BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

Take No Prisoners, 2022
Ink and acrylic on canvas, plywood, 3D printed marble PLA plastic
21.3 x 34 x 3.5 cm

Take No Prisoners (2022) is part of a series of paintings exploring the many facets of non-player characters (NPCs) in video games, from their looping lives to the repetitive dialogue that they bark at the player character, as a metaphor for the boundaries of human action within an increasingly algorithmic, surveilled existence.

NPCs are characters in video games that are controlled by the computer. They have a predetermined set of behaviours programmed by artificially intelligent (AI) software. The lives of these characters revolve around the player. They are stuck in the game world, doomed to repeat the same day for eternity, waiting to be interacted with.

The paintings contain quotes spoken by a variety of NPCs from different video games. The paintings explore NPC dialogue in video games, short one-line audio clips spoken by NPCs that populate the game world. These short sentences are called barks and can be random or in reaction to the player or events happening within the game. The phrases are often repeatedly spoken to the player within the game world, sometimes heard hundreds or even thousands of times in a single playthrough. Each painting includes a specific bark from a different game, written in the games typeface and set against imagery taken from within the specific game world.

Bicknell-Knight’s works are hybrid paintings. The pieces begin as digitally edited fabricated images. They are then printed onto canvas, stretched and then painted onto with acrylic paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original online digital image. The sides are colour matched, and the front of the canvas is partially painted onto. The paintings are held in a series of 3D printed frames, produced without a perimeter to expose the inner workings of the structure. They are intentionally elaborate, taking inspiration from traditional frames from the 18th century, deliberately drawing attention away from the subject of the work and emphasising the artificial nature of the painted representation.

Take No Prisoners has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Non-Player Character, curated by Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns (Off Site Project). At Klaipėda Exhibition Hall, Klaipėda, LT, 20th January – 19th February 2023.
– Non-Player Character. At Galeria Kollektiva, Kassel, DE, 29th July – 21st August 2022.