Text by Patricia Ellis, 2003 from the catalouge ONE WAY IN RULES OF PLAY:

Game Simulation Creator:
Gaming is never about winning. Skins and short cuts are downloadable from the web. Plug-ins are where it’s at. Victory is irrelevant; it says in the instructions how to do it. The new commodity is Experience: constantly upgrading the aspects of control, Personalised Scenario Design. Uploading imagination, sharing it with friends. Danø builds space in tangible virtuality. Programming has never been more mechanical: Vinyl and taped flooring, techno-painted walls, draping fabric ‘screens’, foam, wood, and aluminium animus. Digital plains devised at the hardware store. Grids and stripes stand in for special effects, and low-resolution graphics provoke a trigger-happy promise. It’s a game zone which lies somewhere between virtual technoscape and cocktail bar ambience(4). Where design has everything to do with the ergonomics of alifestyle elite(5). Surface is absolutely everything: Danø has a connoisseurship of the graphic, an affinity with the symbol, a symbiosis with semiotics: ElIsworth Kelly, Walter DeMaria, Lawrence Weiner, eat their hearts out. Danø is lo-budget, lo-fi, user-friendly commodification: Passing the savings on to the viewer(6).

The Inverting Time Generator:
Architecture is the antithesis of speed; it’s about immediate spatial experience, with pretensions of being immortal. Danø treats gallery space like a drive tower: A generic box in which to house a motherboard empire. Entering the space is like stepping into a microcosm: A black hole where time rallies at light-speed in fast forward and rewind at the same time. Danø’s futurism is based in the 80s; but with the safe distance of hindsight and knowing techno-ease of today. It’s a 30-something nostalgia: The warm retro-comfort of Space Invaders, Commodore 64, Max Headroom, and Cold War nuclear threat. The same breeding environment of technological mistrust that made an entire generation regard computer-managed homes, internet dating, ebay, and digital resurrection of dead film stars as second nature. Danø presents a futurism with the chic luxury of confidence: Technology, for him, is a design feature. Implementing his will is a DIY craft work.

Avatar Personalisation:
Danø presents a game/life symbiosis of movies like Tron(7) and War Games(8). The next generation: The Matrix, or Johnny Nmonic, etc. seem boring by comparison: They jack the necessary physicality(9). Danø’s home-made special effects have that retro morality, a tangibility which really means something. The viewer becomes a real-life player in his game: Negotiating the space with mere mortal senses, spotting the hazards, picking up the bonuses, and trying to decipher the impossible rules. Only to discover that there are none. Just a sense of being last in a totalitarian construction, not knowing how to respond to dogmatic iconography, relating all tao well to Mickey Mouse ears, chubby legged strippers, images of machine guns, and tiny dream homes embedded on meteorit rocks of ‘snot’. Trying their best to follow simple, yet conflicting instructions: CHEAT, " EARN, BUY, FUCK, LIE. Technology has no mysteries; we’re already inside the machine, each person a self-styled avatar. It’s a lifestyle that’s truly preferred.

(4) Like, sar, the trendy London bar Sketch – complete willi video-drome beverage lounge and the most sci-fi toilets this side of Japan. 9 Conduit St. London, UK, Wi5 2X9. Reservations to +44 (0)870 7774488.

(5) It’s hard to place your finger on the exact point where Art became lifestyle, but it must be somewhere in the SOs and 60s where surface and spiritualism collided. Maybe blame Bamett Newman for the stripe that incorporates all the wonder of Judo-Christo mysticistn, or Jackson Pollock for the splot that sums up masculine angst. ar Donald Judd who made every cube seem a deeply personal reflection ofthe self. Dr Bridget Riley who brought Fashion and Nature together as One.

(6) Modernism made Art which became logo-istic; Danø takes pure design and passes it off as Art.

(7) Tron, you will recall, was that awesome »in-the-know« geek-flick where a computer programmer shrinks himself down to microchip size to enter a computer hard-drive and play out gladiator-style fight-to-the-death video games (with the genius special effect of a glow in the dark Frisbee) willi defunct programmes controlled by an evil virus. It’s a primitive, ret glorious attempt to humanise the machine, making all the technical components real characters willi Dames like »Bit« and »Ram«. Everything you need to know about Tron at: www. tron-sector.com

(8) A true 80s classic: Two school kids back a top-secret military computer and set off a simulated nuclear war willi the Russians (who don’t know it’s a simulation). The rest ofthe movie is a race against time to find the computer’s creator (and only true friend) and convince him to save the world be engaging the computer in a pacifying game of old-fashioned chess. Available at a video store near you.

(9) Technology may have jumped leaps and bounds – but it’s a drag for the modem movie industry: All those scenes of people typing, or chasing afterthings which can’t be seen, which contain ‘information’ so big and destructive it can’t actually be conceived. Loosing the audience in virtuality usually means loosing the plot altogether: Which is why you usually fall asleep arter the first 10 minutes, or just give in and spend the next hour and a halfbeing awed by special effects. A more run diversion, however, can be found at: www.annoyances.org/exec/show/articleO9-127, an invaluable online service who’ve kindly listed all the technological impossibilities of favourite mainstream movies: Fx. »Why is it that the most relevant information is displayed in a separate window right in the middle of the screen, but there is never an OK button to close it«, or »No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is readable by all computer programmes.« It is a wonder.

Read more about Danø the internet;

www.kopenhagen.dk search Rasmus Danø (all text in Danish)

Kunstforum # 176, Kunst und Spiel 1, Dieter Buchhart; ”Über die Dialektik von Spielregeln und offenem Handkungsfeld”

For more info contact;

SIOFC / Rasmus Danø
H.C. Ørstedsvej 39B 5th. Floor
1879 Frederiksberg / Cph

Tel; +45 2991 7468
e-mail; r.danoe@gmail.com
web; www.siofc.com

Stiller man sig betragtende op ved et trafikknudepunkt og forsøger at begribe folks færden, bliver forvirringen hurtigt total. Der drejes til højre, gås til venstre, cykles ligeud osv. Ingen er tilsyneladende tilfreds med at være hvor de er. Kaotisk skal de altid andre steder hen.

Kunne man hæve sig højt over dette, vil man opdage, at bag det tilsyneladende kaos ligger mønstre. For den enkelte er der som regel en rigtig god grund til at dreje til højre – en plan, der følges.

Konceptuelt set, har Danø med installationerne “shortcut to required human system profile and free credits” og “identity and the matter of real time video stills from the surface of the earth” kastet samme hævede blik på eksistensen med alt hvad den indebærer af identitetsskabelse, systemer, følelser, strategier osv. Hvor life in itself ses fra spillets vinkel. Hvor beskueren bogstaveligt talt går rundt på et enormt spillebræt. Hvor valgmulighederne, umiddelbart og overordnet set, kan synes rigide eller stringente, men kombinationsmulighederne er noget nær uendelige. Et maskespil fuld af givne systemer, snorlige passager, overlapninger, åbninger og støj. Et koncentrat.

Gustaf Gimm