Frame Game is a video taken from the series 'Distractions', shot by artist Michael Nyman in various parts of the world during the past fifteen years.
To Nyman, there seemed no point in filming static monuments, so in Frame Game when he found him self at the ancient site of Persepolis, the length of each shot of the static ruins is dictated by the time it takes the frame to clear itself of tourists. In post-production Nyman enters into a competition with those tourists who choose not to move out of frame.
Experimentation with the medium of video, its limits and its ability to allow an infinite range of possibilities and random coincidences, remains a focal point in Nyman's work. In Frame Game, Nyman appropriates the recording of an ordinary scene depicting a historical site visited by a group of tourists. Shot with a hand-held camera and altered with digital intervention, the footage is then distorted and turned into a fictitious set of video games, seemingly inviting the viewer to engage with the work, much in the same manner a player would engage with a video game
Nyman's manipulation of his own imagery is an attempt to communicate an alternative scenario of the mundane and the monotonous, instantly transformed into a plot of unfolding events and unexpected results. Consequently, the medium becomes part of the message it conveys, contributing to the very aesthetics it purports to describe.