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Triggerhappy is a gallery
installation whose format will be familiar to anyone who
has encountered that early arcade game, Space Invaders combining
an absurd quest for information with an old-fashioned shoot-em-up
computer game. In this, it accurately reflects, and comments
upon, the electronic environment in which we live, work and
play.
"In effect", the artists say, "triggerhappy becomes a folly.
A self-defeating environment looking at the relationship
between hypertext, authorship and the individual." They
cleverly recontextualise existing representations and subject
them to active manipulation on the part of the viewer, who
becomes an unwitting participant in a meaningless game of "info-war".
Michael Gibbs.
1998. |
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"[In Trigger
Happy] ..It
is crucial that [Thomson & Craighead] don"t merely combine
the two visual elements - space invader iconography and theoretical
text - without the more spiked combination of two purportedly
antithetical modes of attention. They use the thrill of actually
playing the game to complicate further the theoretical point
being made as you try to kill the "death of the author" text
before it gets you."
Dave Beech, Art Monthly July/August
1998. |
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"In the web environment,
as in that of Trigger Happy, the reader"s focus on text seems
constantly and thoroughly aborted, perpetually distracted
by the prospect of more specialised, more scintillating, more
apropos information. Thus, in the midst of this play on hits
and clicks, Trigger Happy is gesturing towards the basis of
a future information economy, where attention, precisely because
of its scarcity, may become a central commodity."
Jamie King, IF/THEN Published by The Netherlands Design
Institute |
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