Historic Video Game Now Playing at New York's Museum of Modern Art

Forty years after its first exhibition "Mike Builds A Shelter" is introduced to new players.

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, June 15, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is exhibiting Mike Builds a Shelter, a pioneering art videogame from 1983.

Mike Builds a Shelter is a collaboration between game artist Dov Jacobson and renowned performance artist Michael Smith, with programming by high-school student Reza Keshavarz. It was exhibited at the New Museum (NY) in 1983 as part of Michael Smith’s installation, Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar. Museum-goers fed in quarters to play the game. The New York Times hailed it then as “the first videogame as fine art”.

The game explores the theme of nuclear anxiety and the absurdity of fallout shelter logic. The player, as Mike, must build a shelter in his basement before the atomic bombs drop. He climbs up stairs and stumbles back down carrying one cinder block at a time. Meanwhile the air raid sirens get progressively more intense. But, reflecting nuclear war, the game is deliberately unwinnable. Before setting the last block , the player witnesses a flash and sees the city (with its Twin Towers) go up in flames outside Mike’s window and on his TV screen.
Game Over.

Mike Builds a Shelter plays on a full-size arcade cabinet with a commercial joystick and a functional coin acceptor. It was restored in 2008 by digital art conservator Paul Slocum.

It is now part of MoMA’s permanent Media and Performance Art collection, curated by Stuart Comer. Comer encountered the game and Michael Smith’s Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar installation at the 2014 Frieze Fair London, where they were exhibited by Dan Gunn Galleries.

The game and installation are on display on the second floor of MoMa, in Gallery 204, through the end of 2024.
More information is at www.moma.org.


Mike Sprite - Animated GIF
Videogame in Cabinet
More Graphics


Artist bios:
Dov Jacobson: https://dov.jacobson.net/cv.html
Michael Smith: http://www.mikes-world.org/about/mikebio.html



Mixed media
Commodore 64 / emulation hardware
320 x 200 x 16 color
CRT monitor
Painted wood and steel cabinet
Commercial joystick and coin acceptor.

Exhibition History
Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar, Castelli Graphics, 1983
The End of the World, The New Museum, 1983
Messages to The Public, Public Art Fund 1984*
Reset/Play, Arthouse, Jones Center, Austin, 2008
Frieze Art Fair, Focus Section, London, 2014
Mike Builds A Shelter, Light Industries, NY 2015
Video Game Art 1970-2005, And/Or Gallery, Pasadena 2018

*The game’s animated sprites played out on the iconic Times Square Spectacolor Lightboard, ending with the message “Be the last on your block.”

Paul Slocum
AND/OR GALLERY
+1 214-676-5347
paul.slocum@gmail.com

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