Screenshot from Monument Valley

In an upcoming article for my School Arts Magazine column, I interview game designer and artist Ken Wong about video games as art.  If you haven't played his ridiculously addictive and beautiful iOS/android game Monument Valley yet, it definitively ends any debate as to whether or not video games can be considered art.  With very little instruction, you can wander around beautiful Escher-esque (also very Escher-iffic) architectural curiosities and find your way through a fascinating and changing maze that defies any adherence to gravity or perspective- but is incorporates a new imaginative logical process.  There can be no question, in the design of this game, the artist is present.

Which brings me to the 8-Bit game version of Marina Abromovic's The Artist is Present by artist/game designer Pippin Barr.  In this game you get to visit the artist at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as per her recent 'performance' piece.

......yawn.

Unfortunately for me, I'm on Shanghai Time, so every time I try to enter the museum in the game, it's closed.  I've been virtually sitting outside the Museum for 3 days now.  Maybe those of you in and around East Coast time will have more luck.