NCCD first ever to celebrate golden age of British video game industry

Revolution in the Bedroom, War in the Playground: Video Gaming 1979-1989
19 Oct 2013 to 5 Jan 2014

Our brand new exhibition will be the first ever to celebrate and explore the rise of the British video games industry. "Revolution" takes a unique starting point - home based or "bedroom" programming. We highlight the importance of the hardware and the creativity of the early pioneers of video gaming and the industry's importance to the arts and creative industries.

You can even go hands on with some of the exhibits and get gaming!

We focus on the golden years of '79 to '89. The gaming art form pioneered during that time is finally being recognised as a genuinely new form of aesthetics and storytelling. These British games wove a rich and diverse 8-bit tapestry full of working class heroes, political satire, and infuriatingly complex puzzles, and the narrative devices and internal physics they pioneered still stand out as innovative and utterly ground-breaking.
Our curators have brought together objects which capture the achievements of the British bedroom programming generation, and the material and promotional artwork that articulates the rich and creative culture that grew around the industry. We have working models of the Sinclair ZX81, ZXSpectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro and the Amstrad, arcade games, video game titles, manuals, user guides and popular fanzines of the time such as CRASH.
Some of the most influential, iconic or ground-breaking British video games from the era, such as Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are profiled - have a go at Atic Atac, Ant Attack, Manic Miner, The Hobbit and The Wild Bunch. Four newly commissioned films show a series of interviews with never-before seen footage, featuring significant games designers telling their stories directly.

Original artwork and reproductions by iconic designer Oliver Frey are included, and a new commission from Turner Prize nominee Simon Patterson, who is producing a major new wall-based work in the exhibition space, will add a highly contemporary view point to the exhibition. The exhibition closes with a profile of some of the current games designed from the bedroom.

We have these exciting workshops and special events to complement the exhibition (more details soon)

Collider: Introduction to Raspberry Pi, Sat 19 Oct
Collider: Girl Code, Thu 24 Oct
Gaming vs Cross Stitch Workshop, Fri 25 Oct
Drawing Circuits with Conductive Paint, Sat 26 Oct
Gaming vs Cross Stitch, Sat 16 Nov Playground Wars:
Commodore vs Spectrum, Tues 22 Oct
Bedrooms to Billions (East Midlands film premiere), Fri 25 Oct
Gallery Tour with Director of Game City, Iain Simons, Tue 26 Nov
GameCity NightAway: Modem Playing, Tue 26 Nov

The exhibition is curated by the NCCD, in partnership with GameCity, as part of the Frequency Festival 2013. Sponsored byhttp://www.arcadedirect.co.uk/