Audience & Avatar Proposal

 

JOHN PAUL BICHARD

http://www.idealmilk.com/artgame.htm

http://www.tii.se/arttech/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=7&lang=en

The White Room
In-game photoshoot of manipulated gamespace interiors - Digital Prints - 8in.x6in.

The White Room is a set of photographic prints resulting from an in-game photo shoot that documents a series of constructed disasters. These interiors were set up by the artist using the videogame Max Payne 2, a 'Film Noir' thriller that tells a tale of lost love, deception and betrayal. The shoot took place within the game's developer mode using the GOD and GETALLWEAPONS cheats and BenDMan'S 'bloody mod 1.2'. By transforming the game environment into a ready-made urban studio space, the objects and interiors were altered using the in-game weapons with the gore from dead enemies being used to 'paint' the sets before being unceremoniously blasted out of view and the scene captured. The events implied never happened in the game, they are not representations of 'real-life' crimes nor are they illustrations of fictional crime stories. These are silent witnesses, containers demanding context, they are waiting places.

Evidência #001
Installation: aluminium, turf, tree stump, earth, leaves, feathers, bullet cases. 2004

Evidência takes as its starting point, an ending; a forensic space, a place in which remains and material take on new significance. From the objects and images, there are no definite conclusions, no clear narratives, just the threads of something that could have happened. The viewer is invited in, but in doing so enters the scene to witness part… of a crime, a conflict, a game?

For his second exhibition at Quadrum, Bichard has (re)constructed a forensic space, a small plot of land which is at once the scene of a crime and a fragment of a first person shooter videogame made ‘real’. As a forensic space, it becomes a clipping, a piece of evidence removed from its original surroundings, as a games space, it is a trope, a snapshot of a brief violent action that would be lost as the player moves on to the next encounter.