BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

Prefab
3rd – 30th October 2022
High House Artist Residency. At Antony Gormley Estate, King’s Lynn, UK

Prefab is a body of work that Bob Bicknell-Knight began developing during a two-person residency at High House Artist Residency at Antony Gormley Estate, King’s Lynn, UK. He underwent the residency with Rosa-Maria Nuutinen. The residency was the beginning of a series of works that would be included in Logging Off, a duo exhibition with Rosa-Maria Nuutinen in 2024 exploring the seductive nature of video games at The Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth, UK.

Bicknell-Knight began researching and making new work about the tools used to produce video games, specifically the game development software Unity and its asset store. The store enables users of the software to buy and sell assets to use in their games, from 3D models and animations to UI (user interface) elements and code.

Some of these assets have been used hundreds, or even thousands, of times within different video games. The most common assets are prefabs, game objects used in multiple places across a given game. They are usually simple objects, like trees or plants, with low polygon counts.

The widespread use of such high quality, realistic assets may be perceived as homogenizing the video game creation process, and could be the reason why a growing number of game-players want to spend the majority of their time immersed within increasingly lifelike video game worlds.

During his time at High House Bicknell-Knight began reproducing some prefab 3D models as paintings and sculptures, highlighting their everyday beauty and subtle intricacies.

Nuutinen created and began several small and large scale drawings, exploring the relationship gamers have towards their avatars within games, alongside producing drawings of video game landscapes that utilise real world locations, referencing the impressionists of the 19th century whilst updating the practice for the modern, digitally focused world.