first documentary I have seen on the subject of art created from video games, but it appears that there is actually a thriving cultural & academic scene devoted to its study: the film featured speakers from universities and research centers in the US, France & Germany.