weewerk 16...
Play
organized by Heather Corcoran and weewerk

Works by:
Myfanwy Ashmore
Joe McKay
Sandy Plotnikoff

Three days:
Thursday 18 March... 4-9 pm... opening
Friday 19 March... 12-6 pm
Saturday 20 March... 12-6 pm
including Saturday salon... 3-5 pm

Note NEW SPACE for this show:
weewerk 2.01
101 Niagara Street, Unit 201, Toronto
SW of King & Bathurst, at Tecumseth
tel. 416-825-9745

Thank you to InterAccess electronic media arts centre for their support for this show.

Video gaming has by now fully permeated western pop culture. But why is the reigning model of gaming still a combative and violent one? In this exhibition weewerk brings together a few alternative modes of gaming, based instead on what we might describe as the more demanding and productive practices of active observation, meditation, social exchange, subterfuge, and playful hacking. For Mario Battle No. 1 Myfanwy Ashmore has delved into the now-seemingly-innocent days of early Nintendo to create a game of enervating, enforced serenity. Brooklyn-based Joe McKay presents a colour-matching computer game that channels bloodlust into competitive observation. Lastly, Sandy Plotnikoff's video-in-progress is an accumulated volume of epiphanies produced through mental alertness, visual acuity and physical daring, which should remind us of the potential for play in real urban situations.

On Saturday afternoon 20 March from 3 to 5 pm hackers of all stripes, programmers and interested members of the public are invited to join video-game columnist and indie-media proponent Jim Munroe and artists from the show for a focused salon discussion on issues of gaming, play and hacking.

Note that this three-day show will be presented in a new, even smaller, space (a.k.a. Germaine's studio) at 101 Niagara Street.

Works in the exhibition

Myfanwy Ashmore, Mario Battle No. 1, 2000, interactive computer game
"Ashmore altered this NES ROM by removing all the enemies, prizes, architecture within the game. Now as a game player, all you can do is go for a walk. Eventually you run out of time and die." - Year01

Joe McKay, Colour Game, 2003, interactive computer installation
"In the McKay piece, players sit at a console and work simple RGB sliders (levers raising and lowering the amount of red, green, and blue light). Each player is arbitrarily given a "starting color" and must shift the levers until a "target color" - say, a large dot moving around the screen - is duplicated. When one player hits the exact hue (and it takes some concentration), he or she is declared the winner of that round and the game resets... The installation does something often claimed for color field painting that invariably never happens when you look at it: that is, it teaches you about the physical properties, relativity, and context-specificity of color..." - from Tom Moody's blog

Sandy Plotnikoff, White Pumpkin, 2000-ongoing, 8:00
Set to a soundtrack by Maura Doyle, the video relates to and documents source material for Plotnikoff's experiments in colour-matching, social interaction, street gymnastics, and playfully scavenged experience.

Biographies

In Toronto you can view more work by Myfanwy Ashmore in the exhibition "0.001 Percent Volume" at Mercer Union until 3 April 2004. Ashmore studied at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1990, graduated from the Sculpture-Installation department at the Ontario College of Art in 1996, and received her MFA from York University in 1998. As well as being an artist, she is currently a technician at the Ontario College of Art and Design in the Academic Computer Centre.

Brooklyn-based Joe McKay grew up in Ontario, studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, and has participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Recent shows include VertexList, Brooklyn; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; the Media Z Lounge at the New Nuseum, New York (with Kristin Lucas); Transmediale video festival, Berlin; and ZKM, Karlsruhe. He also works as a Mac consultant and has created the web site prereview.

Sandy Plotnikoff is a Toronto-based artist best known for his wearable objects, constructions and interventions, including his virus-like snaps project. www.laundry-line.net

Jim Munroe was formerly managing editor at Adbusters. He has since written several novels; runs the indie-publishing resource site No Media Kings; participates in the collective blog The Cultural Gutter; writes the column "Pleasure Circuit" for eye weekly; and makes "tiny movies and games." www.nomediakings.org, www.theculturalgutter.com

Heather Corcoran is completing her BFA in Ryerson University's New Media program. Along with her involvement at weewerk, she is an intern and member of the Programming Committe at InterAccess, where her most recent effort was co-organizing the ASCII Portrait Project. Her own work has been featured in Adbusters Magazine.