ARTiculAction Art Review - Special Issuue Aug. 2016 | Page 125

Mark Franz

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Special Issue

created by him or her. I heard somewhere;
maybe it was in a Jared Diamond book,
that indigenous artists described
themselves as not creating the work they
were painting on cave walls, but that their
ancestors were creating it through them.
This idea resonates with me, because I
don’t see people as individual islands of
thought, but rather that what is often
labeled genius or success is a result of a
beautiful combination of events. Similar to
how life itself is a result of hydrogen and
stardust and going through an amazing
and unlikely transformation. In that way, I
wouldn’t describe my personal experience
as an indispensible part of the creative
process, but rather a very small part of a
long chain of events. This perspective, I
think, helps to promote empathy.
Your approach accomplishes an effective
investigation about the relationship
between imagination due to the way the
viewers re-elaborate their personal
substratums due to the references to
Nintendo's original game and the
universal imagery that you subvert to
create an effective non linear narrative.
German multidisciplinary artist Thomas
Demand once stated that "nowadays art
can no longer rely so much on symbolic
strategies and has to probe psychological,
narrative elements within the medium
instead". What is your opinion about it?
And in particular how do you conceive the
narrative for your works?

I think contemporary art and design has a
unique ability to communicate important
social issues. Through the use of the
vehicles of popular art, including film,
video games, interactive applications and
installations, and other media,
psychological strategies come to the
forefront of the creative process. The other
day, John Maeda, one of my personal
design heroes, tweeted “Good design is

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