Bevibel Design

In Spring 2019, the original creator of Line Rider, Boštjan Čadež, along with curator Jani Pirnat, held a gallery exhibition of Line Rider at Match Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where Boštjan lives.

Video Curation

I helped with the exhibition by curating Line Rider videos to play on all the walls of the “video room”. I edited together looping video files with added titles with relevant information like the title of the work, creator, and year released. I also curated information about the full list of collaborators, which Line Rider build each work was created in, the music used, and promotional links from the creators.

Playlist of Videos

Exhibit Description

I was asked by Jani to write a paragraph describing Line Rider history for the gallery, which was printed on the wall in the first room of the gallery.

Award-winning internet phenomenon Line Rider, which began in 2006 as a flash “toy” uploaded to DeviantArt by student of industrial design Boštjan Čadež, became a worldwide viral sensation virtually overnight. After the initial buzz faded, a dedicated internet community continued to probe the possibilities of this open-ended sandbox game for years. From lush landscapes drawn by hand, to advanced animation tools, to detailed analysis of the physics engine, the endless possibilities of the blank canvas have been explored beyond what anyone could have imagined. This exhibition not only presents a variety of Line Rider creations with different aesthetics, approaches, and artistic goals, spanning the entire length of its 13-year history, but looks to the future with new ideas from Boštjan Čadež, using technologies such as virtual reality and motion capture.

Lecture: History of Line Rider

As part of the exhibit, I was offered a chance to fly to Slovenia and give a lecture on the 13-year history of Line Rider and the online Line Rider community, and I took the opportunity!

Full promotional description of lecture:

A History of Line Rider
13 years of a niche subculture at the intersection of art and gaming

Award-winning internet phenomenon Line Rider, which began in 2006 as a flash “toy” uploaded to DeviantArt by university student Boštjan Čadež, may have faded into relative obscurity by 2010, but a small but dedicated internet community continued probing the possibilities of this open-ended sandbox game for years. From lush landscapes drawn by hand, to advanced animation tools, to detailed analysis of the physics engine, the endless possibilities of the blank canvas have been explored beyond what anyone could have imagined. Line Rider aficionado Ben Harvey, A.K.A. Rabid Squirrel, will take us through more than a decade of Line Rider history, philosophy, and culture. Now that new viral works have brought Line Rider back into the cultural spotlight, what can we learn about art, gaming, and online communities from studying the history of the Line Rider subculture?

Ben Harvey, A.K.A. Rabid Squirrel, is a multimedia artist and designer who has been creating things in Line Rider since 2007. They ran the Line Rider community hub We Ride The Lines from 2008 to 2016, and have directed and produced numerous community events and projects. They have long been one of the most prominent curators and one of the foremost critical voices in Line Rider, known for analyzing Line Rider works from an artistic perspective and for creating and maintaining the Line Rider Archival Project. Following the viral success of their 51-minute track This Will Destroy You, they became the first Line Rider creator to freelance in paid commissions, as well as creating the video essay “Line Rider: The Gamification of an Art Medium”