Anne-Marie Schleiner, Joan Leandre, and Brody Condon's work addresses the subject and overall violence of video games post the tragedies of September 11, 2001. Surrounding the months after the attacks, video games appeared that encouraged the players to destroy terrorists without explaining the complexities of the situation.
They responded with Velvet-Strike, a pseudo interactive game that allows the gamer to insert graffiti messages of love and peace along with digital protests instead of the violence. Velvet-Strike is designed to bring awareness to the over simplification of world issues portrayed in video and internet games and hopefully bring people's attention to what is really going on in the world.
What really drew me to these artists was not the work, but one of the quotes on their artist page, which read, "Reality is up for grabs. The real needs to be remade by us." I felt like that tied into the readings we were assigned this week on the complexity of what art is. I've always believed that art in someway is a response to something greater, which is what these artists try to convey. "Reality" is subjective, and we have the opportunity to create it for better or worse. They have created a game that criticizes the amount of violence accepted by society and allow others to voice their opinions on the matter as well. It's art that only furthers more art, which to me is very cool.
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