As one of the oldest and most celebrated Nintendo video games Super Mario Bros., has been reinterpreted and appropriated by artists and designers an infinite number of times. Works like the real life Mario, minimal Mario, and many others have transformed this figure into a mainstream pop culture icon, tapping into a vast field of creativity even beyond the gaming world.However, most of these interpretations are based on the appropriation of the game’s visual features and development of new interface design.Hong Kong new media artist Keith Lam presented an innovative version of Mario, Moving Mario, in which the game universe perspectives are reversed. These metamorphosis engage the players in a new physical experience with gaming.As we all know, Super Mario Bros., is a time-based narrative game based on the simple concept of navigating Mario horizontally and vertically through his gaming world, always from left to right without being able to walk backwards. This kind of moving image gives the players a general notion of exploring an endless virtual space, the existence of the TV frame is often ignored.Keith breaks down this idea in Moving Mario by fixing a static Mario on a moveable TV set. Instead, of controlling Mario, the hand controller moves the gaming world, flip-flopping the games’s traditional perspective. In this installation, Mario can be moved, but the player must move along with the character and the TV screen to do so. Through this process, players can rethink the relationship between the player and the game, as mobility in the “virtual world” is triggered by physical movement in the real world.This work was an Honorable Mention in the Interactive Arts category at PRIX Ars Electronica 2008.Images courtesy of Keith Lam.
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