Earth-Bound
What do video games and 20th century contemporary art have in common? Simple: Roller Coaster Tycoon.
In 1970, artist Robert Smithson recorded himself traversing a spiral of rocks and dirt laid by bulldozer, jutting out over the Great Salt Lake in Rozel Point, Utah. The video footage shows him scrambling along boulders and pushing freshly-laid soil out of the way on his journey into the center of this man-made mini- labyrinth; he called it Spiral Jetty.
Much later in the 20th century, when I was 12 years old, I spent countless hours in the world of a game called Roller Coaster Tycoon, raising and lowering earth tiles, pushing around hills, planting trees, and playing with the game environment. I certainly wasn’t doing it in the hope of creating a work of history-altering art.
