DANCING-PAD: WAS SO POPULAR, NOW
IT’S ALMOST AN ANTIQUE…
IT’S YOUR LAST CHANCE: THROW AWAY
THE MOUSE, CONNECT THE PAD! EVERYONE
HAS GOT THE SAME FACE IN MY
DREAM, YOUR UGLY FACE IS IN THE
MIRROR OF DEATH… LET’S DANCE, YOUR
LIFE IS ON YOUR FEET!!

// generated by ah_Q, do not modify unbindall
bind UPARROW “+forward”
bind DOWNARROW “+back”
bind LEFTARROW “+left”
bind RIGHTARROW “+right”
bind MOUSE1 “+attack”
bind MOUSE2 “+jump”
bind MWHEELDOWN “weapnext”
bind MWHEELUP “weapprev”
seta timelimit “0”
seta fraglimit “0”
exec ah_Q

Art people might be confused by the above words, but game players—especially Quake players—called Quake’er in China, are very familiar with this kind of program configuration language.

My mother says that I was very quiet when I was a young boy. I was difficult to persuade to go outdoors to play games with the others. I weltered in my closed personal world, drawing, writing, making toys, and playing with different parts of machines I never knew the names of. It was natural that when I got my first TV game console, an 8-bit Nintendo, in the late 1980’s, I enjoyed it so much that I played it day and night. Not only was it the first time I enjoyed the great experience of interaction, it was also a game I could play alone.

After four years traditional education in print making at CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing), I lost my artistic direction. Avant-garde art came and went in China, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. One day in 1992, while I was playing games as I did every day, I suddenly got an idea: since I had always believed art originated from games, why don’t I just bring games back into art? I started to paint screenshots of TV games, recalling all my memories of revolution, education, heroes, machines, actions, and then there was no boundary between game and art!

By the time I got my first Macintosh (LCII) in 1993 I was already a successful painter showing works at the Venice Biennial. On the first night of drawing on the screen with the mouse I didn’t realize how this magic box would change my life. I kept paintings for years, although I was sometimes tired of this media, but in 1996 I had the opportunity to secure my dream machine: the first PowerMac, scanner, laser printer, and the largest Wacom tablet with Director. The original idea for my first interactive piece, My Private Album, was a gift for my parents. I wanted to collect all our family photos and archive them for easy access and security. Soon, however, this idea changed to art, a family documentary could become a sample of humanity research. This was my first interactive installation which was exhibited widely, including at Documenta X in 1997.

When the first public demo of Quake III Arena released in 1999, I was already a experienced game player—especially FPS games such as Doom, Quake, Quake II and Duke. Quake III really caught my imagination; not only because of its unbelievable 3D images, but also because it is the first game I played over the Internet.

I recorded a hundred hours of crazy fighting which became a part of my digital movie, Q3, which is my first artwork based on this game. Q3 is a thrilling story combining a virtual interview between me and a robot from the game, CNN news in RealVideo, and breathless fights. Q4U was invited to be shown at Documenta 11; when the curators’ staff came to my studio in 2000, all I had was just a title. Although I found it possible to modify Quake III, putting myself into the game was hard work. Unlike a gamer’s modification, what I needed to do was find the balance point between commercial game and art world, essential if the work was to be shown as a classic installation in a museum. After working on this nightmare for two years it was to be shown in Kassel, which for the first time in its history would not allow admission to young people under the age of 18. I was pleased because I might turn out to be the first artist with work to download over the Internet.

Ah_Q was the next natural step from Q4U. Dancing pads used to be the most popular toys all over Asia; everybody around me was playing on them. If the secret of Quake is about moving and shooting, why don’t I bring the action back to the feet instead of the hands? A brand new environment—a so-called MAP in Quake - was designed for this work: a flat yard with a huge mirror on a wall under a blood-red sky, so the players could see themselves even as they were being bombed to pieces.

Game technology for art has become more popular recently. Modification is one of the easiest entry points to artists interested in real time interactive arts. Back in 1992 when I started using games as art, people questioned this as an art-form. Now, there is no longer any question about it. My students in the Media Lab at CAFA asked me what exactly “interaction” means. I replied that it could be the technology of communication, but in fact I would prefer to say that it’s a game.