Romance

Romance

Seth Price
2003, 30 min, color, silent

Description

A performance tape of sorts, Romance documents Price's progress until death through Adventure, one of the earliest computer games. The game was created in the mid 1970s by programmers and engineers in their spare time, and, foreshadowing today's "open source" software, the program's code was freely shared, replicated, and re-authored by many people over the years. Conceived as a series of questions and answers within the guise of interactivity, the player must consistently adjust his responses to the syntactical and grammatical rules of the program. Devoid of the intensive graphics, sounds and action of current computer games and game-related art, the video unfolds as a silent conversation in which the presence of the artist is evoked through typing, with its real-time hesitations and corrections. Bearing similarities to instant messaging as well as Arthurian Romances, Romance is an investigation into language, the durational aesthetics of the structuralist film, and the fluid boundary between participation and spectatorship.

Exhibition & Distribution Conditions

In exhibition, this work should be presented in a cinematic situation, i.e. a projection contained in its own room, preferably projected onto a screen, in a black box gallery, with seating provided. Please contact the office for further information.