Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools, an exhibition of new work, revolves around the concept of “product demonstrations.” All of the works featured in the exhibition—ranging from video games, single channel video, kinetic sculpture, and prints, to pen plotter drawings—have been created by means of technological tools with an emphasis on the mixing and matching of both professional and amateur technologies, as well as the vernaculars these technologies encourage within culture at large. The centerpiece of the exhibition, Various Self Playing Bowling Games (2011), is a bowling alley consisting of large-scale projections of bowling games from the late 1970s to the 2000s, each hacked by the artist to throw only gutter balls. Projected in chronological order these games are a history of both video game bowling and of graphic representation in the digital medium, from pixellated abstraction to realism. The exhibition also includes works from the series Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations, consisting of unique prints showing fades between colors that have been created by using the popular image processing software Photoshop’s standard gradient tool. Another series featured in the show is CNC Wireform Demonstrations, wire sculptures randomly generated from software the artist has written and then produced by state-of-the-art industrial computer numerical control (CNC) wire-forming equipment.
Cory Arcangel’s work crosses a range of media, including computer-generated projects, performance, video, installation, music composition, sculpture, and print media. Arcangel (b. 1978) is best known for his Internet interventions, and modified video games. He has recently shown work in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, as well as in the Whitney exhibition Synthetic.Text courtesy The Whitney Museum of American Art.
