CORY ARCANGEL

Originally born in Buffalo, New York in 1978, artist Cory Arcangel is a 32 year old that focuses his energy on media art in Brooklyn. As an artist and performer, he works with Arcangel received his Bachelor of Music at the Oberlin Conservatory in 2000 and continued thereafter continued to pursue solo exhibitions in various parts of Europe and the United States using mixed media forms blending the internet with video game systems. While best known for reworking early computer systems like Atari 800 and Commodore 64, of the 1970’s that are considered superseded; he is also regarded for Nintendo game cartridge hacking. Throughout most of his artwork, he infuses appropriating media while incorporating the relationships between culture in our society and technology. Moreover, Arcangel describes his creative efforts to absorb his knowledge as a computer programmer, web designer and artist. He often works in a collaboration of artists and programmers that engage primarily with digital media forms with Beige, a collaborative art and record label in which he has produced videos, web projects, albums of electronic music, in addition to modifying cartridges to Nintendo video games.


In one of his pieces in the Barbican’s Curve gallery, Arcangel designs and installs 14 bowling games and blows them up to about 16 ft by 16ft tall. His design calls for projecting the games in a chronological order along a wall beginning with the earliest Atari game from 1977 and ending with a 2001 Gamecube game. While bowlers regain their techniques and strive to for a top score over 100, they soon realize that the games have been rigged to all score zero. In designing this project, Arcangel utilizes preexisting graphics in which he collaborates them into an art form. Inspiration of this piece stems from the evolution of gaming technology since 1977 in which originally consisted of a grey-scaled pixilated screen lacking pragmatism and perspective.


Cory Arcangel’s work includes a wide range of subjects and materials. His work generally alters or remixes an existing piece, for example in is his piece “Super Mario Clouds” he altered the video game so only the clouds are visible. Furthermore, his work can be more sculpture based like “Phasing Dancing Stand.” In this piece he creates two dancing stands that synchronize with each other every four minutes. In addition, Arcangel works with mash ups such is his piece “Sweet 16.” This piece repeats the beginning of the song Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns ‘n Roses. Another work titled “Sans Simson” is an example of his live performance at Columbia University where he uses his shadow to block out Simon in a performance by Simon and Garfunkel. By looking at Arcangel’s portfolio on his website, coryarcangel.com one can observe that his pieces vary a lot within a year; however, he later readdresses prior themes while creating new pieces.


When discussing Arcangel’s exhibition context it can be said that his work is mostly display within traditional art museum space. Some of his early work, such as “I Shot Andy Warhol,” requires interactivity with a gaming console; therefore, it is difficult bring a piece like this one into the web. Although Arcangel does try to bring a part of “I Shot Andy Warhol” into the web by showing a video, it only works in the web as teaser for the actual piece. One of his works called, “Data Diaries” is very interesting because he took the RAM memory straight from his computer to create daily videos of the data using visuals and audio.


One of the unique characteristics of Arcangel that stuck out is the way he openly shares the way he does his work. Through out some of his work Arcangel will show the viewer step by step how to create a piece like his. For instance, if you go to Arcangel’s website and click the link to his piece “Super Mario Clouds,” he not only presents the work but he also gives directions of how to hack a video game. Most artists will give a background of how they came to make their piece, but not to the extent that Archangel does.


Most of Arcangel’s pieces revolve around the theme of popular culture. When analyzing his pieces it is hard to decide whether his work is influenced by popular culture or if the fact that he is working with digital media brings up popular culture, since these two factors go hand on hand. Works like “Super Mario Clouds” can be an example of this. Mario Bros. is a very well know video game but is hard to pin point whether he is working with Mario video game due to its popularity or the fact that Nintendo and Mario are one of the earliest forms of popular digital media. Other ways Arcangel references this pop culture is in mash-up pieces: “A Couple Thousand Short Films About Glenn Gould” and “Arnold Schoenberg, op. 11 - II - Cute Kittens” which are based around YouTube videos. This mash up piece by Arcangel, such as “Working at YouTube,” is very alike to the work of Kip Fulbeck “Some Questions for 28 Kisses.” The viewer is saturated with dialog, visual representation and also text that everything becomes incomprehensible for the audience.


Arcangel’s work comes from a remix culture. He takes different mediums such as installation, digital, performance, computers, and text to create art. Arcangel experiments with these and combines them to create a piece that will be the strongest. Most of his work revolves around computers and programming. His work has been displayed recently at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim Museum and the MOMA in New York, Space1026 in Philadelphia, the Migros Museum in Zurich, Team Gallery in New York, and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris. Currently, Arcangel is working in London on a performance piece titled “Music for Stereos” where he is exploring the genealogy of pop music. Arcangel is becoming a great influence on digital art all over the globe, which is proven by his numerous museum exhibitions for the past several decades.


http://www.coryarcangel.com/