You may have already come across the above image whilst perusing the intertrons for gaming goodness. A friend of mine linked me to it a while back and I read about it on a French website. At the time, I thought to myself “why don’t we ever get cool stuff like this in Sydney?” You see, my French is not up to scratch; if it was, I would have read that the artwork was in fact exhibiting in Sydney — just down the road from where I work and study. *facepalm*
What was even more frustrating was the exhibition closed just days before I pitched my story to Good Game about doing a piece on artists inspired by videogames. We could have shot all this amazing footage of Ella Barclay’s Tetris blocks in their intended setting, but we only just missed it. Luckily, her Tetris blocks were still in Sydney in her studio — a quick walk from the ABC!
It was a pleasure interviewing Ella and she was really lovely — she was even cool with me climbing onto the red block and getting myself wedged in the corner. Other artists interviewed included Rebecca Murphy and Tom Langlands — both equally lovely artists who welcomed both myself and the crew into their homes/studios.
I’m really glad my first story for Good Game allowed me to focus on two things I’m passionate about — art and videogames. I know arty things aren’t everyone’s cup of tea and, no doubt, there will be people who won’t like my story very much. A quick look at the GG forums already shows the mixed views that people have about the artists, the artworks, the story, and me. But I’m happy with how things turned out and I can only hope to improve from here.
If you’d like to have a look at the episode in question, you can download it from here. Viewers outside of Australia will have to download the episode as it cannot be streamed.
