Mark Essen, Cowboy Ana, 2008, still image from 32-bit video game. Courtesy of the artist.
On April 9, Jessica Loudis published an interview with “Younger Than Jesus” participating artist Mark Essen. Here is an excerpt:
AC: While most of your games employ an 80s retro aesthetic, they also integrate explicitly contemporary features, such as the disembodied baby photos in Randy Balma. How do you see your work building on these older games?
ME: I think it’s important to let people know that these aren’t games from the 80s. They reference them in some ways, but they also make use of new experiences you just can’t have with the older hardware. One example, games now can run really high frame rates: film’s 24, video’s 30, and games can be 60 or more, if you want. For the last level of Randy Balma, I used these high frame rates to make every other frame a different color. When the screen flashes red and blue, the whole thing becomes purple. Maybe it’s just the video card tearing up, but the smoothness is something that wasn’t possible before. I like experimenting with the aesthetic in ways like that.
To read the rest, click here.
Hey, discovered your site by accident accomplishing a look for on Yahoo but I?ll certainly be coming back. ? How can I think in God when only last week I received my tongue caught inside the roller of an electrical typewriter?