I attended Matteo Bittanti’s lecture at UNR and he opened my eyes to a whole other aspect of art made possible through video games. Though I did not feel that he was the best lecturer, I could tell that he was very passionate about his work and good at it as a result. At one point he even pointed out that he didn’t think he was a good lecturer, but there was demand for his speaking and a paycheck to back it up, so he continued to lecture accordingly.
Though we had talked about machinima a little bit in class I was still not 100% sure what it really was and what the term encompassed, but through Bittanti’s lecture, I gained a much better view of it and saw the possibilities that become available through the medium. Though I do not play video games I see commercials for them all the time and know how popular they are. I have always been interested in the art direction and design that goes into them as well. Sometimes it seems like really talented artists are using their craft to make money designing them, when what they is much better than a lot of art in galleries and other display spaces. To me it’s very interesting to take what someone else has made and appropriate it into your own art by changing it, which is a lot of what Bittanti does.
I thought the works he did with Street Fighter and his “Bruno” pieces were interesting, but for me they were teetering on the edge of not being art. He himself admitted that he slowed the Street Fighter game down for the end result to be annoying to the viewers. “Bruno” was cool because it was dedicated to deceased friend, but I wasn’t very interested in the piece beyond that.
Questions I had were: Do any of the original designers of the games that you “rape” ever contact you about your treatment of their pieces? Are there any original video games that are created strictly from the artist’s point of view, but sold to the public like any other game?
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