I was up till 7 in the morning working on a project and doing other stuff that I’ve been holding off since forever. Unfortunately, I had to pass on the Jersey IGDA meeting because of this, but at least some long standing items are officially off my to do list. But I was still able to make it to the Super Mario Movie opening. First off, here are some pics courtesy of my crappy camera phone…
Upon entering the space, you’ll find on both sides of a hallway’s walls, all the code that comprises the “film”, all 32k’s worth, which took Cory Arcangel over 343 hours to compose (plus an additional 100 hours worth of bug-testing). At the very end of all this documentation you’ll find the actual cartridge that houses the movie, or at least one of them (see picture). Also in the room was a short video which showed the process, from Corey gathering research from other various ROM hackers to him soldiering components onto the Super Mario Bros cartridge (and while eating Cheerios).
As for the actual film itself, it’s basically 15 minutes long and illustrates how video game worlds deteriorate due to age. The story follows Mario as he traverses his now broken landscape, with the events being loosely tied together via broken game speak, which is a very close cousin to Engrish, but at this point, I’d like to think that it has flourished on it’s own.
At a certain point, Mario comes across a blue Goomba (btw, it’s worth noting that Mario is actually sporting his brother’s colors) and is taken to a rave. The true highlight of the movie, the rave scene in not brilliant due to its concept, but in its execution. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say its very Yar’s Revenge-like.
Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The piece does an excellent job of playing with and adding some meaning behind one’s conceptions of “messed up” graphics. My favorite part, and I don’t know if it was intentional, was a long pause in the action, which made everyone wonder if the game had crashed. I don’t think I was the only one wondering if the cartridge needed to be blown in.
I went in large part because of the Paper Rad connection, but I really didn’t know much Beige beforehand. Though as I’ve recently discovered, they were the minds behind the I Shot Andy Warhol NES game, which is a modified version of Hogan’s Alley that I played at the Museum of Moving Images a few years ago during a video game exhibit. So I was expecting just some Paper Rad kaleidoscope and whimsy, but was also pleasantly surprised by the material’s depth.
Trust me, it’s not deep or anything like that, since it’s certainly not meant to be, though that didn’t stop members of the crowd from pontificating in an effort to look smart, especially for their dates. When I go to an art gallery or museum, I’m the type that basically shuts up and let the art soak it in. Nothing’s worse that pretentious art-fart types who dissect work right then and there in an effort to engage in an intellectual dick waving contest than if the subject matter is related to video games, cuz that’s when you look really stupid. But the subtext is there if you look for it, though having a healthy familiarity of NES games, the kind that can only really be developed a child firsthand, is a must.
I also appreciate any artistic attempt to exploit perceptions of video games, as long as it’s done with style, substance, and most importantly, simplicity. Another good example is, once again, and funny enough, yet another Super Mario Bros hack.
Anyway, the place was packed, though that’s no surprise considering Deitch is one of the hottest galleries these days, plus Paper Rad has developed quite the strong following (and as I discovered, Beige has plenty of fans as well). Also not surprisingly was some of the familiar faces; I ran into Bit Shifter and Nullsleep and was able to tell them how I the copies I made of the 8 Bit of Christmas went over really well with friends.
BTW, for those interested, one can download bits and pieces of the project right here. Interestingly enough, interspersed in each folder are components that aren’t in the final piece (or at least visibly so), such as dialogue. Perhaps it’s all stuff that fell on the cutting room floor, so to speak. One might hope that the Super Mario Movie might eventually be made for downloading (like his Super Mario Cloud, so long as you have an NES emulator to run it) but I think ultimately, its still best to see the whole thing projected on a wall, twenty plus feet tall, and all fuzzy like.
