about the project.

AWGTHTGTWTA was inspired by the gaming habits of contemporary kids. The artist worked with teens from Liberty High School and Clinton Middle School to produce a collaborative video with real-time scrolling text-messaging displays to be projected in the Fulton Houses playground. The installation focused on linking the public space of the playground with the preoccupations of its contemporary inhabitants: ideal fantasy worlds, compulsive online gaming, improvisational singing on YouTube, and the chanting of a youth chorus. The audience was invited to interact with the installation by sending text messages that became video subtitles. The artist also wrote text to be performed by the chorus that is edited with found footage from YouTube. The final element of the installation was footage of students performing readings from a creative writing project that describes their images of the future and ideal worlds. AWGTHTGTWTA explored the link between the coding of games and the simultaneously productive and destructive use of creative energy.

about the artist.

Tony Oursler was born in NYC in 1957, where he continues to live and work. He has been making installation and multi-media projects since the 1980s, renowned for his innovative explorations of sculpture and video projection. Oursler has exhibited his works at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Whitney Museum in NYC, the Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A. He also participated in Documenta 8, 9, 10 in Kassel, Germany. He is currently represented by New York’s Metro Pictures Gallery.

To learn more visit: www.tonyoursler.com