Artwork
R.I.G.
R.I.G. (Rez Ikaruga Gradius) is a video of three games played simultaneously through one video connection. The idea for this project was found by accident. I had ordered a shared S-Video cable from Hong Kong, the basic use being to connect multiple consoles up to a TV through one S-Video connection. This worked as intended, however, when two systems happened to be on at the same time, they both would attempt to display data on the screen, resulting in very weird video effects and overlaying sound.
The idea was to try three different games for three different systems and attempt to play them at the same time to see what effects were produced. I immediately focused on shooters because I own many for different systems. I ended up picking Rez for Dreamcast, Ikaruga for Gamecube, and Gradius V for Playstation 2. This had the added benefit of each shooter scrolling on a different axis. Gradius on the X axis, Ikaruga on the Y axis and Rez on the Z axis.
Play was done rather sporadically, using both hands and feet, and was basically done blind given the disorienting output that was produced. Several takes were made before the results were satisfactory. Footage was digitized via a Canopus Firewire video converter.
The footage shown on Assembler is a shorter and lower quality version of the original footage, which is in DV. This had to be done because of the rather large file size of this video (550MB and 2 minutes, 40 seconds in length).
R.I.G. has been featured in the exhibition Gameplay: Video Games In Contemporary Art Practice at Around The Coyote, Chicago, Illinois