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VIDEO/ART: THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS

BARBARA LONDON’S VIDEO/ART: The First Fifty Years is both a personal memoir and a history of an artistic medium from its genesis to the present. The effortlessness with which these two undertakings coexist is a testament to London’s lifelong commitment to her subject matter: as the founder of NY MOMA’s video programs, she was instrumental in bringing a once-underground art form into the broader establishment.

New York in the 1970s was arguably the global epicenter of the fledgling new art form, with artists such as Nam June Paik, Beryl Korot, and Mary Lucier at the forefront.

John Peck
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ArchitectureBerlin
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EAST GERMAN MODERN

DURING ITS FOUR-plus decades of existence, the GDR was a unique geopolitical paradox. Its place at the heart of the Cold War conflict belied the simple, day-to-day lives of the vast majority of its citizens. This paradox manifests itself visibly in the architecture of the former GDR, where often-cosmic abstract and geometric tendencies exist alongside the drab and mundane.

John Peck
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ArchitectureAsia
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SOVIET ASIA

TOWERING CONCRETE SCULPTURES inlaid with bright tiles, Brutalist housing blocks adorned with intricate patterns: the structures of post-Soviet Central Asia are a study in east-west contrasts, and include some of the stranger relics of the Cold War era.

John Peck
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BooksGames & Digital Media
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THE CRPG BOOK

THE CRPG BOOK, from the UK’s Bitmap Books, is the culmination of years of work by over a hundred contributors. It’s one of the most comprehensive histories of CRPGs ever written, and features in-depth review-style writeups of over 400 games, along with essays on the ancient history of role-playing games (going all the way back to the Prussian Empire), the early days of MUDs (multi-user dungeons, the earliest online games), the archaic but impressive PLATO computer system, and the importance of paper manuals and hand-drawn maps.

John Peck
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ArchitectureBerlin
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EASTERN BLOCKS: CONCRETE LANDSCAPES OF THE FORMER EASTERN BLOC

BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE IS experiencing something of a renaissance – or at the very least, a zombified second coming. With the opening of formerly sequestered countries in the Eastern Bloc and the ease of taking and sharing digital photos, hulking tower flats and concrete curiosities have emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. In the words of the authors, “The Iron Curtain was understood in the West as The Concrete Curtain. Everything behind it was perceived as mass produced and grey.”

John Peck
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Games & Digital MediaPrint and Design
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PRINTING POST-APOCALYPSE

IN THE RETRO-futuristic, post-apocalyptic world of the Fallout series, legible printed matter is a rare and valuable commodity. Finding an intact magazine or comic book gives valuable stats and perks, from increased know-how with machines to improved conversation skills to unlockable tattoos. Presumably, most books and magazines were far too delicate to survive the nuclear apocalypse, appearing as the junk-class items “burnt book” and “burnt trade magazine” (though the high-Nordic-fantasy world of Skyrim, also from Bethesda, certainly has its share of “Ruined Books” as well).

John Peck
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BooksGames & Digital Media
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DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS ART AND ARCANA: A VISUAL HISTORY

WHEN IT COMES to truly iconic touchstones of fantasy and sci-fi, Dungeons and Dragons is in a plane of its own. After four-plus decades of existence, the cultural significance of its universe is rivaled by only a small handful of other heavy hitters like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Its early design and aesthetics borrowed liberally from Robert E. Howard’s Conan series, pulp novels and comics, and of course Tolkien, but its DNA – its “source code” – were the rigorous rulesets of the strategic wargaming community, which preceded it by decades.

John Peck
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BooksGames & Digital Media
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THE ART OF POINT-AND-CLICK ADVENTURE GAMES

THE UK-BASED Bitmap Books is steadily becoming one of the foremost chroniclers of everything that falls under the umbrella of “retro gaming”. Their exhaustive, full-color volumes trace various threads running through the history of videogames, and while the majority of their titles are dedicated to a specific console, other volumes cover everything from vintage arcade cabinets to the lost world of game box art.

John Peck
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