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Cory Arcangel

Beat The Champ

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Installation of Cory Arcangel Beat the Champ

Featuring 14 bowling video games from the 1970s to the 2000s, Cory Arcangel transformed The Curve into a giant video game – one where the bowler never scores.

Presented chronologically, the games collectively created a collage of sound from the abstract static of Atari to Nintendo's bleeps and bloops to the more realistic simulation of bowling sounds of recent PlayStation consoles. Using custom manufactured electronics, Arcangel hacked each unit to play a loop of a game in which the bowler fails to score.

Arcangel also displayed the video game consoles themselves, each with a small computer chip attached, flickering at one end of the darkened gallery.

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Co-commissioned by Whitney Museum of American Art.

Reviews

‘Sure it's retro, sure its kitsch. Quite simply, its breathtaking...‘
BecauseLondon
‘It sounds like a noisy arcade and looks, at first, like a potted history of tenpin bowling video games but there is, perhaps, something more existential going on...‘
The Guardian
‘The pixellated aesthetic of older Atari games lend a retro dimension, while the animations of recent PlayStation games have a contemporary feel.‘
The Art Newspaper
‘Want to know who’s going to be the next big thing in the art world? Keep an eye on US leading multi-media artist Cory Arcangel‘
TNT Magazine

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