Addicted to Nintendo? PlayStation lover? Then watch these images, from the systemic study of video games induced diseases, and fear the future!
This ongoing collaborative project by IOCOSE and Matteo Bittanti investigates the scenarios imagined by several “scientific” studies conducted in the last two decades which warned against the horrors and dangers of digital gaming. It presents a "what if" scenario in which techno-pathologies and physical deformities allegedly caused by an excessive use of digital games are presented as “real”. The conspiratorial element, which informs the vast majority of “news” we consume on a daily basis, is one of the key ingredients.
And surely “Game Arthritis” is also a pun. The title itself mocks the ongoing debates on the artistic value of digital gaming, which resulted in endless on- and offline debates, innumerable exhibitions, events, conferences, articles, books, lectures and so on. The fear that Game Art is becoming arthritic – asthmatic, too - is not unfounded. Perhaps the worst has yet to come??
(selected from the projects'press release)
“Game Arthritis” is exhibited as of today at the Venice Biennale, in the context of the exhibition “Neoludica: Art is a Game 2011-1966”. Not to miss!