Digitally Remastered!

Above image: printed hardback display copy version

Title: Is it a game, or is it real

Print Edition: Unlimited (Hardback & soft cover versions)

Process: Produced through Blurb.com

Above image: Original version of the work

The book work is a reinterpretation of David Bischoff's War Games. In this instance a 'remake' of the Penguin book that uses the film adaptation of Bischoff's novel as the cover image. Here the novels text is proceeded by its cinematic cover image. A reinterpretation that for many becomes the original, diluting any beginning or end - a reality made out of fiction.

The reinterpretation uses a digitized theme for intervention. Firstly the work presents the digital pixel aesthetic of the 1980's although in this instance the aesthetic is simulated, constructed out of its own image. Further more the books physical creases and folds become digitized, layered within the surface of the book cover. The physical remanence of the book gradually compresses into the image of the novel - consumed to become part of the fiction.

Secondly like the film/novel the artist book has distopian undercurrents concerning digital technology and our trust in its utopian design. The POD facility Blurb highlights the relative ease with which one can copy, reproduce, store and send digitized imagery/objects without any concern for origins or authenticity. Further more the rapidity with which this technology moves raises archiving issues concerning the compatibility and 'readibility' of digital information between old and new software. Data is either lost or interpolated - are we preserving the past or distorting it?

Is it real, or is it a game fuses past & present, text & image, fact & fiction as an artwork that is interpreted through its mediation. Subsequently the work invokes a self-conscious presence, perhaps referencing Bischoff's vision of computer consciousness.

Also see Edges of a Hardcore