A Slow Year

A screenshot from "A Slow Year"
Photo of limited edition of piece

Internal Copies

ELL-W-17-1

Good Condition

Copy published by Free Software Foundation, Inc. on CD-ROM in 1991.

Grigar purchased this copy from Amazon for use in the exhibition at the Modern Language Association 2012 Convention held in Seattle, WA. The work (Version 2.1) is an emulation of a video game originally produced for the Atari game system. CD in the back of book. Contains CD and book of haikus. Haiku book has a hand written label on the cover, a dedication inside the cover, and notes on many pages.

Tested and working on the following operating systems:

    Author(s)

    Ian Bogost

    First Published

    1991

    Original Publisher

    Free Software Foundation, Inc.

    Language

    English

    Description

    "'Video games are actions,' declared Alexander Galloway in a manifesto that stakes out the essential differences between videogames and other forms of expressive culture, such as literature, photography, and cinema. But what about videogames in which action looks like inaction? What about videogames in which action means sitting still? What about a video game that purports to be less a game and more a meditation--a work of literature? .... This game is 'A Slow Year' (2010), designed for the classic Atari 2600 console by Ian Bogost. Comprised of four separate movements matching the four seasons, A Slow Year challenges the dominant mode of action in video games, encouraging ... 'acts of deliberation.' These acts of deliberation transform the core mechanic of games from 'action' (as Galloway would put it) into 'experience'--and not just any experience, but the kind of experience that Walter Benjamin identifies as Erfahrung, an accumulation of meaningful history that stands apart from the more fleeting moments of time in the modern age (Erlebnis) that parade themselves as experience."--Ian Bogost

    External References