Joe McKay is a recent transplant to the Bay Area. His inventive and alternative computer-based games have been widely exhibited.

Driven by common influences such as technological advances and evolving cultural discourse, artists often invent coincidental worlds. Tonight's program looks at video artists who have pursued a path parallel to the development of video games, whether it was through the navigation of deeper space, haunted imagery, or the quest for engagement. Angelique Clark's 2080 (2004, 4:13 mins) is a Pong-inspired video for humans who are “super deform.” Nicole and Norbert Corsino's Captives (France, 1999, 12 mins) places enthralling choreography within a completely fluid 3-D space. Eddo Stern's Sheik Attack (2000, 16:25 mins) lifts sequences from a half-dozen war games to “misremember” the tragic outcome of a Middle East utopia. Real-world architecture finds itself reinvented as melded structure in Van McElwee's soaring Space Splice (1994, 12 mins). Torsten Burns and Darrin Martin send their performance arena spinning into a conceptual void in the loopy Learning Stalls (2003, 3:30 min. excerpt). In Fred Szymanski's Vent (2004, 8 mins), the emptiness of space is filled with a searing dimensional soundtrack. Finally, weaving together Web-based Bin Laden games in Deathstar (2004, 9:25 mins), Eddo Stern orchestrates a mournful symphony of sadism.