I often think about outdated technologies and how we still fascinate over them for various reasons. In particular I’ve been interested in pop-culture tech – my first fascination absolutely being my old Atari 2600 gaming station which, for all intents, was also my first experience within a virtual space – an extension of myself on the other side of the screen via hand-eye coordination and a new identity as an “operator” of characters.
I began to wonder why it was that Atari has made such a resurgence as of late with modified joystick units that you can buy at WalMart and just plug into your TV, ported games you can run on your PC, or ready to go game cards for Palm Pilots. I realized that there are a variety of reasons for this, the key ones being: A) Nostalgia – Atari fits a role of not only being a rudimentary gaming system that predates Nintendo, Sega, and others, but also that of the PC generation. There are many people out there who enjoy revisiting their youth-based experiences. B) Cultural phenomena – there are also many younger people who are fascinated by Atari (and never had direct experience with the original units) because it fits within an 80′s flashback frame that has become so popular as of late.
So, ultimately, I came to the conclusion that playing these old systems is the equivalent of “tech-time tourism”. In the same way we might visit historical “real” locations to get a sense of how people physically existed in another time, the new-Atari boom is our attempt to do the same, but within tech space, and most importantly within virtual space. When I was younger it seemed so difficult to maneuver within PacMan or PitFall because it was a new experience (similar stories have been told of people who try to use a mouse for the first time – total separation of physical reality). Those of us now familiar with these experiences have since gathered stamina withinin this virtual space – we have mastered the art of physical to virtual proprioception (extending ourselves into our tools). Most of us have evolved into a state where we can coexist with our on-screen avatars without discomfort. This comes down to even the very simple layers of working comfortably within a desktop environment.
Taking this idea as a core thought, Illusion/Elusion was designed to break that linear evolution and attempt to make noticeable this experience of revisit old technology while again feeling the difficulty of manipulating that space. In Illusion/Elusion tech-time tourism is no longer a comfortable experience. The virtual space is now in constant flux, you can never quite get your bearings. The illusion of simplicity eludes the user. The combination of new technology, old technology and video footage emphasizing our broader cultural fascination with technology, highlights in mashup form a broader sense of mass tech-fetish. This sense of the glitzy, slick device was also the purpose behind the project’s antithetical color and material choices.Medium: Atari gaming systems, electronic circuitry, video, steel, plastic, acrylic
