at MASS MoCA
ArtByte
September 2001
As a college student, I worked for a toy and game agent who pitched new ideas to manufacturers such as Milton Bradley and Hasbro. Since he had to stay abreast of the field, I helped him maintain copious files of every toy and game ever released. This was more depressing than some would think. The work involved sorting through endless attempts at diversion-board games, doll houses, construction toys, you name it-and most of them seemed like sad, resigned failures. What are inventors thinking when they release uninspired products like five-sided chessboards and glow-in-the-dark kickballs? If not motivated by greed or ego, perhaps they genuinely want to bring joy to children, but have no idea how.
That's not surprising, because though fun may seem trivial, it is not easy. Few can articulate what makes a game like chess, go, or Tetris so addictive, and that ignorance may account for the underwhelming nature of MASS MoCA's new exhibition Game Show. The exhibit, which highlights art that adapts the themes and structures of games, promises a blend of bleeding-edge theory and Barnumesque tent-filling: a perfect match for the populist/minimalist museum in upstate Massachusetts. Instead, the result is a grand, fascinating letdown.
Quite frankly, Game Show is no fun. Kay Rosen's "The Sight and Sound of Music," for example, includes a 40' x 130' wall drawing that doubles as a word puzzle. But the puzzle itself-which involves simply matching up points on a line graph with an alphabet on its vertical axis-is so easy it's almost insulting. Uri Tzaig's "Trance" offers visitors the chance to move marbles around on a rubbery game board, but there are no hints as to whether the pieces should be cooperating, competing, or even moving at all; the resulting amorphousness is less provocative than boring. Although they appear to be games, many of the pieces at Game Show do not offer the payoff of successful games; they ask for the effort of interaction, but they do not reward that effort with challenge, intrigue, or delight.
But let's be fair: There's no reason to single out Game Show, or MASS MoCA. The exhibit isn't so much a lapse of curatorial vision as it is an unintentional indictment of the broader efforts to combine art with interaction. MASS MoCA's greatest crime may be in attempting this exhibit 50 years too early. Game designers and artists, eager to trade street cred for dinner-party respectability or vice versa, have long rhapsodized the promise of collaboration, but both sides are too conceptually entrenched to step into the uncertain territory between them. Both share the blame. If you think Game Show sounds like a failure, check out all the Quake clones on sale at Software Etc., each offering more polygons and different weapons.
There's no faulting the sudden interest in games by artists; with Everquest and Ultima Online sucking in the lives of 20-hour-a-week addicts, games are a more potent cultural force than ever before. But those artists often cheat themselves by ignoring the principles of interactivity in favor of simply invoking its rituals. Games that are successful are crafted with an awareness of the need to balance certain dynamics: both pleasing and challenging the viewer, fighting redundancy yet creating a sense of familiarity brought about through repeating themes. It's not so different from principles of visual arts such as form, color, and composition: You can break these rules, but it's best to understand them first. Just as Picasso understood human anatomy before he decided to discard it, the Game Show artists could benefit from a little more study of what exactly makes traditional games fun. It's obvious, from the adjoining exhibit Fluxus Games, that the Fluxus artists intuitively knew this; those works combine a deconstructive aesthetic with a respect for the craft of fun. These pieces consider the attention span of the viewers and are eager to be both profound and entertaining.
That promise-that aesthetic discovery doesn't have to be dull-echoes faintly in Perry Hoberman's "Cathartic User Interface". In "CUI," images of technobanalities are projected across a wall of computer keyboards (seven high, six across) as museumgoers are allowed to throw Koosh balls at them. The projections themselves are far too literal-computers are frustating, and those dot-com CEOs sure seem like jerks-but nonetheless the piece lacks the wet-blanket single-mindedness that characterizes too much of the exhibit.
The day I visited, "CUI" seemed like the most popular piece; I had to wait behind two grade-school kids throwing Kooshes so enthusiastically that I wondered if somebody had promised them Digimon cards for playing along. When it was my turn, I held the Koosh in my hand and experienced a disarming synesthesia: The visual texture of the keyboards-those nubby computer buttons scrunched together-complemented the feeling of the ball's rubber spikes against my fingers. And it turns out that you can't throw a Koosh lightly if you want to press the buttons you hit: You have to whip your arm down to give it enough force. There is an appealing if infantile dynamic in "CUI," where you make your best throw and are rewarded with the dull whap-clack of rubber spikes on plastic keys. Having provided a piece with a little expectation, a little challenge, and a little delight, Hoberman seems to know what makes a game fun. What he does next with that knowledge is up to him.
Game Show, Mass MoCA, May 27, 2001-April 2002.