Ducks should be free from persecution

Should you happen to find yourself in Newcastle between the 10th and 13th of May, and you really felt the desire to do so, you could visit Field Gallery - located at 255 King St, Newcastle [if you do this, I would strongly suggest visiting between the hours of 12pm to 5pm; disappointment may ensue otherwise]. Their current exhibition is entitled "The Farmyard Animal Challenge," which required artists to respond to a small farm animal they were sent in the mail in whichever way they chose. I was sent a pony, for the record, but didn't receive it until after the exhibition had opened.

For the show I produced a new work, Ducks Should Be Free From Persecution. Continuing a body of work which is centred around the reworking of footage from video games, this piece contains a sequence from the Nintendo Entertainment System game "Duck Hunt". The game's objective is simple; a duck flies on screen, you shoot it, then you wait for the next one. You receive three shots at each duck, and must shoot [I hesitate to use the word kill, as there's no blood, but I guess that's effectively what you are doing] a certain quota to progress to the next level. If you fail to reach the quota, the game is over. There are options to play the game with two ducks on screen, or even a mode where you shoot clay pidgeons. Very exciting.

Using the option with two ducks [for aesthetic and practical reasons], I recorded about 15 sections of the game where the gun is never fired. In the actual game, missing the ducks results in hound appearing from behind the pictured green bushes and laughing at you. I simply edited this out, and looped the footage [using about 5 of the recorded sections] so that the ducks continuously fly through; uninterrupted, without fear of execution.

There are a number of things going on in this work [most of which occurred to me after its completion], that make it quite different from the other works I have made in this vein. I could ramble about said things, but this most likely isn't of much interest to many in the here and now. Perhaps if I ever get around to a full blown website I could write a big think piece on it then. I quite like this work though, and have really began to feel for the ducks' plight. At the opening of the show, a small child looked at the tv this was playing on, turned to his Dad and asked "Why does it say 'shot' Dad?"

"Because you shoot them son," came his quick reply. It made me quite sad to hear that, and I remember saying to myself "No! That's not the point, at all!" But I guess it is, as that is the the only reason the ducks exist. The importance though is the passive act on the part of the player / viewer. They could be shot, but the choice has been enacted to let them live. I think that's a much nicer way to look at things.