Our logo is inspired by Cory Arcangel’s 2002 work, titled “Super Mario Clouds”. One of the earliest examples of multimedia arts, it is created by hacking a Super Mario cartridge, and erasing everything except the clouds. You can see the resulting video here and in its actual installation form here. It can be interpreted at various levels. At one level, it’s a nod to a previous aesthetic tradition in painting, exemplified by cloud studies of British painters Constable and Turner. But obviously, Arcangel revises the tradition and its aesthetic values in light of the capabilities afforded by contemporary technologies. In this way, the work also challenges traditional values by framing aspects of video games as legitimate works of art, on par with works on traditional media like painting. Challenging and revising values also emerge at a social and political level, insofar as Arcangel hacks into and modifies a supposedly proprietary artifact belonging to a big tech company in order to align it with other social, aesthetic and personal aims and use cases.
Sina Fazelpour 