Paul B. Davis utilises outdated/obsolete computer technologies, including most notably Nintendo games systems, in order to perform specialist interventions into the territory of the digital art medium. While the materials utilised are ready-made, the use principle is entirely hand crafted; Davis altering the existing code while adding nothing new. This idea, the implemented projection of an alternative potential onto a ready-made object, exactly and succinctly captures the structured abridgement, between computers and art, between theory and praxis, ongoing in Davis practice.

Davis is a founder member of the pioneering programming ensemble, BEIGE, which also comprises Cory Arcangel (Team Gallery, NY), Joe Beuckman and Joseph Bonn. BEIGE members have subsequently used Davis hacked NES concept to create a distinct body of work that has been shown internationally.

Aesthetically Davis images are solid slabs of reordered, pure proto-modernist colour. With his alterations a new game, a new screen and a new surface emerges. The materiality of a hacked game cartridge, set into the instantly recognisable Nintendo console, guarantees that the recession into a purely two-dimension digital fold is never as total as it is in the work of other digital artists, the work remains an object. Further, the dizzying hyper-graphics of many related practitioners are surrendered in favour of the neat, blocky pixilation of the outdated NES operating system. This show also includes an installation featuring 8-bit Construction Set, an art/music/concept work rendered in vinyl which will be mounted on a record deck within the gallery, visitors being invited to play it out to their own satisfaction.

Quoting his influences as ranging from formalised British computing theory (Alan Turing) to the advent of widespread domestic console gaming (Mario), Davis has pioneered a truly unique strategy through a multiplicity of actions, networks and artistic creations. Davis practise is at once rigorous, conceptual, even nerdy, while nonetheless fully intimate with the patois, style, attitude and aesthetic of retrogressively inspired, data-bit multi-media contemporary culture, that has recently forced its way into the public consciousness