Cory Arcangel

Went to the opening of A couple thousand short films about Glenn Gould at the Castlefield Gallery in Manchester. On the way I spotted some of those mosaics based on pixel imagery that you see around lots of places. They stuck in my head this time, considering the show I was going to see, particularly as the second one reminded me of the famous piece by this artist Super Mario Clouds (2002).

I'm a big fan of Cory Arcangel (Best. Name. Ever.) and was really looking forward to his new piece, where a piece of music was constructed from clips of video from YouTube etc. The images flashed past rapidly, each note a separate blip from a video, amateurs flipped to professionals flipped to cats playing piano. It was hypnotic and fascinating.

Older pieces were also on show, Permanent Vacation (2007) was a cute log-jam of two computers batting 'Away' auto-response emails to each other.

I Shot Andy Warhol (2002) was developed by hacking Hogan's Alley (the 1980s Nintendo cartridge) to create a bizarre shoot-em-up. There's an tongue-in-cheek connection between Warhol's work on iconic portraits, and Arcangel's use of people you can still recognise when they are simplified pixel sprites.

I was even lucky enough to talk to the artist in this lengthy exchange:
Cory Arcangel: Is this the queue for the restroom?
Me: Yes

Cory's blissfully retro blog

Castlefield Gallery