An 8-bit Moment in Gameplay: [giantJoystick] - Mary Flanagan :: Exhibition: February 4 - March 17, 2008 :: Reception: February 14, 6 - 8 pm :: Gallery at Calit2, Atkinson Hall, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA.

On February 4, the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will launch the 2008 program of its new Gallery at Calit2, an art-meets-technology space on the first floor of Atkinson Hall on the La Jolla campus. The art showcase reflects the nexus of innovation implicit in Calit2’s vision, and advances the understanding and appreciation of the dynamic interplay among art, science and technology.

The first exhibit in the space, An 8-bit Moment in Gameplay: [giantJoystick] will run through March 17. The play sculpture is a working, large-scale game interface designed for collaborative play, by artist and media theorist Mary Flanagan.

Video games have been around for over forty years, and have redefined our reality with classics such as “Pac-Man”, “Asteroids”, “Centipede” and “Missile Command”. As video game consoles, which offered low-resolution graphics known as 8-bit, were introduced in the 1970s. But it wasn’t until the early 1980s that they became wildly popular, moving 8-bit graphics from the arcade into the home with the Atari 2600 game console. That console featured a distinctive joystick, and Flanagan takes visitors back to the seminal period by turning the Atari joystick into a super-sized work of art that she considers a form of social sculpture.

Flanagan investigates everyday technologies through critical writing, artwork, and activist design projects. “Mary Flanagan makes art and popular culture become one, following in the tradition of pop art,” said Ricardo Dominguez, a visual arts professor and member of the Gallery at Calit2 programming committee. “She also explores the aesthetics of gameplay, which today has extended beyond video games to influence media and culture at large.”

An interview with the artist about [giantJoystick] can be viewed online [Quicktime only].

Calit2 is a partnership between UC San Diego and UC Irvine, and houses over 1,000 researchers organized around more than 50 projects on the future of telecommunications and information technology and how these technologies will transform a range of applications important to the economy and citizens’ quality of life. The institute has integrated new media arts into its cross-disciplinary agenda.

Mary Flanagan investigates everyday technologies through critical writing, artwork, and activist design projects. Flanagan’s work has been exhibited internationally at museums, festivals, and galleries, including: the Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum of American Art, SIGGRAPH, The Banff Centre, Central Fine Arts Gallery NY, Artists Space NY, the University of Arizona, University of Colorado-Boulder, as well as venues in Brazil, France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Flanagan holds MFA and MA degrees from the University of Iowa, a BA in Film from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in Computational Media focusing on activist game design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UK. She teaches in the Integrated Media Arts MFA program in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, NYC. Her research group and laboratory in New York is called TiltFactor, a lab focused on the design of activists and socially-conscious software.

For more information about the Gallery at Calit2 and the [giantJoystick] exhibit, contact Gallery Coordinator Eduardo Navas at enavas[at]ucsd.edu.