Lars Bang Larsen You bought a Commodore Amiga computer in 1991 and, using the graphics program Deluxe Paint II, created fictional video game stills. You titled one of these series of works ‘Q. Would you recognise a Virtual Paradise?’ [1992]. Would it be relevant to ask the same today, 30 years down the line and many digital revolutions later?

Suzanne Treister Well, people seem to ask that same question today, as if it were a new question, which I find a little disturbing. Back in the late 1980s, when I became interested in the idea of video games, my mind was in overdrive as I tried to imagine how these new technologies might affect society, our way of life and the planet. It felt like parallel hallucinatory universes were being formed, with huge paradigm shifts lurking ahead. In the early 1990s, I would go to SegaWorld at the Trocadero in London’s Piccadilly Circus, where you could find virtual-reality games on the top floor. You put on a headset, with your body surrounded by a padded barrier so that you didn’t wander blindly off IRL, and entered a VR chequerboard platform in outer space. In that world, there were monsters on staircases that led to a zone that stopped you when the code ended, making it impossible to jump off into the cosmos. My ‘Virtual Paradise’ works were more about the future of technology itself and its possible dangers and downsides. For instance, texts on the game screens read: ‘Not enough memory for operation’, ‘Now enter a virtual wilderness’ and ‘No message [proceed]’.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.