From heroin to Playstation

Happy Chat Beast tries to be good in Feed Me © 2013, Rachel Maclean

Although this exhibition focuses on established artists like Rachel Maclean, there are pieces that point to just how mischievous and hands-on Science Gallery London is likely to become in the years ahead. Katriona Beales‘s Entering the Machine Zone II is a new commission, developed with the assistance of Henrietta Bowden-Jones, founder of the first NHS gambling clinic. It is the world’s most pointless video game – though I defy you to stop playing once you have started. It propels you with frightening rapidity towards the dissociative state that, for gamblers in particular, is the real attraction of their vice – far more addictive than the promise of money.

Popping along to the newly opened Science Gallery London and getting Hooked for New Scientist, 26 September 2018