Research on Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel

Arcangel is a new media artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He “recycles”,    “re-uses” and “steals” code from other sources to create his own artwork – he mainly uses video games to do this. Some examples of his work are his famous Nintendo mods: “Super Mario Clouds” and “I Shot Andy Warhol”.

At the beginning of his career he and Paul Davis created their own record label called BEIGE records – which was when he first started to learn about programming as they began working on an ATARI 8 bit construction set. As Arcangel learned more about computer operating systems and ways of manipulating simple technology to prank people at school, he began to explore digital art or “new media art”. A big influence on his work was cracking – a way of editing the software to rid of unwanted features- and was particularly important to him when he was first getting into computer art.

The Nintendo Game Mod, "I shot Andy Warhol" - hack of "Hogan's Alley"

His first Nintendo modification was “I Shot Andy Warhol” where he changed the graphics in the game but left the actual running of the game as it was. The cartridge has two chips: the Program chip and the graphics chip. All that Arcangel had to do to create this was change the graphics, in this game he changed the people in the game to look like Andy Warhol – there were pixel limitations which meant he could only use people that were able to be created in the restricted amount of pixels enabled.

"Super Mario Clouds"

To create ‘Super Mario Clouds’ all Arcangel had to do was erase the program code of the game which left him with the graphics of the game which he made into a video, GIF and still. A lot of his work is as simple as this as he likes creating things that are easy yet effective. This piece interests me because I like classic games and although it no longer has a purpose or function as a video game, it is still cool to look at as he draws out something from the game that people generally overlook or don’t pay much attention to. The video is essentially just the clouds from the game moving as they do in the game, and this is repeated until the end of the video.

I am not always sure why I like Arcangel’s work, I am just drawn to it; perhaps it’s the processes he took trying to make it or the themes he bases his work on but all I know is that I like it and I think it shows how much digital art has developed since it first began.

"Data Diaries"

 Arcangel used a "RAM Fishing" technique to create some of his art and made a quicktime video out of RAM that was left over. He did this everyday, for a whole month.