Visual Arts

Mario’s life began in 1981 as the main character Jumpman in cult game Donkey Kong, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and originally named Mr. Video for planned recurring roles in multiple games. However, he was renamed Mario after the landlord of Nintendo’s US warehouse, Mario Segale, whom they owed rent to and resembled the character — a move Miyamoto said saved the character from disappearing off the face of the earth. As the most famous videogame star, Mario has appeared in countless computer/TV games, TV series, cartoons, animated films and comic books with worldwide distribution. With his famous cap and mustache that were in fact specifically designed to cover up graphical limitations of animating hair and facial expressions back in the day, there is no doubt the pudgy plumber from Super Mario Bros serves as a legendary icon of video games all over the world.

Taking time to recall a familiar sight from our daily lives: people playing hand-held games everywhere — it’s reached the point where those mini-machines are in fact playing with us, or even playing us. They serve as a universal communication hub, dragging us into the virtual world, where the question of “reality” is a constant debate — how, why and when have we become so addicted to it?

People often speak of art as an unreachable realm; but if we looked at art through video games, what we could we see? Through this project – MARIO VIVA – Microwave would like to use this iconic game character as a starter for the public to taste the fun of interactive media artworks, and at the same time, explore the social and cultural phenomenon that runs deep in our society today.