De Blob: Anarchy, Art and Video Games

Fun, colorful and maybe it has a deeper message.

I don't really play newer video games, but I got the chance to try out De Blob, a Wii game that feels a bit like Mario Sunshine, Sonic the Hedgehog, Kirby and The Tick. De Blob even looks a bit like Tick, doesn't he?
I'm not saying it's original, but it's delightful. The plot is, an evil corporation called INKT has invaded Chroma City and turned the entire place to a colorless, soulless place. Your job is to maneuver De Blob to paint capsules and soak the entire town in color. You rescue citizens from their lifeless, cultureless existence and everyone cheers and music plays and it's great.
The bad guys, the Inkys, they're like Nazi's. Watching cut scenes of them are like old Nazi propaganda films and a less funny, less violent Happy Tree Friends. But it's an interesting perspective to have on fascism, at least for a video game -- that government is uncreative and soulless and the best way to fight back is ART.
There's even the Church of Inktology (which you destroy and turn into a skatepark), a thin veil for religious commentary or maybe just attacks on Scientology, but I don't see much difference.
Yes, it's a game about Anarchy and graffiti and it's marketed for kids. I think this is spectacular. My brothers and sisters who own it will maybe grow up thinking for themselves. Or maybe not. They don't read into much.
And that's half the reason I don't play newer video games -- there's nothing to read into. There were some bizarre, troubling morals in the games I played as a kid, like Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening, Metroid and Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but at least there was something. There's nothing anymore. Halo? Please. All those stupid WWII games? Yeah right, not even a "don't join the army" warning. Even the newer Zeldas and Marios are vapid.
But De Blob is an exception. A beautiful exception.

If I had a Wii, I'd buy it.

Tao

I went to a theme park yesterday. I hate the plasticity and forced fun of theme parks. Being strapped into a contraption that moves too fast or too slow doesn't scare me and it doesn't make me sick. I almost wish it did, because then waiting four hours to ride the Big Fat Whatever would actually be fun. The most fun I had the whole day was carving my name into the fiberglass seats I chained myself into.

When we left the park, my family and I went to Concord for dinner at some place called Margaritas. It was Mexican food, in the sense of deaf people singing and the restaurant used to be a jailhouse, so some of the booths were jail cells.

Anyway, I promptly ditched my family to take a walk around Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. I started taking pictures of street art that was everywhere. Behind a fancy restaurant, a waiter was smoking. He watched me bound, literally bounce, up to a wall of sticker graffiti.

Graffiti turns me on. I mean, when I was watching the Departed, I noticed graffiti and wanted to travel to Boston just to see it for myself, if it's even not still there. It doesn't matter if it's just scribbles or an entire mural or just a sticker, I love it.

I one day realized I was just getting excited about art, nothing more. That made me happier. Graffiti is just different from what's hanging in a gallery. It's free, in multiple senses of the word. It's not following some curator's rules and it is done by people just like me. More importantly, it is done by people nothing like me. I experience so much and take in so much from it. It's far from an eyesore, it's eye candy.

It is the most pure and amazing type of art.

Anyway, as I was snapping this picture, the waiter asked what I was up to. I told him about my obsession with street art and he smiled. Said he used to be into that kind of shit too. He said he personally hated the sticker variety because it was so easy to do. I wanted to refute that the message is more important than the medium, but I bit my tongue.

He told me the best place to find some street art. I grinned and shook his hand and before I ran off, I asked his name. Tao, he said.

I found the place he was talking about. I climbed up onto the roof of an abandoned thrift store to get the shot I wanted. I was expecting beautiful, colorful murals, but what I discovered wasn't much. It's entirely possible that Tao did them himself, but they weren't bad. Still, I was loving many of the stickers I found. I adored exploring the city. Getting lost. Becoming one with the pavement and surrounded by people.

I still appreciated Tao's directions. I like strangers. They can be wonderful.

I returned to my family and ate crappy Hispanic food, but didn't tell them where I went. It was my secret.

Day Twenty Three: Cradle

Notes on the Wall

April fools? Art is like a joke and if you explain the punchline, the work loses integrity.
I'm sorry if my jokes are a little too vague or sophisticated.
Or illegal.

Embrace it or reject it, but my generation's art movement is street art. It doesn't need your approval to be considered art. It doesn't need a fancy gallery to be considered art. It doesn't need fame or fortune or identity to be considered art. It only needs a wall.


Street art is not about following the rules. It is not about me me me. It is about you you you. If they don't like my work, they paint over it. If they do, they are not charged an admission to see it. I risk jail time to show them my work, some would say, truly suffer for it. Not for me, for you.

Don't even call it art.


These are some examples of my street art and the responses from other artists. I don't know who they are. But I think this is all immensely amusing.

This is some of the first graffiti I ever did. It took me standing on a row of bike racks, barely aiming. The stencil was upside down and soon as the paint was applied my friend Ninja and I crossed the street. A security guard showed up and started screaming into a radio that we were just there. That's the closest I've ever been to getting caught.

The red eyes are still there, as of this date. The real "eyesore" is the fact that this wall was boring white and hadn't been painted over in some years. Notice the peeling. I made it look much better in my opinion.
It wasn't until recently that someone, a much better stencilist than I added "SORE" to the end, making pun of my art and possibly making fun of me. I don't mind, because it amuses me.

The argument still goes on, is graffiti art or vandalism? I decided I don't care. It is what it is. So I made stencils that claim: "THIS IS ART", "THIS IS NOT". I finally understand what the FREE ART? wheatpaster was trying to say.
It was clever to do, and then ZEAL/LABOR tagged underneath, as if to agree with my sentiment. It made my day.


Good things come in threes, but I only have two examples. I haven't done much stenciling in a coupla months. In any case, I feel as if I am communicating with my environment and people around me, albeit sarcastically, illegally and unintentionally. That's really what this movement is about. So what if I created an "eyesore"? I created much more than that in the process.
I'll leave the rest for you to interpret. That's your job.