High Noon

2011, interactive installation

speakers, cameras, iPhone, modified thermostat, custom computer applications

"On the playful (if still undeniably dark) side of Game Theory is Brent Watanabe's iPhone hooked up to two facing speakers and camouflaged to look like a thermostat on the wall. Every 40 minutes (when the thermostat reads 12:00PM), gunshots ring out between the speakers, and if gallerygoers happen to be standing between them, they get "hit" and the body count is tallied on the "thermostat" on the wall. Some visitors figure it out immediately (and often throw themselves into harm's way, says curator Cable Griffith, enacting their own false deaths), and others never understand why gunshots just seem to go off in the gallery. If no one is hit, you hear the sounds of casings hitting the floor. The game plays for you, with you, without you, against you."

-Jen Graves, The Stranger

Venues

Cornish College of the Arts Main Gallery, Seattle, WA

Reviews

“Games Artists Play”, Jen Graves, The Stranger