Marco Brambilla | Director I Artist | Creative Exchange I Half Life

Marco Brambilla

The 2002 multi-channel video installation, HalfLife juxtaposes surveillance video of gamers playing the popular video game Counter-Strike with a live video feed of the game world in which they are playing. The player’s expressions are seen from the cross-hairs’ point-of-view while the their virtual actions inside the game-world unfold in a progressively more violent and graphic video spectacle. A virtual cycle of life unfolds as characters are killed off in the game and disappear from the surveillance channel to be immediately replaced by the next player.The HalfLife installation included a third video channel of actual surveillance footage shot in a cyber-café in Garden Grove, California, where video surveillance systems were implemented by the City Council in 2004 to monitor a sudden increase in gang violence. More