Retro arcade games as expressive and performative interfaces

Abstract

ABSTRACT This chapter explores arcade videogames as interfaces for performance in the context of digital art. When a new medium is invented it inevitably undergoes experimentation, and the hardware and software of coin-operated videogames are no exception to this rule. Performance is framed as it applies to the arcade videogame medium as a machine-driven act, and as human-machine interaction across user contexts. Retro game platforms provide a challenging set of audiovisual and interface constraints for focusing artistic output. Arcade games are accessible, immersive, and by nature of their public and competitive setting also performative. While this performance is not always deliberate on behalf of the user, it represents suspension of disbelief to act within the given play narrative. The black box nature of legacy arcade platforms as creative materials is explored through the practices of hacking, preservation, and reappropriation and reinterpretation of arcade hardware and software for creative means by independent artists and industry alike. This examination of arcade videogames as performative interfaces includes detailing the motivations, process, and results of the author’s own creative practice in arcade videogame interface art, in addition to a genealogy of arcade videogame themed artworks from media art practitioners going back to the 1980s.