Super Mario Movie
Cory Arcangel & Paper Rad / 2005 / USA / Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York
Beginning with drawings by the artists collective Paper Rad (Ben Jones, Jessica Ciocci and Jacob Ciocci), Cory Arcangel meticulously converted their images into code, and then burned it onto a chip that he hand-soldered into an 8-bit cartridge of the first “Super Mario Bros” game for Nintendo. The result is “Super Mario Movie,” a fifteen-minute narrative projected live from a 1980's NES (Nintento Entertainment System) console. In it, Mario's world has begun to come apart at the pixels after two decades of neglect, and we see him in a variety of altered states – weeping on a cloud, riding atop a magic carpet – before ultimately arriving at a rave party. A true collaboration in the art of media obsolescence, “Super Mario Movie” showcases both Arcangel's well-known manipulation of old videogame technology as well as the hyperkinetic, neopsychedelic stylings of Paper Rad.
