Eh.

I feel the vast majority of artists who combine art and games lack a handle of the brief yet intense history of video games while utilizing only superficial examples of gaming vocabulary. If they have studied gaming history and interactive theory, very few (if any) artists in the spotlight exhibit it. Creating a new input for an existing game could be considered art, but it usually doesn't address the medium of the game on the screen or the space between the player and the virtual world.

For example, Patch&Ko is pretty cool at linking Panchinko with Street Fighter 2; an interesting, if loose, connection between income generation for game manufacturers, how players pay in, and a reconnection to what could arguable be the first interactive input device for electronic entertainment. But this is all stuff that occurs OUTSIDE the game that's being used with no real connection to what's happening INSIDE the game.

Where Patch&Ko stops being interesting is when someone realizes, "Hey, I've played SF2 before. With a joystick. That was fun. This isn't as much fun. Why? Because this is basically pachinko with a slightly interactive display. Queue nolstalgia and historical commentary. Artistic mystery solved." Why not just attach an LCD to a blender that displays a Quake Rally car doing donuts in a parking lot? The two examples exhibit the same amount of control and celebration of games and art. As a commentary on games and their effect on people it's about as valid of a submission as the Sega Genesis Activator Ring or the Nintendo Power Glove.

There is a tendency for these artists to destroy the source material (or at least the craft aspect of them) that they seek so hard to derive meaning from. I wouldn't be commenting on this, if it wasn't the fact that these artists try to build an artificial connection between modernism and video games and calling it something new when it's MODERNISM. GPS, unique inputs, bringing games into the real-world, etc. come off as gimmicks considering that it's all been done and done successfully (see PAC MANHATTAN done by the Tisch School of the Arts @ NYU).

The idea is to get BEYOND the, "THIS IS A GAME ATTACHED TO A BROOM! WOW! IT'S SO COOL!" reaction, and to get people to address the surreality and reality of games and their effect on players. I can certainly respect artists who are using games as elements of modernism but not when it's being passed off as a new medium or movement. The use of pixels and meepy floop music combined with ideas of modernism does not really qualify a work of art as something that addresses what happens with games inside and outside the virtual world.

Only when we start seeing examples of artist trying to truly merge the two (art and games as one) will we really start seeing a new medium on the rise. There needs to be modifications to the games themselves, and they need to be compelling, successful examples of interaction in order for a viewer or player to participate long enough to reach a meaning (instead of just being annoyed or gimmicked by crazy input devices). The biggest obstacle with that, is that the true pioneers in video games, those who understand how to pique interests in their audience and to create successful examples of controlled player interaction, are currently focused on making video games and taking the medium as a form of entertainment to the next level. This whole movement will not work until artists start collaboarting with the craftsmen who make games what they are.

"Disappointing" is really the only word I can use to label this piece of work.

At it's best, Stanley's work is poorly thought-out, totally oblivious to his source material and just flat-out LAZY. Maybe I am missing a message that exists on a higher level that Stanley has either concealed beyond recognition or simply is not equipped to express, but this is a missed opportunity to have connected the mechanics expressed by Space Invaders with the reality and nature of the events of September 11, 2001 along with the nature of the war on "terror".

At it's worst, it's a cheap, amateur piece that shamelessly rides the rising popularity of videogames while exploiting a still open-wound in the psyche of the American and international community. This piece does little to put a spotlight on what could have potentially been a powerful comparison between the futility of Space Invades and the international efforts to combat terror with conventional tactics. Instead, it is a muddled, chimerical, clumsy almagam of pop culture and recent events.

If Stanley has an ounce of videogame history and vocabulary, he certainly doesn't express it. There is so much great material to work with, and it's almost as if he just cut the tongue out of the buffallo and threw the rest away. Making this material work as a critical success to both high art and the general populace would have been EASY, but somehow, Stanley has appeared to let sensationalism and his own ignorance prevail.

I know very little about Stanley, but this piece has pretty much made me lump him into the annoying and vacuous community of artsy bullshitters who do nothing but wave their hands in front of games they've never played while calling themselves pioneers of some new, imaginary medium.

Controversy for controversy's sake is a sheer sign of vanity, caprice and artistic shalowness.