“You see all kinds of (art) in this exhibit you never thought about (with) video games,” Gibson said, referring to the variety of approaches taken by the artists in respective pieces. The artists throw the game-given roles of hero or villain out the window and revamp their digital identities into art. The wide range of the pieces pulls characters of the genre out of the seizure-inducing environment of a television screen and into a new world. More than 100 artists contributed with different takes on their favorite or most intriguing aspects of 8-bit gaming. “This has always been our biggest show,” gallery co-owner Jon Gibson said. Art from the first and second installment of the show has been compiled in a book with the same name as the exhibit and is the main reason the number of show visitors increases each year. Now in its third year, the 200-piece exhibit opened April 17 and drew more than 1,700 people on opening night, the biggest crowd since “iam8bit” first kicked off in 2003. As opposed to today’s multitude of different video game consoles with eight-button controllers shaped to fit the contour of a gamer’s hand, all people needed back then was a small rectangle, and the only buttons that mattered were A and B. The 8-bit, video game-inspired art pieces in the show at the 1988 Gallery on Melrose Avenue bring observers to a time when Pac-Man passed the torch of crowd favorites on to Mario. For video game fans, aficionados, addicts and those who are fortunate enough to remember the 99-lives code to Contra, the art exhibit “iam8bit” is an aesthetic trip down pixilated memory lane.
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