In Rotation 16 | Art of the State 17 | Foodfinds 18 | Fi¬m 20
Reno artist Benjamin Poynter is having trouble getting his point across, and it’s not for lack of a polished, articulate, by Kris Vagner engaging work of art. The question he’s run into is how to distribute his video game, which Apple removed from its offerings less than an hour after he uploaded it to iTunes for purchase. Apple says Poynter violated its terms of use by mentioning a corporation in the game. Poynter says he didn’t violate the terms, as he blocked out the name of the company before submitting the game. Meanwhile, representatives from the art world and the online media have responded with For more information, visit benjaminpoynter.com. concerns about corporate censorship and about the discrepancies between our hunger for foreign-made electronics and the human costs of the cheap labor it takes to produce them.
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RN&R
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NOVEMBER 1, 2012
Poynter, an MFA candidate at the University of Nevada, Reno, designed a game called “In a Permanent Save State.” It’s a tribute to the migrant workers in China who committed suicide in 2010, allegedly in response to working conditions at Foxconn, a factory in China where Apple products are assembled. A January 2012 article in the Guardian gives some background: “In 2010, a total of 18 [workers] in the Shenzhen campus of the Taiwan-owned company did attempt suicide; 14 died. Some employees and labor organizations blamed a combination of factors for the workers’ deaths: low wages, long working hours—sometimes up to 16 hours a day—and inhuman treatment.” In Poynter’s video game, he says, “You play in the afterlife of the workers.” He uploaded it to the iTunes store on Oct. 12. Within an hour, after 53 sales, Apple removed the game.
Holocaust, to a wiggly, hand-drawn hipness that would befit the likes of an iPad ad. The game’s ambient, dark fairytale soundtrack, composed and performed by the Reno Video Game Orchestra, sounds like a score from the world of contemplative, contemporary Asian film. “For me, it was kind of disturbing,” says Stacey Spain about the game. “It was supposed to be.” She’s director of Sierra Arts, where the game and a related exhibit, also called Ben Poynter uses his phone in his “Apple Store.”
PHOTO/ALLISON YOUNG
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Save your soul
Poynter, who started out his artistic career making videos, says he spent about 800 hours on the game, and it shows. When an animated skeleton tries to ascend from a dark, cartoonish underworld to daylight, its rat-in-a-cage anxiety is loud and clear, even on a phone-sized screen. His imagery is at once visually indulgent and darkly, dystopically surreal, seamlessly blending a century-long timeline of aesthetics, from retro-Victorian collage to nearly
