Super mario clouds (2002)
Cory Arcangel
![Picture](/uploads/4/5/4/2/4542606/287348427.jpg)
The maipulated NES game cartridge
“This is an artist who knows his materials inside and out, and as a result, makes it all look incredibly effortless.”
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
“Many may feel that video games themselves are not art, but Cory's work clearly is. He isn't creating games, but art based on games, art with a commentary.”
- Anonymous
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Cory Arcangel is known for appropriating artefacts from earlier digital times for use in his artwork and explores the relationship between technology and culture. In Super Mario Clouds, the artist removed everything from the game but the slowly-moving white clouds in the background of some Mario levels. The work has become iconic for its re-purposing of video games and repackaging of retro technology into art. To create the work, Arcangel directly manipulated the physical game cartridge and its programming to change the effects of the way the game plays.
"Ideas pour over me like a waterfall, hundreds a day, every day… it's oppressive," says Arcangel. You can read some of them in his 2009 Continuous Partial Awareness, downloadable from his web site. They are full of jokes and puns and references to media from a past era. Some will see Cory Arcangel’s work as a prank or a piece of digital Dadaism; gamers can get quite irate about it, with one YouTube comment stating, "Nice try Cory, but there are Programmers (sic) out there that actually program, not just erase what others have done. You're a joke". In some ways, though, it works simply as a deconstruction of videogame design - it makes you think about these background objects which usually pass by almost imperceptibly: what do they add to the experience? How important are they to the success of the games? Or maybe it's just a really relaxing, hypnotic animation (Stuart, 2009). Further Reading
The game of art: a profile of digital artist Cory Arcangel http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/dec/04/games-art Interview with Cory Arcangel http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/cory-arcangel/ |
Suggested Questions
- How would you describe this artwork to someone over the phone? - Identify the dominant art elements and principles. - What do you think Arcangel is trying to depict through his work Super Mario Clouds? |
Suggested activity
- As a class, discussion how Arcangel utilises the concept of appropriation, and what the moral and legal implications could be. - Watch Super Mario Movie and then have a class discussion about the concept of appropriating and re-contextualising video game worlds and narratives. - Can you identify any links between Cory Arcangel’s work and Andy Warhol’s? |