gamescenes

Game. Art.

Game Art, unlimited. 

GameScenes chronicles the ever-changing landscapes of Game Art.

Background info: Originally, a videoludica's channel, GameScenes.

Now (= 2009), a full-fledged blog (!). 

Written and edited by Matteo Bittanti.

Regular contributor: Mathias Jansson.

Special thanks: Domenico Quaranta, Valentina Tanni, Paolo Ruffino.

Would you like to play with us? Drop me a line

Event: "Texture Maps" (Feb 12 - March 14 2010 @ Nest, The Hague, Holland)

 
 

"Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture (a bitmap or raster image), or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974." (Wikipedia)"

"Texture Maps" is the title of a ground-breaking exhibition opening on Feb 12 at Nest Gallery in The Hague, Netherlands bringing together a series of artists directly inspired by video game aesthetics. The stellar line-up features Eelco Brand, Robbie Cornellisen, Robert Overweg, Rafael Rozendaal, Oscar Stegehuis, and Michiel Van Der Zanden. The unique ensemble and the variety of the artworks on display makes "Texture Maps" a must see for 2010.

 
Eelco Brand, "Heuvels", 2006, 110 x 178 cm, pigmented print 

 
Eelco Brand, "Land", 2007, 100 x 150 cm, pigmented print 

Link: Texture Maps

Link: Rafael Rozendaal's FromThedarkPast (2009) 

Related: Michiel Van Der Zanden

Related: Robert Overweg

Related: Oscar Stegehuis

Game Art: Florian Fusco's Gameboy paper replica (2009)

 

"Ehrlich gesagt fand ich die damaligen Game Boy Geeks total unsympathisch. Das sieht auch nicht besonders intelligent aus, wenn ein zwölfjähriges Kind stundenlang stirnrunzelnd und mit offenem Mund apathisch auf ein Stück Plastik mit Minidisplay starrt. Heute ist das Luxusspielzeug von damals spottbilliger Trash. Mittlerweile konnte sich die  Minikonsole mit ihren 8bit Sounds mit Hilfe der Entwicklung von Musiksoftware wie Nanoloop oder Little Sound DJ als Musikinstrument etablieren." (Florian Fusco)

Link: Interview with Pull The Metal (via Neural)

 

Interview: Martin Berghammer's RELOAD exhibition (Shift e.V Gallery in Berlin, 1999)

 

This interview took place in January of 2010 via email and it's part on an ongoing series written by Mathias Jansson on the seminal milestones in the Game ArtWorld (for additional information, check the links at the end of this entry).

Opening night RELOAD@shift, 25.09.1999:  

GameScenes: Can you tell me something about the creation of Shift e.V gallery in 1995?

Martin Berghammer: Shift e.V. was a privately held non-profit art-organization founded in 1995 by myself and a group of Berlin-based artists. We provided a platform for exhibitions, lectures, and events that dealt with crossover-tendencies in contemporary art. After six years and nearly twenty-five exhibitions Shift closed its doors in spring 2001.  

 
RELOAD @ shift, Berlin, installation view 

 

GameScenes: What’s your relationship to art and videogames? 

I am an artist, I started as a painter in the 1980s, later switched to installation, and worked with different media including Super-8 film and video. I founded Shift in 1995 and ran it as a director and curator for six years. I became interested in video games in the early nineties, I played some "harmless" adventure-games (like Myst). At that time I discovered DVD-projects from artists and musicians that were built around a game aspect, such as "Freak Show" from the band "The Residents". The game Quake caught my attention not because of its furious action, but for the fact that it was the first game to allow networked (IP-based) gaming; it seemed like a good example for a 3D-environment providing real-time-interaction and -communication (chat).   After becoming a gamer myself - which I felt was a necessary step in order to be able to work with it - I became aware of the various peculiar and creative aspects to the culture of gaming.  Any modification of the game, of its levels and characters, required a lot of coding experiments with buggy editors and handcrafted tools released by other gamers, everything was "learning by doing". I noticed an interesting momentum here: a growing sub-culture connected to a technical revolution had begun to enter the mainstream. Such a wave could serve as a metaphor for how culture mutates in general as well as how cultural borders are transgressed.  

 
RELOAD @ shift, Berlin, installation view 

 

GameScenes: I found this comment about Reload very interesting: “Despite their enormous economic and social relevance, online games are still reduced to being a waste of time and appropriate only in the realm of nerds and slackers.” It seems to me that the idea that videogames could be indeed art must have been regarded with disbelief and scorn at that time. On the other hand the exhibition Reload toured Germany during 1999-2001, so there must have been a growing interest in this new form of art?

In the early nineties gaming was still an underground phenomenon, unnoticed by the mainstream, and not taken seriously in the contemporary art world. Only a few media artists worked with modifying computer code, HTML-pages and games, and formed an outsider group within the art world. Working in that field required quite a lot of technical skills, and the audience also needed a certain amount of expertise in order to fully understand the work. By the mid-nineties the aesthetics of computer-, game- and web-interfaces slowly started to invade mainstream media like news-TV, advertising or MTV-music-clips and artists became more aware of the potential of the web and virtual space as a source of material and inspiration. Through researching the topic on the web I discovered the work of some of the other artists (mentioned earlier in this interview serie) that had worked in the 3D-game space, but processing that whole phenomenon intellectually had not yet begun. 

 
RELOAD_Nuernberg, installation view 

GameScenes: How did you select the artists for the exhibition? 

When I started to play Quake myself I immediately knew that there was an art-project somewhere in there, but didn't quite know how to approach it. In 1998, while playing online I met Florian Muser & Imre Oswald who had built a Quake-level representing the Hamburger Kunsthalle. That was a starting point; I invited them and several other artists, whose work dealt with architecture, 3D and/or internet-based media-art, to contribute to a gaming-project. Only some of them had experience with gaming and/or Quake.   A bunch of blinking computer screens in an empty room always looks a bit odd - I therefore decided to go for a "real space vs. hyperspace" concept for the show, since I thought it was important to base it within actual, physical space. The main conceptual decision we made in modifying Quake was not to deconstruct - i.e. destroy - the game but to work within the given environment and let the software be "playable" (to keep it fun...). The group working on the digital pieces quickly became a team, helping each other with the many technical challenges they were facing. Muser & Oswald's "Hamburger Kunsthalle" level was basically finished when I invited them - the piece was then later acquired by the museum. The other Quake-levels were commissioned for the show, production time was several months. We had a public Quake-server running during the exhibition that allowed players from outside to join in (you had to download and install the modified levels from our website). 

 
RELOAD @ shift, Berlin, installation view 

The exhibition designer was Stefan Wieland. Can you explain the big idea behind his innovative and original design?

Stefan Wieland's piece was a hybrid between sculpture and exhibition architecture, spread across all rooms, and consisted of six giant letters forming the word RELOAD. As often in his work he used a word/text-fragment as a starting point, reducing it to a simple object that still subtly referred to its original meaning. Working directly with the proportions of the exhibition space he transformed it into a sort of real world game level, playfully forcing the visitor to navigate through the gallery by climbing over and around the sculptural components. Furthermore, the sculpture, while elegantly hiding the computer hardware, served as a stand for the four terminals running the Quake-mods, as well as providing a pedestal for Astrid Herrmann's architectural models of game-space interiors. In the second edition of RELOAD that travelled to Geneva, Nuernberg, Munich, and Frankfurt we tried as a group to merge the two realms a little more, and, using the new version of the game Quake 3, we designed a virtual representation of Stefan Wieland's new sculpture as a single game-level in the form of the word LOST. 

 
 
Reload Logos  
 
GameScenes: What was the reaction of the public to the exhibition?

Well, as is often the case when people encounter a screen in an exhibition, here they were also initially in more of an observation mode. Then they would hesitatingly grab the mouse and begin to click it. Others would ask me what to do etc., so I would give them a brief introduction and show them how to get around....and off they went on a virtual stroll. The visitors familiar with games immediately felt comfortable, as well as some Turkish teenagers who came to play every afternoon with their McDonald's food in hand, as if the gallery was a gaming arcade (after a few weeks we had to kick them out though...). Once a curator stormed in and loudly declared himself to be a pacifist - later that night he was the last person to leave and we had to pull the plug on him. 
 
GameScenes: What surprised you most?

I was definitely surprised by how quickly and seriously the whole topic of games and virtual space was taken over by academia and theorists. I am stunned (and at times dismayed...) by the momentum of this technical (r)evolution, in particular by the extent to which it now overstimulates and governs our lives. The boundaries between reality and virtual space are blurred more and more: head-up-displays in cars, air-tags for cell phones, military equipment etc. You might even say that we're already living in a gamer's science-fiction world today. 

Video gallery
 
Florian Muser und Imre Osswald created a 3D version of the museum "Hamburger Kunsthalle" as a game-space and an arena. 

Web-Artist Holger Friese built a level from scratch, ignoring the conventions of level-building, using textures and graphics recalling his previous work therefore creating sort of a walkable catalog.

A fan of  French avant-garde architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, Tom Ehninger re-created the 1923 "sketch for a house" as a Quake-level that proved to be very popular among players. 

Christine Meierhofer modified and abstracted an existing Quake-level by replacing all textures, objects, and player figures with b&w wire-frame drawings.

Text by Mathias Jansson

Related:

Tobias Bernstrup & Palle Torsson's "Museum Meltdown"

Anne-Marie Schleiner's “Cracking the Maze” 

Orhan Kipcak (ArsDoom, ArsDoom II) 

Konrad Becker on “Synreal: The Unreal Modification"

Event: Wafaa Bilal “Agent Intellect” (Jan 21 - April 5, 2010, The Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, Vermont).

"Wafaa Bilal: Agent Intellect" is the title of a new exhibition organized by The Helen Day Art Center located in Stowe, Vermont. The event focuses on Iraqi-American artist Wafaa Bilal ouevre. Among the artworks on display are “Domestic Tension” and “Virtual Jihad”, the most explicitly game-based pieces. For “Domestic Tension” Bilal locked himself up at FlatFile Gallery in Chicago and acted as a human target in a bizarre paintball game. Visitors on Bilal's homepage used a webcam mounted on a paintballand shot him for days. This performance was meant to draw attention to the ongoing troubles in Iraq, a country shattered by mass killings, terrorist attacks, snipers, and suicide bombers.

The installation also raises questions about the blurring between virtual and real violence. How far would users go on the internet? If they had stood face to face with Bilal in the gallery, would have they behaved in the same way? Domestic Tension was described by the author as a peculiar First-Person Shooter where virtual actions have real life consequences. The performance centered on suffering not through the display of emotions, but engaged people via a playful interactive video game.

The other piece in the “Agent Intellect” exhibition is “The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi” (2008), based on the videogame “Quest for Saddam” (2004), which first was hacked by Al Qaeda supporters. Here, Saddam Hussein's virtual face was replaced President George W. Bush, but in Bilal’s third modification the artist himself played the role of a suicide bomber in the game.

His goal was to address the...

“...Vulnerability of Iraqi civilians to the travesties of the current war and racist generalizations and stereotypes as exhibited in games such as Quest for Saddam, along with vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S.'s failed strategy in securing Iraq. The work also aims to shed light on groups that traffic in crass and hateful stereotypes of Arab culture with games like Quest for Saddam and other media.” (Wafaa Bilal).

Link: Wafaa Bilal

Link: The Helen Day Art Center

Text by Mathias Jansson

Game Art: Marque Cornblatt's "The Self Portrait – Fly Daddy" (2010)

 
 "The Self Portrait – Fly Daddy. Over the course of months, objects in my studio get assembled in interesting ways -  like legos, but with junk.  Bits and pieces are added, then taken away, then added again, until the assemblage of found objects and recycled scrap transforms into “something.”  At first, it may be unclear what the new thing is  –but as I continue to work, listening to the materials and their stories, they usually suggests a figurative character, some kind of weird living being with a personal narrative and rich history. This new piece seems to ask the question: What do you get when you cross a Big Daddy from Bioshock with a Bloatfly from Fallout 3?" (Marque Cornblatt)

Link: The Self Portrait – Fly Daddy

Game Art: Olle Essvik “Broken Narratives” (2008)

Swedish artist and curator Olle Essvik (alias JimPalt) is the mastermind behind a peculiar videogame, "Broken Narratives”, which he describes as:

“A collection of games/narratives. Games without levels, win/lose thinking, games without purpose, just narratives with the structure and navigation of a computer game. The computer game has references to dreams with graphics from classical computer games. Its also developed into a portable sculpture (arcade game) that you play with a joystick. It was built from old trash and other cheap materials.”

The game is a simple platform game made with Flash, the graphic is plain and in greyscale. The user guides a small black figure through the landscape and can jump, collect things and solve puzzles, but there is no time or score in the game. In the background you hear the melody from a music box creating a poetic and dreamlike feeling. If computer games are thr digital equivalent of dreaming, these dreams would look like “Broken Narratives”. Between 2008-09, this art game was shown in London, Copenhagen, Virserum (Sweden), and Helsinki.

Play the game here.

text by Mathias Jansson.

 

Review: GameScenes (NextGame.it)

"Per quanto le opere riconducibili alla Game Art siano innumerevoli e attualmente non catalogabili (perché in costante evoluzione), inoltre, il volume qui segnalato non ambisce certamente a mire enciclopediche. Anzi, quel che dispensa è solamente una minima porzione del panorama artistico preso in esame, meritevolmente scampata a un doloroso ma dovuto processo di selezione. Ci si ritrova per le mani, dunque, un saggio d'arte dalle dimensioni più che generose, per un totale di 456 pagine da sfogliare e leggere senza fretta, quando se ne ha voglia, per puro piacere visivo e per cultura personale.  L'appendice italiana (da pagina 315 in poi), inoltre, vanta illuminanti saggi di Matteo Bittanti, Domenico Quaranta (giornalista, critico d'arte e docente di Net Art presso l'Accademia di Brera), Rebecca Cannon, Pierluigi Casolari, Maia Angeli, Henry Lowood, Sally O'Reilly, Philippa Jane Stalker e Valentina Tanni, mentre un utile glossario si occupa di far chiarezza in merito a termini tecnici quali "Neen/Neenstar/Neenster" o "Pixel/Net Art"." (Lorenzo Antonelli, NextGame.it)

Leggi la recensione completa

Game Art: Michiel Van Der Zanden's "Museum Killer" (2008)

Pwned Paintings # 2, 2008, Digital Video, 1:10 min. from Michiel van der Zanden on Vimeo.

"In my work I import the world of digital media into painting and vice versa, which often results in an assembly of ‘low’ and ‘high’ culture. I’m using images of digital entertainment, such as videogames and YouTube videos, or the 3D program Blender. These images are reproduced and reworked on the computer and used as a starting point (sketch) for my paintings.

For years I have been fascinated by the specific language of videogame graphics. For me the videogame is an ideal starting point, because I had already been working with traditional collages and the videogame in its essence, is a rather perspectivistic (photo-)collage.
Before, I used to extract images from existing games, nowadays I mostly use Blender 3D modeling software to build my own game worlds. Within these worlds of videogames, I’m looking for friction with the ‘real’ world: Behind my PC, I’m collecting screenshots (using the Print Screen button), much like a tourist or a reporter. On the other hand am I looking for game-elements in reality, so I make pictures or small notes with ideas derived from reality.
After that, I’ll often create a new setting or space, with one or more characters, events and/or objects. On top of that, I will try to break the videogame’s original intention: I will pause at a diner which is just used as scenery in a racing game…A machinegun from a game is exhibited in a military museum…A clown is closely guarded in a luxurious villa. But I also have a run with traditional painting techniques, such as portraits and landscapes. I will take elements out of a videogame and give them a new function and context. Murals from a videogame, become a 17th century “Trompe l'oeil” (a perspective optical illusion), or a soldier’s face, who’s face in the context of the videogame seems less important, is now portrayed attentively." (Michiel Van Der Zanden, 2009)

Link: Michiel Van Der Zanden (Thanks to Valentina Tanni)

Related: Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson's "Museum Meltdown"

Related: Chris Reilly's "Everything I Do is Art, But Nothing I Do Makes Any Difference, Part II Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gallery" (2006)

Event: "GaMe!" (DAM Gallery, Berlin, 2/2 - 3/24 2010)

 
Todd Deutsch, a.k.a. KillerJ00, 2005, C-print, 45,7 x 30,5 cm, edition of 15

As a part of Transmediale.10, DAM Gallery in Berlin has organized an exhibition titled “GaMe!” featuring six international artists working with videogames and electronic toys, The line-up includes France Cadet (France), Todd Deutsch (USA), Mark Essen, (USA), Joan Leandre (Spain), Jason Rohrer (USA), and Tale of Tales (Belgium). Todd Deutsch is known for his photos from LAN-parties, Tales and Tales for their existential art games and Joan Leandre for his videos of deconstructed videogames.

Text by Mathias Jansson.

Link: GaMe! (in German)

Related: GameFaces

Call for Machinima: Gallery Maskinen, Sweden (deadline: February 19 2010)

 
"CALL FOR MACHINIMA ENTRIES

GALLERY MASKINEN WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO SUBMIT YOUR

CONTRIBUTION TO PARTICIPATE IN A MACHINIMA SCREENING 

ON THE 2'ND OF MARCH 2010

Machinima is the use of real-time three-dimensional (3-D) graphics rendering engines to generate computer animation. The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique which includes videos recorded in computer games or virtual worlds.

Originally a practice that arose from the animated software introductions of the 1980´s demoscene, machinima is today a powerful artistic tool that promote the relationship between art and new technologies with the ability to reinterpret and re-code content from computer games and virtual worlds.

The machinima screening will take place the 2 March 2010 in HUMlab at the Umeå University in the northern part of Sweden. We are interested in any forms of machinima based work and you can contribute with as many works as you like. We prefer that you send the works, for example, via www.sendthisfile.com or www.yousendit.com to galleri.maskinen@gmail.com. If this is not possible DVD´s can be sent to:

Rasmus Albertsen

Glädjens Gränd 2, 0102

90363 Umeå

Sweden

DEADLINE FOR WORK(S) 19 February 2010

NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE OF WORK(S) 24 February 2010

The event will take place at the 2 March 2010 between 5 pm and 8 pm

Maskinen is an artist-run, non-profit gallery. Our ambition is to run an nontraditional gallery that doesn’t necessarily work inside ”The White Cube” and give place to lesser-exposed trends in the different forms of contemporary art. Established, as well as un-established artists are represented in Maskinen.

HUMlab at Umeå University is a vibrant meeting place for the humanities and information technology. A large and diverse studio environment serves as the most important manifestation of this basic idea which involves bringing people together, looking at information technology as tool, medium, study object, and activist venue, and doing things that have never been done before. 

HUMlab is localized at the very center of the campus, and attracts people from the whole university and from the outside. Many international visitors come to HUMlab, and there is often a number of simultaneous activities going on in the space. More info: http://www.humlab.umu.se/

The development of HUMlab has been supported by the Kempe Foundations, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and others."

Thanks to Mathias Jansson

Link: Maskinen Gallery