Joseph DeLappe: Screen Shot

[CCAI Nevada Neighbors Alumni Joseph DeLappe opens Beijing exhibition]

Where Where Exhibition Space
Opening: Saturday, July 9, 4:00 pm
Exhibition: July 9 - 31, 2011
Curated by: Gordon Laurin

No. 319-1, East End Art Zone A, Caochangdi Village
Chaoyang District, Beijing
(in the Platform China courtyard)

Screen Shot represents Joseph DeLappe’s ongoing work to engage “First Person Shooter” (FPS) computer games as arenas for creative, political, and hacktivistic performative interventions. The artist’s fallen avatar, as recorded during his interventionist project “dead-in-iraq”, taking place within the U.S. Defense Department funded America’s Army recruiting game, is realized here as finely rendered graphite drawings. The hands of a Taliban fighter, as depicted in the controversial Medal of Honor shooter game, lay on the gallery floor - made real via a complex process of 3D data extraction and physical construction. Through these works the 24/7 global phenomena of virtually simulated contemporary warfare as “play” has been reified as images and objects of conscience.

Joseph DeLappe is a Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. He is considered a pioneer of online gaming performance art. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad - including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. He also directs the iraqimemorial.org project, an ongoing web based exhibition and open call for proposed memorials to the many thousand of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. He has lectured throughout the world regarding his work, including most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His works have been featured in the New York Times, The Australian Morning Herald, Artweek, Art in American and in the 2010 book from Routledge entitled Joystick Soldiers The Politics of Play in Military Video Game.

http://www.delappe.net

[image and text from the artist's press release]