The Making of Super Mario Clouds

The Making of Super Mario Clouds

Cory Arcangel 
2004, 76:00 min, color, silent

Description

In the first part of this work, Arcangel silently documents the real-time construction of his video game cartridge piece, Super Mario Clouds, in which he hacked a "Mario Brothers" cartridge, erasing everything but the blue sky and clouds. The Making of..., which Arcangel calls "a documentary on making a cartridge," records the artist in his apartment, making the cartridge for the 2004 Whitney Biennial, where Super Mario Clouds was exhibited. While The Making of Super Mario Clouds poses as an instructional video, willfully amateur camerawork and the omission of any soundtrack indicate the artist's intentions: to give viewers, in his words, "a feel for the process, in its gloriously boring true detail." The second part is a 9-minute video re-scan of the clouds.