Game

Bill Lundberg is a pioneer of video art known for his projections of simulated images into real spaces, which critic Guy Brett has termed “film-sculptures.” He began this work in the early 1970s, using Super 8 film projections to create immersive installations that often turn on humor and metaphor. These projected environments play with cognitive expectations and raise questions about the psychology of looking. 

Game depicts one such scenario. This drawing anticipates an installation of the same name realized at the Creative Research Laboratory in Austin in 2003. The video sculpture comprises dual projections onto a ping-pong table, each showing the hand of an unseen figure engaged in an independent game of ping-pong, with a soundtrack of paddle hits and ball bounces. The lack of synchronization between the two players makes it impossible to follow the balls back and forth across the net, frustrating the spectator’s expectations for the game.

Lundberg is a professor emeritus and founder of the transmedia program in Studio Art at UT Austin.