BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

Animal Pack Deluxe (Rabbit_Die), 2024
Ink and acrylic on canvas
100 x 100 x 2 cm

Animal Pack Deluxe (Rabbit_Die) (2024) is part of a series of works exploring how video games are created and the climate crisis. The works are hybrid paintings, beginning as digitally fabricated images within the video game development software Unity. The images are then printed onto canvas, stretched and painted onto with acrylic paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original digital image. The painting method explores the tension between the digital and physical sides of Bicknell-Knight’s practice and is a collaboration between his digital and physical working methods.

Animal Pack Deluxe (Rabbit_Die) was one of several paintings in the series, depicting animals at the precise moment that they’re falling to the floor, never to rise again. Everything you see in the paintings, from the animals to the trees, has been purchased as a prefabricated (prefab) asset. Within video games, an asset is any resource that is used in the development of a video game, from 3D models to sound effects and pieces of code. The assets in the paintings are simple 3D models with low polygon counts, like animals and plant life, usually appearing in multiple places across different video games. The use of these models, purchased by game developers rather than being made themselves, is a contemporary coping mechanism harnessed to accelerate the production process of virtual experiences. The paintings use the idea of the prefab as a vehicle for speaking about how the world is in an unstoppable free fall towards a global climate crisis.

Animal Pack Deluxe (Rabbit_Die) has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Out Of Bounds, curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight. At SEAGER, London, UK, 31st January – 2nd March 2024.