A Modern Totem

A Mod­ern Totem

I saw this strik­ing image from boing boing of what I con­sider a mod­ern totem or tiki statue. A group of Dutch artists carved a tree trunk into the shape of a full-sized stand-up arcade video game.

It’s an inter­est­ing work on a num­ber of lev­els, but this medium and style of video game is slowly going away. The iconic image of this style of arcade game seems dated in the world of per­sonal video game sys­tems, hand held gam­ing and the inter­net. I sup­pose there are still arcades, but this style of game sys­tem belongs, like the Jedi Knights, to an older more civ­i­lized time. Like the 80’s.

Per­haps some­day peo­ple will puz­zle on the mean­ing of this totem and it will be as unrec­og­niz­able as the fallen Moai of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. If video killed the radio star, who killed the arcade game?

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