1UP
1UP, 2013, video formatted for unique 80-foot high video marquee, 30 seconds
Five iterations of the artist move through a shifting set of game environments drawn from the golden age of arcade games. These three game worlds have different settings, obstacles, goals, and rules of physics, all of which affect the characters' movements & controls.
I am interested in how our our internalized knowledge of the movement, actions, setting, and art style of these games from 30 years ago informs our experiences today, and I am drawn to the absurdity of realistic human performers attempting to carry out movements associated with a flat, abstracted 2D environment.
Created for Art on the Marquee at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St., Boston
1UP, 2013, video formatted for unique 80-foot high video marquee, 30 seconds, night view
1UP, 2013, video formatted for unique 80-foot high video marquee, 30 seconds, day view
Press
Cate McQuaid, What's Up at Boston-area Art Galleries?, The Boston Globe, March 20, 2013
Jeffu Warmouth’s funny, existential 1UP also pays homage to old arcade games, but here the protagonist is a man, not a Pacman, desperately scrambling through endless tests.
Ira Cantor, Pax East Goes for Big Game, The Boston Herald, March 17, 2013
Fitchburg State University media professor Jeffu Warmouth’s 1UP shows a self-inspired character “moving through a shifting set of game environments drawn from the Golden Age of arcade games.” Warmouth, 42, a Groton resident, said he spent about 100 hours creating his video, which recalls scenes from the classic 8-bit games Donkey Kong, Joust and Dig Dug. “I’ve always done work with kind of a popular bent to it and I’ve done a lot of work about pop culture, and I’ve always been interested in venues that are not white gallery space,” said Warmouth, who has made two previous videos for the BCEC marquee. “There’s something great about the marquee being in the public space where people are not expecting art. Definitely, it’s expanded my audience.”
