Jump Heaven Speed Hell, a collection of letterpressed and Xerox posters, 3d prints and glow forge etched pieces; this is the product of work with AI such as Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT and marrying it to classic chance operation (dada/surrealist) and culture jamming/remix processes.
It also builds upon the supposition that most people encounter graphic design is through video game user interfaces and experiences. Along with my Film Posters series in my teaching and practice I believe in using an existing machine or framework to develop new ways to use the machine.
These works use video games and its language as a vehicle to describe the mythic powers and forces that govern us still. In the flicker of fire and shadows on a wall, or the jumping avatar from our favorite game, mythology is still the language that sits under our everyday experience.
“Jump Heaven Speed Hell” comes from a summer of watching speed runs of video games broken apart with hacks, glitches, and tricks. The terms “Jump Heaven” and “Speed Hell” come from what I saw as the two methods of beating a game, dexterity and skill or brute force taking advantage of tricks. There are echoes of Super Mario’s Coin Heaven, a secret reward for investigation, and shooter “bullet hells” in which players have to avoid an almost infinite number of projectiles, any which can kill instantly. When we jump heaven we are leaping over our obstacles, when we speed hell we tank it and press on through. People are daily making their way through their levels, with the pandemic, social and economic unrest; a lot of us are playing on “hard” mode.
Jump Heaven. Speed Hell.
8-bit breviaries and cybermonk aesthetics.
Demigods, patron saints, minibosses, and the big bad.
Magic Lantern shows in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Seeing God behind every 1-Up,
mainlining electrons that make my hand a gun, my heart an engine.
Magic fire music.
I make fire.
Fire burn, fire rage, and be like ghosts.
Shadows cast and in the shadows; forms.
Forms make words; words are magic.
Magic raps. I spit hot fire.
Magic fire music.
Were I to choose an auspicious image for the new millennium, I would choose that one: the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he has the secret of lightness, and that what many consider to be the vitality of the times—noisy, aggressive, revving and roaring—belongs to the realm of death, like a cemetery for rusty old cars.
—Italo Calvino, “Lightness”
