Videogames graced the cover of ARTnews this month with a lovely roundup of all the games-related projects that have been appearing over the last few years. Carolina A. Miranda gave this succinct description of Feng Mengbo’s Long March: Restart (pictured) which closes at PS1 this week.
Clever culture jamming aside, what sets Long March: Restart apart from the average video game is its scale. On view at PS1 through April 4, the game is projected on two screens facing each other, each of which is 53 feet wide and 10 feet tall. As I proceed from one level of the game to the next (there are a total of 14), I have to spin 180 degrees to continue on the wall behind me. This forces me to dance around a gathering crowd of museum visitors while shaking off a determined five-year-old demanding the controller. (Sorry kid, not until I destroy a battalion of scaly extraterrestrials with my arsenal of soft drinks.) A few levels into the game, I’m feeling as frenetic as my bouncing avatar on screen. “You go inside this video game,” says Mengbo. “You don’t sit passively and play it.”