Video game needlepoint
Becky Schaffer reworks needlepoint kits to add in subversive videogame elements, like Lara Croft standing astride a pretty meadow. The Game Girl Advance article is from 2003, but these landscapes still entertain and enlighten.
Do you know where Becky's current site resides? Post in the comments and I'll add it to the main post.
Link (via Wonderland)
Schaefer feels there are strong parallels in the 'boxing-in' of experience that craft kits and mass-release games like Tomb Raider offer. In both cases, a smoothed and prefabricated reality provides entertainment to fill and define idle time. Recombining the bucolic/domestic and the erotic/violent helps Schaefer to expose these similarities and to remind us that we've checked out of everyday messy existence, whether threading our needle, or booting up our pc.
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Seems like the same simple joke told over and over, and it's kind of an old joke to start with. This kind of juxtaposition is as played-out as Lara herself. I guess you could say that needlepoint and Lara Croft complement each other since they both represent entertainment from a bygone era.
It's all harmless fun I guess, but rather than subverting anything it feels like just more painting-by-numbers.
http://www.spritestitch.com/
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Actually, I commonly use a program to design my cross stitch patterns, and I've done a few video game patterns. In fact, I'm currently working on a comic book cover.
But what I don't get is why such a big deal is being made about it.
Main nitpick here: Most of the designs shown aren't needlepoint, they're freeform embroidery (often called "crewel" in the '70s, although technically crewel has to involve wool fibres).
Needlepoint is all half (tent) stitches and is a counted technique usually worked on canvas.
I'll go back to my anachronistic little stitching hole now.