Pixel-Art Game: Café Terrace at Night

This three-staged memory game invites you to observe masterpieces closely. Historically, a masterpiece was a work of a very high standard, produced in order to obtain membership of a guild or academy. Since the author never went to art school, her untrained eye wondered: "How should I look at art in order to fully appreciate it?" Trying to answer this question, she decided to design a system of observation based on different steps: games and activities following a set scheme that triggers the player to look at a masterpiece on a different scale.

Pixel-Art Game allows you to zoom into these Dutch Masterpieces. Match the original image with its pixelated copies by zooming into Van Gogh's famous Café Terrace at Night. The painter's colour and use of light are emphasised through the pixels of the digitalised image, taking art into our contemporary digital language.

With light packaging, perfect to take along with you, the Pixel-Art Game offers several games in one set. Each of these 3 games is a step towards understanding the artwork better, and they can be played with multiple players.

Vanessa Catalano studied architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. In 2013 she graduated with an MA from a programme called Design Cultures, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. For these studies, her Master's thesis was about museums as contemporary learning environments, where gamification is a main element in learning.