It's something totally mundane in our world that seems instantly out of place in the context of a violent virtual environment. In Ready For Action, a series of short video clips Sheely started making in 2012, we see characters from a variety of action games taking a break from their usual mayhem to wait for buses and subways.
It changed throughout the day to mimic whatever was happening outside the venue. The "sky" visitors saw on the other side was one of several Sheely had carved out of video game scenery. For Skybox, another early piece, he installed a large virtual skylight in the ceiling of a room inside an art gallery. Sheely's work isn't strictly interactive. It spurred him to explore games as a means of expression. It wasn't until college that he encountered people using videogames for art: "You know, really re-interpreting the existing work to communicate something about the medium and about its culture," he says. He was 6 when he started learning the programming language Basic, and he grew up with one foot on each side of the medium-avidly playing games and making them. Sheely discovered videogames at a young age and realized he could bend them to his will shortly thereafter. Sheely specializes in videogame subversions like these, adding to, subtracting from, and remixing familiar interactive titles to help us consider them in new ways. This is Minecraft re-imagined by Kent Sheely, a new-media artist living in New York. Overhead, Walmart's joyless sunburst stretches across a pale blue sky.
The structures around you are built on brands in the most literal sense: Bricks emblazoned with Ikea, 3M, and Enron.
On the horizon, verdant hills are dotted with Shell Oil Company's avatar. Instead of grass, you see the familiar gold-and-green logomark of petroleum behemoth BP. You step out of your shelter and look down at your feet.
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