THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD
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TRIGGER HAPPY  
You can view a screen recording of the work here and use an emulated version of the work hosted by bwFLA, University of Freiburg here

Triggerhappy is a gallery installation whose format will be familiar to anyone who has encountered that early arcade game, Space Invaders combining an absurd quest for information with an old-fashioned shoot-em-up computer game. In this, it accurately reflects, and comments upon, the electronic environment in which we live, work and play. "In effect", the artists say, "triggerhappy becomes a folly. A self-defeating environment looking at the relationship between hypertext, authorship and the individual." They cleverly recontextualise existing representations and subject them to active manipulation on the part of the viewer, who becomes an unwitting participant in a meaningless game of "info-war".

Michael Gibbs. 1998.
"[In Trigger Happy] ..It is crucial that [Thomson & Craighead] don"t merely combine the two visual elements - space invader iconography and theoretical text - without the more spiked combination of two purportedly antithetical modes of attention. They use the thrill of actually playing the game to complicate further the theoretical point being made as you try to kill the "death of the author" text before it gets you."

Dave Beech, Art Monthly July/August 1998.
"In the web environment, as in that of Trigger Happy, the reader"s focus on text seems constantly and thoroughly aborted, perpetually distracted by the prospect of more specialised, more scintillating, more apropos information. Thus, in the midst of this play on hits and clicks, Trigger Happy is gesturing towards the basis of a future information economy, where attention, precisely because of its scarcity, may become a central commodity."

Jamie King, IF/THEN Published by The Netherlands Design Institute