Where 2
December 15, 2013 – February 14, 2014
Opening reception: Sat., December 14, 7-10pm
Opening reception: Sat., December 14, 7-10pm
Exhibition on view at Where
1397 Myrtle Avenue, Unit 4
Brooklyn, NY 11237
1397 Myrtle Avenue, Unit 4
Brooklyn, NY 11237
Press Release:
“Where 2” is the current state of 20 years of ongoing research. The first findings were developed in the early ’90s on a copy of SimCity for Super Nintendo located in my father’s spare bedroom. I only had access to the game every other weekend, and so before leaving I would raise taxes to 99%, select the maximum gameplay speed (a Cheetah icon), and then turn the television off while leaving the game’s persistent simulation running.
There was no predicting the state of my city when I returned twelve days later (approximately 1000 years in-game), though the bank was inevitably full and so usually the most prudent course of action was to destroy the whole city and fill the map with the two most expensive buildings, the Airport and the Football Stadium.
Research continued in my teens when my brother and I operated a small server for pirated games and media. Relevant experiments included spending a week downloading a handycam bootleg of The Blair Witch Project (1999) which had been divided into forty parts, and hosting a low-res copy of the infamous Tyson v. Holyfield “Bite Fight” (1997) the morning after it had been broadcast live on television.
“Where 2” is the current state of 20 years of ongoing research. The first findings were developed in the early ’90s on a copy of SimCity for Super Nintendo located in my father’s spare bedroom. I only had access to the game every other weekend, and so before leaving I would raise taxes to 99%, select the maximum gameplay speed (a Cheetah icon), and then turn the television off while leaving the game’s persistent simulation running.
There was no predicting the state of my city when I returned twelve days later (approximately 1000 years in-game), though the bank was inevitably full and so usually the most prudent course of action was to destroy the whole city and fill the map with the two most expensive buildings, the Airport and the Football Stadium.
Research continued in my teens when my brother and I operated a small server for pirated games and media. Relevant experiments included spending a week downloading a handycam bootleg of The Blair Witch Project (1999) which had been divided into forty parts, and hosting a low-res copy of the infamous Tyson v. Holyfield “Bite Fight” (1997) the morning after it had been broadcast live on television.
Presently, my research has taken the form of a digital system for reproducing Douglas Gordon’s super-durational appropriation work 24 Hour Psycho (1993). The system consists of a pirated copy of Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960), screened in the gallery once daily at dusk. Each screening is captured by the Where webcam, processed by custom software, and streamed to the gallery’s website at Gordon’s prescribed rate of two frames per second. The slowed down, 24/7 stream is viewable on the gallery’s website. Visitors to the gallery are encouraged to use their mobile web browsers to watch both versions at the same time.
— A.E. Benenson
— A.E. Benenson
A.E.
Benenson, Where, New York