Jorge Luis Borges' 1941 short story "The Garden of Forking Paths" predates the Internet. However, its notions of non-linearity, the storyline surrounding an infinite labyrinthine book that realises multiple paths and futures are echoed in the information age with hypertext, the World Wide Web and the form and structure of computer games.
Just as Borges and his contemporaries pushed the envelope of narrative form, artists have created and modified computer games, experimenting with notions of what a game is and exploring alternate approaches to interaction and play methodologies.
The exhibition presented historic and contemporary artist-made games that depart from conventional structures of interaction and play. It toured regional Australian galleries for five years.
Artists and works
- Laurie Anderson with Hsin-Chien Huang — Puppet Motel
- Andy Deck — Space Invaders Act 1732
- Anita Fontaine and Mike Pelletier — Cute X Doom II
- Jaron Lanier — MoondustEmulatorMobile emulator
- Michael Nyman — Frame Game
- Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie — An Artist’s Impression of a Text Based Environment
- Guillaume Reymond — Game Over
- Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn) — The Path
- Thomson & Craighead — Trigger Happy
Archived project website
The archived exhibition site preserves the original project pages, participating artists and works, and the exhibition’s historical context. Open exhibition site
Preserved works
Neil has been creating preserved versions of selected works so they can be played without their original hardware, either in a web browser or as an application. He is currently working to recover a playable version of Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang’s Puppet Motel.
Moondust
Jaron Lanier, author
