Pixelroom
Jérôme Scemla
2004 - 52 min - Betacam - Couleur - France

Does blowing up pixels make you a murderer? Does playing on a computer make your kid a psycho? More than 30 years after their birth, video games are still provoking fears, flames and blames; just like any new art form or new medium over the ages...They raise such issues as language, violence, sex, addiction, gender/racial stereotypes, social behaviour and they question reality itself. Before long these fears might be transferred to new developments in virtual reality entertainment, along with the success of online player's communities: "immersion" and "augmented reality".
The prototypes are startling: games that blur the boundaries between the imaginary and the real are developing. Soon, the player will be able to walk down his own street with the headset on and see a nice extraterrestrial or a heavily armed terrorist suddenly emerging from the corner shop... Your grand-kid will probably love it. Will you?