AVOID MISSING BALL

Genesis of gameplay from Tennis Programming to Pong

Exhibition
August 17 – September 29
TICKETS AVAILABLE VIA EVENTBRITE

From the first blips of phosphorescent light to the vast online worlds we play in today games have become both a mirror and driver of modern culture. Few video games have had as profound an impact on technology and entertainment as the one that started it all – TV Ping-Pong. This first-of-its-kind survey will explore the early history of influence that led to the development of this iconic game, from early experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Sanders Associates to the start-ups of Silicon Valley, and celebrate the pioneers who created a new medium.

This summer also marks the 50th anniversary of the development of Atari’s home version of Pong — which was being prototyped in Sunnyvale — so it was time for a fitting tribute.

Curated by Van Burnham with additional support from Eric Ayzenberg, Bill Buckley, Apres Davtyan, Matt Downes, Georgi Dzneladze, Eric Kim, Cassandra Pineda, Josh Randall, and Chris Younger.

Presented by Microsoft

Supercade x Ayzenberg

This inaugural exhibition is a collaboration between Supercade, Ayzenberg Group, and sp[a]ce gallery to support the development of the Supercade Museum, the first world-class interactive museum dedicated to the medium of games.

For more details: www.supercademuseum.org

Curator

Van Burnham is the founder and creative director of Supercade. She’s the author of Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age and former games evangelist for Wired magazine. She has written for Lost In Cult’s Console Chronicles, Retro Gamer, Wired, and myriad gaming publications. Van also stewards the Supercade Collection, one of the most significant private collections of arcade and home gaming systems, computers, important industry artifacts, documents, and videogame-inspired artwork.

She has curated and contributed to exhibitions and installations for Epic Games, Beyond the Streets, and Soho House, and is launching a public-facing museum to permanently hold the collections and celebrate the history and future of games.

Art and Artifacts

On view at the exhibition will be a comprehensive archive of first-generation home gaming systems including Odyssey, Atari’s Pong, and myriad rare clones – some playable on vintage era-correct televisions – as well as the Atari VCS playing Video Olympics, Commodore Pet running Pong!, and several early Pong arcade games.

Also included is the two-player immersive experience Acid Pong created by video artist Josh Randall (@robotkid), a psychedelic gaming trip challenging interaction and reaction. Randall embraces the inherent glitchiness of the technology and asks, “What if it was more glitchy?”

Also displayed in the gallery is a selection of prints from Ira Nowinski’s photographic series Bay Area Video Arcades, generously on loan from Stanford University Library. Opening in September is the special exhibition Microsoft Adventure: Applications for Consumer Amusement featuring vintage computers running early Microsoft game software including Olympic Decathlon, Donkey.bas, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Minesweeper and other Windows Entertainment Pack games, and Age of Empires, titles which led to the creation of Microsoft Gaming and development of Xbox.

Coverage from Pasadena Weekly:

“The exhibition helps bring the early days of gaming to life through interactive displays and historical artifacts. Visitors can explore various TV Ping-Pong systems, each representing a key moment in the evolution of video gaming. A standout feature is Josh Randall’s Acid Pong, which embraces the “glitchiness of the technology” and reimagines the classic game with a vivid, sensory experience of Pong.”

Chanin Victor, Reporter @ Pasadena Weekly

Hey There Projects: in sp[a]ce

Curated by Mark Todd and Aaron Smith

Exhibition
Ongoing

Hey There Projects is located near the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. Initiated by intrepid artists and old friends Mark Todd and Aaron Smith, the gallery showcases emerging and established artists in a setting surrounded by vast natural splendor. 

Curators

Mark Todd is an artist, teacher and curator living in Los Angeles. For this exhibition he has brought together a cohesive and eclectic group of local artists whose work signifies the current climate of modern mark making. Much like The Post It Show that he curates each year at Giant Robot Gallery, Mark’s curating style is immensely creative, with a vision for inviting artists and viewers into a space that is as fun as it is insightful and provoking.

Aaron Smith creates thick, colorful oil portraits based on vintage photographs from the Victorian and Edwardian era, which has long fascinated him. For years he has collected vintage photographs of men of the period. To him, these men represent a masculine ideal, if largely a constructed one. Their bearded faces and distinguished attire are spectacular, while their stiff poses and serious expressions belie an existential vulnerability. In each of Smith’s impasto portraits, woozy colors and aggressive surfaces act as a foil to the sitter’s stoic pose, reflecting a giddy ambivalence to nostalgia. This work has found support from a convergence of interrelated subcultures including Neo-Dandyism, Bear Culture, as well as Beard and Mustache Enthusiasts. The artist shares a desire to revel in the exaggeration of masculinity’s archetypes, mining past forms of male identity in an attempt to free them of any heteronormative constraints.

Purchase artwork from Hey There Projects: in sp[a]ce