told me about a hidden feature in the game that allowed your character to become an animal for a short amount of time if you find and ingest peyote,” Watanabe explains.
“I was really taken by the sheer scale of the world (100 square miles) and the incredible attention to detail. Watanabe tells me he discovered GTA V through his nephew, Max. There are generally 200 to 2000 people watching at any given moment, and the deer has spawned fan Facebook fan accounts and other social media fan accounts. The animal has gone viral, with over 450,000 views in its first nine days online. Sometimes the deer knocks people down (especially when they try to kick it) or gores them. After getting hit by an airplane it will lay stunned for a moment, then get back on its feet and continue its odyssey, which has also included being strafed by helicopters and hit with grenades. The deer cannot die, and when ripped by bullets it jets blood then heals like Wolverine of the X-Men. But if you watch long enough you’ll see the deer get struck by a car, plummet down a cliff side, walk among people (common GTA bystander reaction: “What the fuck?!”), or get shot up in gang territory. Most of the time the deer, a muscular buck with impressive antlers, runs through the desolate streets or outskirts of San Andreas (the game’s setting) without encountering anyone.
What makes “ San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam” (2015–16) so different from his other work is that Watanabe usually controls everything, but in this case, he programmed his deer to act autonomously within the unpredictable and interactive world of GTA V.
It is a creation of Brent Watanabe, a Seattle-based artist who makes computer-controlled gallery installations featuring animals in human environments. I’ve never played Grand Theft Auto (GTA), but I have spent a decent amount of time watching a hacked - or, rather, “modded” - deer running through the GTA V live game, and I think this deer has something to tell us. A still from Brent Watanabe’s “San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam” (2015–16) (screenshot by Hyperallergic)
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