Levels by Daniel Canogar - bitforms gallery

Levels2025

Metal structure, led panels, electronic components34 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 12 1/4 in / 87.5 x 19 x 31 cmEdition of 5, 2 AP

Levels is a generative artwork that explores one of the most influential forces behind the growth of the internet: video games. The piece draws data from platforms for live game streaming. Online gaming has played a key role in shaping digital culture and its infrastructures, while also generating significant issues around addiction and compulsive behavior in users. The work focuses particularly on side-scrollers, a genre of video games where the player progresses horizontally across evolving landscapes. Structurally, Levels takes the form of a compact, tiered sculpture, suggesting both sculptural density and psychological constraint. Its stacked shape evokes the architecture of a multi-story building, reinforcing the sense of vertical progression and containment. The form also alludes to the gamified notion of life as a sequence of levels to be climbed, passed, or conquered. The piece draws a connection between video games and the 19th-century panorama, exploring similarities between these modes of visual entertainment. Levels explores the cartographic impulse at the heart of gaming. As players advance through a digital world, they internalize its layout, learning every turn, platform, and hazard. This act of mapping becomes a form of conquest: to know the terrain is to control it. In this sense, the artwork aligns with traditions of visual mastery and exploration, putting forth questions about how vision, entertainment culture, and forms of visual domination continue to evolve through the architectures of digital culture.