When I saw the display of the Super Mario clouds in the Whitney Museum, I immediately recognized it, but did not understand the significance of just having the clouds there. I thought it was perhaps a reference back to the start of gaming taking off. After watching the video, it is surprising to see how much history lies behind this work, with the advent of ROM hacking and what this implied about privacy of code.

The narrator pointed out the holes in Arcangel’s story of how he had used the original Mario Cart to extract the clouds. What was strange to me throughout the video was how obvious these mistakes were. For example, the difference in the blue color between Arcangel’s and the real mario cart is very noticeable. Also, he pointed out the way he removed the PRG with clippers destroys the mask rom, and his use of the number 37 instead of 38 to display the clouds. If Arcangel was making a whole how-to tutorial on how to do this, you would think he would be sure that there were no mistakes. There are also many references to Arcangel’s work on the mario clouds, and from what I could gather from the video it seems they were just bypassing these mistakes.

This video made me think about how things can be manipulated in this field when it is all about delivery of a final product. It also made me wonder why it was so significant to able to manipulate an original work, not just make a copy of it. Overall, it seems the use of rom hacking can take someone’s work to be used in a way they had not intended it for, bus also build off another’s creativity when inspired.

When I first saw this video installation in the Whitney Museum of American Art, I didn’t pay a lot of attention it, because I thought it’s just an artwork showing one iconic element in Super Mario. I didn’t even take a look at the description, but I did take a photo of it. What firstly surprises me is that this is actually not made by Ninetndo but Cory Arcangel, who describes Super Mario Clouds as “an old Mario Brothers cartridge which I modified to erase everything but the clouds.” In order to create this cloud, he hacked Nintendo’s NES game console and manipulated both hardware and software. To me, I don’t think it’s a hacking process. Especially after watching the video “Everything but the Clouds” by Patrick LeMieux, I see a slightly difference between this two version clouds. They just seem similar based on their image, but if you look deep into their process, you can’t actually tell these two are the same thing. Lastly, I would say that this is a kind of artwork by a remixing process.

Super Mario Clouds is the work of said to be hacking by ArcAngel. It has become an iconic piece of modified game art and pop art. He attained a copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros and removed all the elements of the games except for the moving clouds. However, while he claimed to have hacked the game, which he highlights as having “no generational lost” in the final product for viewers, further insight into the programming behind Super Mario Clouds shows that ArcAngel didn’t just leave the clouds alone. There’s a change in color palette that is notably unlike what Nintendo would’ve used and a closer look at the coding behind the cloud shape reveals a small change. Patrick LeMieux’s remaking of Super Mario Clouds reveals the difference between ArcAngel’s piece and if the original game was really stripped away of everything but the clouds. If ArcAngel’s Super Mario Clouds was really meant to be an authentic hack of Super Mario Bros, the detail of the coin at sprite zero would’ve had to remain such as in LeMieux’s Coin Heaven. This casts doubt on how much of Super Mario Clouds really is a Rom hack.

I think that the nostalgia given to Super Mario Clouds by saying it’s a Rom hack brings part of the attention to the piece, but on its own, its a homebrew take on a simple element of the game that emphasizes the actual art of it. The claim of a direct representation of the original game builds its appeal, however, I still like how stand alone it is as a work of pop art.

Super Mario Clouds is a work of art, created by Cory Arcangel that depicted the clouds from Super Mario Brothers scrolling across the screen. As Cory Arcangel claimed, these clouds have been unaltered and merely isolated from all the other sprites through hacking into a cartridge of Super Mario Brothers. However, this claim has been disputed by Patrick leMieux, who argues that the clouds in Super Mario Clouds are not authentically from the video game.

 

With the evidence he presents, he makes a pretty pressing case against the authenticity in Super Mario Clouds. It’s immediately apparent from the differing shapes in the clouds, but reinforced when taking apart the data behind the renders. If so, I believe that it undermines the value of Archangels work. As he intended, the point he makes to accentuate the iconicness of these clouds should still stand, as it is their general form that is required to make the point as he wished to. However, when I saw this, it wasn’t that point that made it memorable to me. I wasn’t able to identify the clouds as specifically coming from Super Mario Brothers, so it didn’t seem like a very strong point to me. Rather it was he fact that they were elicited from a NES cartridge that piqued my interest. There was a certain Pop Art appeal to it, as leMieux identified. However, unlike cans of soup or cracker boxes, Super Mario Clouds have been recreated and remixed over and over again, so without the authenticity, nothing really separates this art from sprite sheets on google images.

I find the reproduction leMieux made to be quite interesting. He’s able to subvert the meaning in Super Mario Clouds to create a work that demonstrates the immovable presence of certain elements such as money in our ideals.

Recall that when I saw Super Mario Clouds piece on the Whitney Muesum field trip, it became my favorite piece as it reminds me about my childhood and all the happy time i have had. The work was claimed as created by “hacking” a cartridge of Super Mario Brothers, the original version of the blockbuster Nintendo video game. I believed it, because even though there was only cloud randomly came up in the frame, it still make me think about the entire game. I was amazed by how the work present the game in such an abstract way. 

However, the documentary we watched this week doubts the process of this work. Lemieux’s reverse engineer of the super mario clouds proves that the code of this work is actually different from the original game. Lemieux used the ROM hacking process described by Arcangel, trying to get a same result; however, the coin could not be erased. This result was quite interesting to me. I have no idea why artist Arcangel would claim that he erased everything but cloud when the process is actually different. However, there is possibility of Arcangel telling the truth. It might because that Lemieux did not figure out the way to erase the coin, or Arcangel’s work was actually an accident, but a good accident. 

When I saw the Super Mario Clouds piece at the Whitney, I thought the single TV screen with clouds looked cool. It was less attention grabbing and “quieter” than the other works at the exhibit. The clouds looked familiar, but it was only when I read the description did I realize that it was from Super Mario. The idea of taking something that already exists, simplifying it and turning into art is not a new one. It was interesting to see this idea implemented with the game medium, and I wonder how easily it must have been for experienced players of Super Mario to recognize the games only by seeing the clouds.

In the video Everything but the Clouds, Patrick LeMieux, followed Cory ArcAngel’s process to recreate the Super Mario Clouds and could not erase the coins. This ends up creating a new concept/art piece based on an art piece that someone else created, that was based on another piece of art (yes, I do consider games a form of art). This never ending cycle can continue on and on until an art piece form no longer resemble the original, and this also represents how art in general, is made. Artists take inspiration from each other’s work, which itself was inspired by someone/something else.

 

Super Mario Clouds

I wrote my last research post on this work, as it captured my attention as soon as I walked into the Whitney exhibition. Before watching this documentary, I knew that this piece is said to be made by hacking the game console of Super Mario. But after watching the video, I was shocked by the result of this reverse engineering.

Arcangel claims that there’s no generation lost because it’s the exact same image but it’s also not copying because the code was never copied or altered. But looking at the code, there are actually a lot of differences comparing to the original codes in the game. The color and saturation did not match the original either. Therefore, critiques are suspicious of whether Arcangel actually hacked into the console or coded it himself. This lead to Lemieux’s reverse engineer of the super mario clouds by using the ROM hacking process described by Arcangel. He realized that the coin at sprite zero could not be erased, suggesting that the Super Mario ROM was not contained in Arcangel’s work.

I was genuinely shocked by the result because during the research process of my last post, all the websites described Arcangel’s work as “made by ROM hacking”. It’s sounds so believable since the process is described so thoroughly and it seems very simple and doable. Therefore, the reverse engineering of the game really made me rethink everything. I don’t quite understand why Arcangel would claim that he hacked into the ROM when he didn’t. But I think reverse engineering is definitely a good way to test out what might be wrong.

When first seeing Cory ArcAngel’s Super Mario Clouds piece, I first was like okay this is just a piece of software that was already made for an old game and it was changed and motified by Arcangel. What more can there be to something that anyone who has the tools to do it does it? well after watching the short documentary on this project, It made me think a bit differently about ArcAngel’s work and the meaning of it. This type of work that has been done for Super Mario Clouds piece is not just hacking it is more than that it is an exploration that brings you to problem solving, engineering, and creativity, and there for has be come a a form of art. It inspired many others to follow this sort of art that allows people to be creative and make many different things which makes these types of work sound cool and amazing because you can use something that was already made whether it is old or new and do something more with it. I really like video games and it is cool to find out that these types of things can be concerned pop art.

Super Mario Clouds is an old Mario Brothers cartridge which the artist modified to erase everything but the clouds. The video quotes words from Michel Foucault: “A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity.” This challenges the definition of authenticity in terms of art. The artist of Super Mario Clouds mentions that he did not touch the graphics from the original cartridge. So there is no generation loss and no “copying”, because he “did not even have to make a copy”. The color and shape of clouds are not exactly the same. This is interesting because it reminds people of Mario Brothers and yet is claimed to preserve its own originality.

This video documents the history of Super Mario Clouds and demonstrates the results of the video creator’s own attempt to “erase everything but the clouds,” a ROM hacking exercise that produces a different game altogether. 

The video reminds me to be always aware of my final project’s originality, while learning from similar projects as well. And I should always document my work truthfully so that people can gain an accurate understanding of my work.

Fin De Siecle II is a huge wall with a lot of screens on it. On the screens, there are broadcast TV programs, computational art and conceptual art playing concurrently. It attracted my attention because of its monumental size. I found it interesting because there are a lot of things going on at the same time on this screen. And although content varies from screen to screen, it looks harmonious as a whole. And it makes me curious about information and emotions conveyed on each screen. After visiting the museum, I researched on the artwork and found out that: the creator Nam June Paik liberates the moving images, which include close-up footage of David Bowie’s face and choreography performed by both a human dancer and the schematic outline of one, from their original contexts. The work reflects how programming saturates and shapes our world. In this case, programming is applied to media content. It helps to structure and transmit such content.

This artwork called Dance is created in 1979. When I saw it, I was attracted by its music and the movement of the dancers. Drawings on the floor are projected. And they reflect the movement of the dancers on the screen. They are colored based on design of each part. After visiting the exhibition, I did research on these works. They are choreographed by a five-part dance to a score written by Glass. The art piece is to show that there is something similar in terms of approaches by artists when they create art. This is insightful because usually creativity is considered as something subjective and unique. But in fact, there is something common among the creative art pieces.