3-D DREAMING
noise onscreen is a four-part series that will take a look at the work and worlds of young creative media makers.
Broadcast on ABC TV on Friday nights before Rage, during the festival month of October 2003, the program will be repeated on Saturday mornings and will also feature film clips by Australian artists. We spoke to one of the artists, Anita Johnson, who builds her own fairytales�
Having recently returned from a seven week long artist�s residency in the snow-filled mountains of Banff Canada, Brisbane-based avante-garde video game designer, traditional/graffitti artist and hip-hop MC (phew!), Anita Johnson, knows a little about climate change. With her own studio and 40 other international artists to collaborate with, Anita�s Canadian sojourn came courtesy of an Australia Council grant that saw the group work under the theme of �Candy�. Her idea? A 3D gaming environment based on the childhood fairytale of those two hungry children, to be titled Hansel und Gretel.
�I probably don�t play as many games as I should, they�re good research material,� confesses Anita, who counts fighting games such as Tekken and Jet Grind Radio - a Japanese-style graffiti-based game - as her favourites. Although she didn�t grow up playing games and (shock horror!) lives in a house devoid of any consoles, Anita spends her days working full-time as a graphic designer for a local gaming company.
Anita plans to turn her Hansel und Gretel 3D environment into a complete game. She�s built two main areas of action - a black & white city area represents the traditional world of fairytales, drawing on inspiration from the Brothers Grimm, streets built from hand-drawn textures that have a slick, manufactured feel. The castle, meanwhile, is an appropriated and reworked from the folks at Disneyland. Interested in exploring the idea of consumerism aimed at children, Anita tackles the concept of corporations and evil at once, with Hansel and Gretel battling it out in the enchanted forest.
�I�m interested in critiquing a lot of different things in our society, so I guess what I was aiming for with that piece was a statement about consumerism,� Anita says of the project. �We all had to interpret �candy� in different ways, and I saw it as a metaphor for consumerim and commercialisation,� the game itself described as dark, macabre and nightmarish. �I don�t try and be political, but it�s something that comes out subconsciously,� she adds of her work�s subversive bent. �I try to be aware of things that are happening, and if people get something political out of it, that�s great.�
There will also be an online/broadband presence at www.abc.net.au/noise, which will feature the stories, artists� profiles as well as works and links to artists� web sites. For more artist interviews read noise magazine, out in October.
|
|
|
