These Brilliant Hacks of GTA and Minecraft Are Pure Art

Artist Kent Sheely's "Resourcefull" mod slaps brand names on Minecraft. Kent Sheely

Artist Kent Sheely's "Resourcefull" mod slaps brand names on Minecraft.

Kent Sheely

An indoor shot of the Enron shrine. Kent Sheely

An indoor shot of the Enron shrine.

Kent Sheely

Sheely specializes in video game subversion. His on-going series Zappers replaces guns in films with Nintendo's orange weapon. Kent Sheely

Sheely specializes in video game subversion. His on-going series Zappers replaces guns in films with Nintendo's orange weapon.

Kent Sheely

Another from the Zappers series. Kent Sheely

Another from the Zappers series.

Kent Sheely

Sheely's breakthrough piece was "Grand Theft Photo," which turned GTA into a photo safari. Kent Sheely

Sheely's breakthrough piece was "Grand Theft Photo," which turned GTA into a photo safari.

Kent Sheely

These are examples of some of the shots gallery visitors snapped. Kent Sheely

These are examples of some of the shots gallery visitors snapped.

Kent Sheely

“I liked the idea of reinterpreting the goals given to the player,” Sheely says, especially in the context of the notoriously violent GTA series. Kent Sheely

“I liked the idea of reinterpreting the goals given to the player,” Sheely says, especially in the context of the notoriously violent GTA series.

Kent Sheely

You step out of your shelter and look down at your feet. Instead of grass, you see the familiar gold-and-green logomark of petroleum behemoth BP. On the horizon, verdant hills are dotted with Shell Oil Company’s avatar. The structures around you are built on brands in the most literal sense: Bricks emblazoned with Ikea, 3M, and Enron. Overhead, Walmart’s joyless sunburst stretches across a pale blue sky.

This is Minecraft re-imagined by Kent Sheely, a new-media artist living in New York. Sheely specializes in videogame subversions like these, adding to, subtracting from, and remixing familiar interactive titles to help us consider them in new ways.

Sheely discovered videogames at a young age and realized he could bend them to his will shortly thereafter. He was 6 when he started learning the programming language Basic, and he grew up with one foot on each side of the medium—avidly playing games and making them. It wasn’t until college that he encountered people using videogames for art: “You know, really re-interpreting the existing work to communicate something about the medium and about its culture,” he says. It spurred him to explore games as a means of expression.

A sampling of one of Sheely’s “Ready for Action” clips, in which heroes like Max Payne take a break from their normal mayhem to wait for public transit. GIF: Wired Design/Source

One of Sheely’s most successful early works was called Grand Theft Photo, which he completed in 2007. He calls it his “first real breakthrough piece.” It took the form of a dummy DSLR camera, outfitted with a small screen on the back. Through it, gallery visitors could explore a version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Sheely had modified himself. Locked into an in-game camera mode, the only thing left for players to do was walk around and take pictures.

Today, in-game photography is a well-explored gaming off-shoot. The latest installment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise actually encourages players to take selfies. But in 2007, when Sheely and a few other artists were just starting to explore the idea of treating the game world as a photographic subject, it was a more radical notion. “I liked the idea of reinterpreting the goals given to the player,” Sheely says, especially in the context of the notoriously violent GTA series.

Of course, creating a virtual world amenable to that artistic vision necessitated a fairly thorough rewrite of the game’s code. “I had to edit the character behavior files so they wouldn’t attack the player and edit the firing mechanics so you were always looking through the camera lens,” he says. “I also had to make the player invulnerable to harm, just in case people using the mod accidentally wandered onto the highway when they were trying to take a photo of the moon.”

Sheely’s work isn’t strictly interactive. For Skybox, another early piece, he installed a large virtual skylight in the ceiling of a room inside an art gallery. The “sky” visitors saw on the other side was one of several Sheely had carved out of video game scenery. It changed throughout the day to mimic whatever was happening outside the venue. In Ready For Action, a series of short video clips Sheely started making in 2012, we see characters from a variety of action games taking a break from their usual mayhem to wait for buses and subways. It’s something totally mundane in our world that seems instantly out of place in the context of a violent virtual environment.

Sheely’s process varies. Sometimes, he’ll be messing around with a game and something will jump out at him. That’s how the Minecraft mod came about. In other cases, Sheely will have a statement in mind and look for ways to communicate it. One brilliant example is Dust2Dust, a mod of a standard team shooter that erases all trace of the players themselves, leaving squadrons of disembodied guns bopping around dusty recreations of Middle East towns. It’s a striking visual, but it’s intended to make a point: In videogames, as in the media, war is often cast in the simplistic terms of good and bad, us and them. Take the combatants away and figuring out your allegiances becomes much more difficult.

I couldn’t help but wonder: Has the career of Kent Sheely, videogame artist, ruined games for Kent Sheely, videogame player? “Yeah, it can be tough to switch that off,” he says of his artistic eye. “I do have moments where I get really absorbed in something and just treat it like a game. But when I play certain games, like anything that lets you just roam around, my mind starts to wander and I start picking up on little things that trigger the instinct.”