{"id":4828,"date":"2017-12-29T07:38:11","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T12:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=4828"},"modified":"2017-12-29T07:43:18","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T12:43:18","slug":"anthony-montuori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2017\/12\/29\/anthony-montuori\/","title":{"rendered":"In Anthony Montuori\u2019s Video Games, You Struggle To Pay Bills, Get Old, And Face The Meaninglessness Of It All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Montuori makes curious video games. On the surface, they resemble the classic fun of 1980s 8-bit games (\u201cI just love the way it looks,\u201d he says)\u2014stacking blocks, jumping around collecting coins, flying a triangle through space. But then things get \u2026 funny. Instead of just racking up points, the games reveal themselves as philosophical riddles or parables or jokes that ask you to question the big, daunting, existential meaning of it all.<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/a>
Anthony Montuori’s 2015 game \u201cSuper Maria.” (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Consider his 2015 game \u201cSuper Maria,\u201d one of six you can play at his exhibition \u201cOne Liner\u201d<\/a> at High Five Arts at 250 Jackson St., fifth floor, Lowell, through Jan. 6, 2018.<\/p>\n

You sit on one of two wooden chairs and play it like an old basement Nintendo. \u201cIt\u2019s literally a copy of \u2018Super Mario,\u2019 the original,\u201d the 31-year-old Melrose resident explains. \u201cIt\u2019s the same pixels. I just changed a few things. You play as her. She lives out her life basically.\u201d You look for coins to pay your bills. You buy various things. \u201cThose items will break and you\u2019ll have to buy them again, over and over forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the game, Maria grows up and lives her life. By about age 60, \u201cshe starts to get old basically. She can\u2019t run or jump or anything,\u201d Montuori says. And \u201cI gave her this dementia thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Montuori\u2019s games can feel like something the pessimistic 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer might have made to help people ponder the dismal chores and pointlessness of life. \u201cThey are very depressing,\u201d Montuori acknowledges. \u201cWhich is weird because I\u2019m not generally a depressed person. I just have a lot of existential dread.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/a>
Anthony Montuori’s exhibition \u201cOne Liner\u201d at High Five Arts in Lowell. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His \u201cThe Adventures of Sisyphus\u201d game has you pushing the legendary rock up the hill, the rock rolling back down, you pushing it up again, and so on forever. \u201cYou\u2019re given a boring useless task that you can\u2019t stop unless you walk away,\u201d Montuori says.<\/p>\n

\u201cDebtris\u201d (2012) is the popular game \u201cTetris\u201d with a small adjustment\u2014instead of earning points, players are laboring to slowly (metaphorically) pay off Montuori\u2019s student loans. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of about the idea that college should be something that the government pays for. You get federal minimum wage for each hour you play \u2018Debtris,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s only been up long enough for people to earn, like, $1,300. Which is kind of sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montuori says, \u201cI just want to keep making seductive, cute video games and keep flipping them on their head and doing subjects you would not think to approach, the existential issues. I think video games treat mortality as such a cute afterthought. \u2026 So I\u2019m making games about not being able to pay your bills and getting old and dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/a>
Anthony Montuori’s 2012 game \u201c\u201cDebtris.” (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\/O\u201d (2017), Montuori explains, is an \u201c\u2018Asteroids\u2019-style game. You fly a little ship in the infinite nothingness of space. \u2026 You have a limited amount of health and eventually you die.\u201d The dead ships become clutter\u2014but also landmarks to help you orient yourself in the vast emptiness. \u201cYour goal is to find this one random coin that is flying around in space, that is meandering, and if you find it your health stops dropping and you live forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is all fine and good \u2026 except what does one do with forever in the vast emptiness? \u201cI give the player a red button to kill yourself. \u2026 Once you have infinite life, you have nothing, you\u2019ve achieved your goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/a>
Anthony Montuori’s exhibition \u201cOne Liner\u201d at High Five Arts in Lowell. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maybe there\u2019s a bit of optimism in Montuori\u2019s game \u201cLong\u201d (2017), which he says is \u201cbasically just \u2018Pong\u2019 in a coffee table and the ball takes 10 to 15 minutes to bounce back and forth. So the people are forced to communicate with each other. \u2026 At the opening, people kind of sat with it and talked to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why I think about these things,\u201d Montuori says. \u201cI think, as human beings, Pandora\u2019s Box is open and you kind of have to think about these things. \u2026 This is how we choose to live our lives and this is how we choose to treat each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montuori adds, \u201cIf life is meaningless, you need to define and create your own meaning. That\u2019s the whole point. That\u2019s what life is\u2014providing your own context for the duration. I find this riddle of existence so weird. So I\u2019m going to keep making work about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help us keep producing our great coverage of local arts by contributing to Wonderland’s Launch Fundraiser<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Montuori makes curious video games. On the surface, they resemble the classic fun of 1980s 8-bit games (\u201cI just love the way it looks,\u201d he says)\u2014stacking blocks, jumping around collecting coins, flying a triangle through space. But then things get \u2026 funny. Instead of just racking up points, the games reveal themselves as philosophical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[188,189,187],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4828"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4839,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4828\/revisions\/4839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}