Pokémon... it's not cute by accident.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have heard of Pokémon Go.  You’ve probably seen people playing it in the streets too – hunting and capturing cute bug-eyed creatures, and collecting potions, eggs and balls from the Pokéstops that dot our parks and streets.  15 million people downloaded the augmented reality game in the first week of its release last month.   Thanks in part to the media frenzy, the game has achieved almost mythical status.  Naysayers like to quote the car crashes by distracted gamers, muggings at Pokéstops, and people falling over objects, walking off cliffs etc. etc. The pro camp cites the number of people getting out into the world, away from the couch and the telly (although from personal experience, if you sit on the couch long enough the Pokémons come to you). Friendships flourish among the hunters, who bond over the shared goal of seeking and collecting digital creatures. 

Proof that you don’t have to leave the couch.  The Pokémons will come to you. Originally posted on Instagram @stealthpooch 

Obviously, I’m not a hater, but I’m not obsessed either.  Call me a semi-enthusiastic dabbler.  I like the thrill of the hunt, and I’m a user of other geo-location activities, like the games Ingress and Munzee, as well as the more grounded Geocaching, orienteering and rogaining.  With the exception of Munzee, I’d say that these other platforms are just as, if not more, enjoyable than Pokémon Go.  So why has Pokémon Go received so much more attention? 

One obvious answer is that Pokémon is a well-known franchise. Pikachu appears on our cereal boxes, on our TV screens, and even on the sides of planes.  Pokémon cards have been traded in Australian schoolyards since the 1990s, which means gen Y is not only familiar with Pokémon characters, but have a great deal affection for these cute creatures.   The original Gameboy game from the mid-90s had a similar basic premise: hunt the Pokémons for points (although in the original there’s an endgame: you train your captured Pokémons for the ultimate battle with the Elite Four - but that’s another article).  The Gameboy Pokémons were pixelated and black and white - far from the brightly-coloured creatures of today’s game - but it appealed to the part of us that likes to collect, explore, collect and collect some more.

However, Pokémon Go’s popularity cannot be explained brand saturation alone.  Nor is it solely due to the novelty of having our surrounding environment turned into magical hubs, or the human urge to collect and classify.  Collecting and problem solving is a key part of Munzee, but its interface is based on scanning boring old QR codes. Similarly, Ingress turns our surrounding environment into a web of portals: sites of battle and exchange. Ingress has a dedicated community, but its mass appeal is limited by the complexity of the game and the rather hostile machine-aesthetic graphics (I always think of the 90s movie Hackers when I open Ingress). 

Essentially, I think the popularity of Pokémon Go is largely about aesthetics.  Pokémon is cute and humans like cute.  This isn’t just a learned-in-the-schoolyard-over-obsessive-card-swapping thing either.  Humans are naturally attracted to and want to care for animals with juvenile features - ‘cute’ features - such as large eyes, large foreheads and retreating chins.  Within the Pokémon universe, even the most hostile animals are manipulated for appeal.  The snake, Ekans, for instance, has an unusually stunted snout, making it appear cuter than a snake ever should.  And don’t get me started on the mouse, Pikachu.  Pokémon Go therefore has hit on a winning combo, appealing to our biological attraction to cute, our urge to collect and classify, the novelty of augmented reality gaming on a widely used platform, existing brand awareness, and, of course, a significant leg up from the media. 

"Humans feel affection for animals with juvenile features: large eyes, bulging craniums, retreating chins (left column). 

Small-eyed, long-snouted animals (right column) do not elicit the same response." 

Drawn by Ephert from a diagram diagram in "Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, vol. II" by Konrad Lorenz. 

Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0

We have also convinced ourselves that Pokémon Go is somehow a healthy game, a morally acceptable game.  I don’t know how many friendships or social encounters have really been facilitated by the game, but my dog has definitely benefited.  The dog park and oval at the end of my street seems to be quite a hub for all things Pokémon.  There’s a ‘gym’ at the seniors centre (no joke), and multiple Pokéstops.   There are few lights in the park and, at this time of the year when our nights are long and cold, there are also very few people.  Since Pokémon was released, however, the park is filled with ‘fairy lights’, as groups of people (and their dogs) chase elusive Pokémon, phone screens glowing.  For the first time in memory, I’ve been happy to take the dog there at night, rather than sticking to the safe, brightly lit streets.   Whatever the reason for its popularity, I hope it lasts if only for my big-eyed dog’s sake.

This article was originally published in the August edition of Warp Magazine, 2016.

Future Pass and Cracked Culture at the Venice Biennale

Courtyard in the Abbazia, Future Pass

Yoshitomo Nara, Future Pass

In this post I want to discuss the exhibitions Future Pass: From Asia to the World and Cracked Culture? The Quest for Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art, both satellite exhibitions to the Venice Biennale.  However, the emphasis is going to be more on Future Pass – I’ve just included a brief comment on Cracked Culture because I found the links between the two quite interesting.  Both exhibitions distinguish their curatorial strategy as being from an Asian or Chinese, respectively, point of view.  However, while the catalogue and didactic texts (of Cracked Culture, in particular), implied that this ‘different perspective’ would present quite a different exhibition to shows imagined by ‘investors and curators in the west’ (Cracked Culture catalogue), both Future Pass and Cracked Culture showcased the same familiar artists, styles, and iconography that I see in, say, Australia’s Asia Pacific Triennials.

Kwon Kisoo, in Future Pass

In the garden, Cracked Culture

The thing that surprised me the most about Future Pass was the proliferation of cute.  If I’d read the short catalogue beforehand, I no doubt would have been more surprised. The curatorial statement is incredibly serious, which seems at odds to a lot of the seemingly depthless artwork on display.  The exhibition is spread over two locations: Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana in Cannaregio, and Abbazia di San Gregorio in Dorsoduro, and each location has a number of dichotomous themes.  The Palazzo hosts the ‘Virtual/Real’, and ‘Cosplay’ [is Cosplay dichotomous in itself?], and the Abbazia focuses on ‘East/West’, ‘Past/Future’, ‘Yin/Yang’, ‘Universe/Self’.  Because I hadn’t read the catalogue beforehand (which is normal for me), I didn’t realise that the curators had based the exhibition on such sober concepts, and even after flicking through the large number of photos I took during my visit, I still can’t quite resolve the relationship between the artworks and the above mentioned philosophical notions.  

Chang Chia-Ying

Future Pass seemed overly painting heavy.  The sculptures tended to be shiny, finished, and acrylic.  Most works were self-contained, which was a departure from so many of the Biennale exhibitions that appear to favour installation or performance, ie. more immersive works of art.  The emphasis on figuration was also noticeable, mostly human figures or cute robotic shapes, anime-like figures, cartoons (including a few Disney character pastiches – something that I think was exhausted a long time ago).  

Lelya Borisenko

Angelo Volpe

Luo Dan

Chen Hongzhu

Kaikai Kiki (Chiho Aoshima)

Aldo Lanzini

Joyce Ho & Craig Quintero

at the Abbazia

Sometimes it’s good to make the viewer work a little, but there was little ambiguity in most of these works.  I felt spoon-fed. 

Palazzo

Mapi Gill

Mapi Gill

The works that I found the most interesting were those that had some relationship to their surroundings, something that happened more in the Palazzo than the Abbazia.  Without reading the catalogue, I was a little unsure whether the heads of the frescos slightly visible above the Mapi Gill paintings were deliberate.  I’m still not 100% sure, but I hope it was. Shy Gong’s Baby Angel was obviously deliberately placed against the ornate wall decorations.  It probably would’ve looked better with a more creative plinth or other presentation, but I enjoyed the relationship between the site and ‘angel’. 

Shy Gong

The rest of the works didn’t have enough of a dialogue with the palazzo to warrant the curators' strong reference to the ‘white cube’ in the catalogue.  They declare that the ‘contemporary artworks interact with, and sometimes almost seamlessly blend into, the historic buildings in which they are installed’.  Yet it seemed that most of the works sat in these buildings despite their historicism; they were plonked, not placed in any meaningful relationship to the space.  I found myself reflecting on the New Zealand Pavilion exhibition I saw in the same Palazzo at the 2009 Biennale: Francis Upritchard’s beautifully fragile figures.  They weren’t site-specific, but they sat in the space harmoniously, the elaborate surroundings subtly influencing the reading of the works.  Unlike most of the Future Pass works, Upritchard's figures worked with, not against, their surroundings.  It’s no doubt tricky to show works of art in such semiotically loaded spaces as the Palazzo, and I’ve noticed so far that almost no artworks at the Biennale attempt site-specificity (a wasted opportunity in my opinion), but when it’s stated in the catalogue that there is a deliberate ‘interaction’, it’s even more disappointing when the promise is not carried through. 

Francis Upritchard at the 2009 Venice Biennale

Cracked Culture exhibition

I sought out Cracked Culture in the back streets of Dorsoduro, because I have a particular interest in Mainland Chinese art, having studied in China.  I was disappointed in the works, and I found it difficult to swallow the strong statement of difference mentioned at the beginning of this post.  The work with water spewing out of a McDonald’s arch into a blow-up paddle pool, for instance, was about as predictable as the Mickey Mouse pastiches in Future Pass.   

However, there were a few works that I really enjoyed in Cracked Culture, such as the video projected on a pile of the university’s chairs (the exhibition was spread over two university art campuses), and the flattened fire hydrants sitting in the stairwell, although I found the absence of labels for these two works odd (the opposite problem to Future Pass’s invasive labelling habit).  I was also amused at the ‘exhibition continues’ arrows that lead to a seemingly empty classroom.  Were the confused visitors looking around the room part of an obscure performance artwork? 

a lovely label obscuring Wen San Su's chair, Future Pass

 Overall, Future Pass and Cracked Culture showcase an absurd number of artworks between them (Future Pass, for instance, had 106 artists participate).  Yet at the end of the day (literally.  It takes almost a day to cover all four locations), I felt like I could probably count the number of artworks I vaguely enjoyed on both hands.  Maybe I don’t get it, maybe you need to be ‘into’ cute to appreciate the Future Pass works, but basically, I found it difficult to swallow the hyperbole.  I wish the exhibitions had lived up to their promise. 

Grand Canal rabbit, or officially Fishing Rabbit by No2good, Future Pass