"Pictionary meets pro wrestling" at Macworld's zany Super Art Fight

Take two artists with insane digital design skills, force them into a timed competition with bizarre random topics, add a screaming crowd, then remove any shred of dignity – and you’ve got an idea what happens at Super Art Fight, surely the rowdiest and most ridiculous live event scheduled for Macworld 2012.

Perhaps against the organizers' better judgment, the Macworld expo has booked the Baltimore performance art jokester phenoms for Friday, January 27, at 2 p.m. PDT on the Macworld Main Stage. This will be the first-ever digital Super Art Fight, with the battle being waged entirely on iPads transmitting directly to large plasma HDTV screens.

The Macworld Main Stage is typically occupied by austere lecturers and notable authors. On Friday, that stage will be occupied by talented misfits trying to figure out what to draw when someone in the audience shouts “Chester Bea Arthur!” as their suggested portrait topic.

Allvoices had a chance to speak with booking director Darren Gendron, who described Super Art Fight as “Pictionary meets pro wrestling.”

“We have a very eclectic group of people that have a very specific set of skills,” Gendron told Allvoices. ”We’re like 20 different Liam Neesons.”

These so-called 20 different Liam Neesons have been Super Art Fighting for years, and recently developed a new variable to the competition called the Wheel of Death.

“At Super Art Fight 2, we released the Wheel of Death,” Gendron explained. “Every five minutes we spin the wheel and add another topic for the artists. By the end of it, artists are looking at five topics each.

“The best thing about the Wheel of Death is that we have a lot of audience participation,” photographer and Art Fight veteran Erin Surrock said. “We get all of the ideas from people. So you might see your own topic on the Wheel of Death and see it be drawn on the canvas.

“When we spin the Wheel of Death,” Surrock continued, “everyone chants ‘Wheel of Death! Wheel of Death!’ and everyone gets very into it.”

“You get a large enough group at a convention,” Gendron chimed in, “and passersby start to worry there’s a death cult at the convention.”

Nearly all of the topics on the wheel are submitted through SuperArtFight.com. Many involve puns, pop culture references and clever wordplay. Past examples include “Robocopter,” “Dr. House of Pain” and “Muppet Burlesque.”

“They tend to be a lot of bad pop culture portmanteaus,” Gendron admitted.

If you can’t attend Super Art Fight at Macworld, you can still catch all the unbridled silliness live online on the Macworld UStream channel.

For more of Allvoices' coverage of Macworld | iWorld 2012, check out allvoices.com/macworld2012.