(Photo: Michael Surtees)

3. NOSTALGIA FOR ATARI, YET AGAIN
Bitmap on Kazuyo Nakano boutique window (117 Crosby Street) and Space Invader (Eleventh Avenue, behind Chelsea Market)

“Remember Space Invaders? I used to play the game in the eighties on my Atari, and so, probably, did the street artist named Space Invader, who created this image [bottom]. Again, it’s a character associated with childhood, the alien image taken out of context. He’s taking a digital image and placing it on a wall with common materials like tile. In the store-window display, the gridlike image also tries to be digital by using pixels (squares) but doesn’t come off as anything that a game from a computer would look like. This bitmap is a dumbed-down version of the techy feel of the street art. There isn’t much of a grid, the squares are all over the place. They have tried to make a pixel image but kind of failed to really create any type of feeling or meaning. Part of the success of the Space Invader image is in the restraint—it is complicated to get such a simple image across. There’s no real rhyme or reason with the window display. It’s a bit sloppy.”