Interactive Work
Aside from the artist’s gallery work, Ritchie’s investigation of New Media has further developed his universal narrative into the interactive realm. In 2001, Ritchie was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to be a part of e.space, which was created to examine art forms that can only exist on the World Wide Web. Ritchie, along with six other artists: Erik Adigard, Lynn Hershman, Yael Kanarek, Mark Napier, Thomson & Craighead, and Julia Scher, created stories that could only be told through the computer screen. Before his collaboration with the SFMOMA, Ritchie developed his first interactive piece in 1996 with the help of äda 'web, a research and development platform that services artists in order to create online interactive projects. In his piece titled, The Hard Way, Ritchie combines several of his previous projects into an interactive site that allow the viewer to navigate through the website, experiencing the narrative by following Ritchie’s imagined avatars that represent infamous personality traits that can be found throughout our own history. Through his text, drawings, and computer-animated realms, The Hard Way serves as a prequel to his piece with the SFMOMA, titled, The New Place. The New Place was created in 2001, and is entwined with Ritchie’s larger project, Proposition Player. The New Place includes mediums outside the web, using sculpture, painting, computer games, and other forms that are not yet defined in this “very large cross-media plan,” serving as a trailer of sorts, previewing things to come. The Proposition Player was created in 2003 for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. This piece explores Ritchie’s thoughts on gambling and quantum mechanics, and the illusions that come along with the elements of chance and risk. Ritchie explains the motive behind this piece here in his 2005 interview with Art: 21: “It’s about the idea that in the moment between placing your bet and the result of the bet there is a kind of infinite freedom because all the possibilities are there. "You may already be a winner!" It’s fantastic—you’re like a god! Everything opens up.” This exhibition asked the audience to take part, and “play” Ritchie’s invented game. Visitors were given a playing card by the exhibition guard, in which they would use to take part within Ritchie’s proposition game. Outside of the exhibition’s context, these cards could function as a usable deck of cards, since hey attribute all of the traditional suits, even including the joker. But in Ritchie’s context, each card symbolized one of the 49 characteristics that Ritchie used to create a story that described the evolution of the entire universe.
Read more about this topic: Matthew Ritchie
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