Yesterday KRAZY! exhibition closed at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I apologize to those of you that I’m letting you know too late. It was great.
The exhibition featured comics, manga, anime, and videogames. Several walls were installed to create kind of maze walking in the gallery. I really like the work done for the installations; specially, the anime section where some projectors were aiming skewed in a delightful way.
One of the funniest feelings was having been intimately consuming ‘art’ from my childhood. Those hours in from of a screen from early times are paying off. And those recently too 🙂 For instance, Rick Hunter fighting against the Zentraedi in “Super Dimension Fortress Macross”. Yep, “Robotech”. While you could here someone crying “Akiiiiiiraaaaa” in the back. Then, on another wall something more recent like “Paprika”. Sweet.
Going towards to the gaming part now, Will Wright was the curator. It was explained that the games were selected by their groundbreaking-ness:
- Pac-man
- Super Mario World
- Sid Meier’s Civilization
- Quake
- The Legend of Zelda
- Grand Theft Auto
- The Sims
- Spore
Yes, I noticed that “The Sims” and “Spore” are in the short-list, but it’s undeniable that they’ve marked game history. Although, he could have waited a little bit more for “Spore”.
These games were displayed in original arcade cabinet cocktail type (“Pac-Man”) that people could actually play it, ink-jet prints (“Sid Meir’s”, “Zelda”), other games were running in a console plugged to a monitor (“Super Mario World”) that you could play as well. Several monitors showing excerpt of games. There was a huge projection on wall composed by several by several squares of Quake videos. Like a big collage alive.
Overall KRAZY! was a great exhibition. I’m looking forward to a KRAZY! 2 exhibition that could show other angles of the new media art.
