Digital artist, Cory Arcangel is best known for his reworkings of obsolete computer systems of the 1970s and 1980s. From 10 February to 22 May, Arcangel will be exhibiting his latest bowling based creation, Beat The Champ at The Barbican Gallery, London.

One of Arcangel’s most famous pieces is Super Mario Clouds, which he created in 2002. Archangel hacked into a Nintendo Super Mario games cartridge and erased all the familiar features except the endless scrolling clouds. This idea of ‘reworking’ appears in much of Arcangel’s work. I Shot Andy Warhol, also 2002, features well-known public figures such as the Pope, Andy Warhol and Colonel Saunders as shooting targets in 1980′s arcade game, Hogan’s Alley. While the subject remains humorous, the work still manages to spark a critical analysis of our disposable culture.

Often brightly coloured and at first glance uncomplicated, Arcangel’s work constantly questions the relationships between contemporary culture, art and technology. Beat The Champ is no exception. The Brooklyn based media artist’s latest project for The Barbican, which is a co-commission with Whitney Museum of American Art, is an installation featuring 14 separate bowling video games from the 1970s to the 2000s. Every game has been hacked into and looped to play scoreless games. Presented chronologically, the games play to the simple sounds of the bleeps and bloops of the earlier consoles such as the Nintendo and Atari to the more realistic simulation of bowling sounds of recent Playstation consoles.

Beat The Champ is being shown 10 February – 22 May 2011 at The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London

Free Admission 

For more information see www.barbican.org.uk

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