Information
Technology
Descriptions & Essays
Triggerhappy is a gallery installation whose format will be familiar to anyone who has encountered that early arcade game, Space Invaders combining an absurd quest for information with an old-fashioned shoot-em-up computer game. In this, it accurately reflects, and comments upon, the electronic environment in which we live, work and play. "In effect", the artists say, "triggerhappy becomes a folly. A self-defeating environment looking at the relationship between hypertext, authorship and the individual." They cleverly recontextualise existing representations and subject them to active manipulation on the part of the viewer, who becomes an unwitting participant in a meaningless game of "info-war".
"[In Trigger Happy] ..It is crucial that [Thomson & Craighead] don"t merely combine the two visual elements - space invader iconography and theoretical text - without the more spiked combination of two purportedly antithetical modes of attention. They use the thrill of actually playing the game to complicate further the theoretical point being made as you try to kill the "death of the author" text before it gets you."
Literature
Archer, Michael and Julian Stallabrass. Thomson and Craighead Minigraph. London, UK: Film and Video Umbrella, 2005.
Exhibitions & Events