Videogame History ArtGLITCH & the Invasion of the Lemmings at RomeVideoGameLab

“What today is called Pixel Art was once simple avantgarde. The higher form of expression achievable by a computer or, simply, normality. 8 and 16 bits rule this collection of pictures coming from the golden age of Commodore, SEGA, Nintendo and Arcade. But memories often fall short of the reality and that’s where glitches come to distort the picture just like time changes our memories.”

The project aims to bring the observer into a sort of temporal ascension about the art of videogames from arcades to contemporary videogames, with the addition of concept arts from Italian digital artists and of photos from virtual photographers to outline the last frontiers of interactive digital arts, which Neoludica has been examined for 14 years.

The video – which is one hour long but can be watched through clips anytime – includes the elaboration of more than 2000 pictures selected and reworked by Filippo Scaboro, to whom we dedicate this exhibit also with physical works on the walls, since he has been in the collective for 10 years and, and because he is one of the most important game artists in Italy, for production and meaning. The other artists in the collective are introduced by Filippo in the video itself, in an art-in-art suggestion that videogames only can create and allow to elaborate.

The effect of installing the box with videos and works is to capture the audience and to induce a reflection about the evolution of this extraordinary media that merged inside of it all the arts and created the summa of the twenty-century avantgardes to transfer them into technology.

On the walls, along with Scaboro’s works, there are also going to be pictures reworked by Cinecittà with QR, where the audience will be able to discover the invasion of Lemmings at RomeVideoGameLab, an eerie but funny presence that is expanding from Sardinia, at Lake Maggiore, in Rome, at…

Neoludica, with the curators Debora Ferrari and Luca Traini, wants to induce an art critic reflection about the relevance of the gaming image in contemporary arts, but using a language that can be understood by everyone, gamers and not, precisely because the redesigned forms are part of the artistic developments that land from the previous century to the current one: painting, sculpture, videoart, installations, and performances.

This expositive-immersive project is accompanied by an ArtBook catalogue with an in-depth analysis about the game art of Scaboro for the Game Culture Book series of TraRari Tipi.

Target: for everyone.