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.

Key contributor: Mathias Jansson.

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

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

Game Art: Tim Devine & "Onur Sonmez' "The Mexican Standoff" (2010) [update]

The Mexican Standoff - Medialab Prado Madrid workshop part 2 from onurson on Vimeo.

Link: Onur Sonmez

Link: Previous post 

Review: "Rez" by Cristiano Poian (NextGame.it)

 "Per leggere questo libro - si precisa nell'introduzione - occorre un iPod ben imbottito. La playlist da spararsi in cuffia chiama all'appello qualsiasi cosa di DJ Krush, del primo DJ Shadow, di Coldcut o Underworld. La raccomandazione non è un vezzo, ma stretta necessità: serve per comprendere più a fondo il concetto di dispositivo sinestetico in riferimento a Rez e la poetica tutta di Tezuya Mizuguchi. Per leggere questo libro, inoltre, non bisogna neppure possedere il gioco di UGA (United Game Artists) o dichiarare di averci giocato almeno una volta nella vita. "Posto di fronte a un videogame particolarmente avvincente, un giocatore viene colto da una voglia irrefrenabile, da un'urgenza insopprimibile, da una desiderio animale: strappare il controller dalle mani del malcapitato utente pehttp://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d83451ba1e69e2011570ffbafd970b/post/composer interagire in prima persona. […] Per un gamer, giocare in prima persona è una esigenza, non un'opzione. Giocare vuol dire porsi delle domande, pretendere delle risposte, leggere il testo che si sta dipanando sullo schermo. […] Rez è uno dei rari casi in cui ci può ritrovare a fissare uno schermo senza un controller tra le dita e senza porsi domande. A me è capitato". Il gameplay, in un videogioco come Rez, non conta proprio un beneamato: è sufficiente anche solo vederlo giocare da altri. È puramente una questione di spazio e cyberspazio, di tempo e di groove, di trance e neuroni, di arte visiva, di Kandisky (secondo i comunicati ufficiali di Sega – Il progetto originario portava il nome di Project K) e di spiritualità digitale applicata al viaggio più onirico possa esserci al mondo. Rez, in buona sostanza, come potentissima droga sintetica, mirabolante e innocua." (Lorenzo Antonelli, NetxGame.it)

Leggi: "Art is Rez-sistance" di Lorenzo Antonelli 

Acquista: Rez di Cristiano Poian

Call for Papers: "Understanding Machinima: essays on filmmaking in virtual worlds" (Deadline: August 30, 2010)

Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds :: Call for Papers — Deadline: August 30, 2010.

Submissions are invited for an edited book with the working title Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds. Machinima - referring to “filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies” as well as works which use this animation technique, including videos recorded in computer games or virtual worlds - is challenging the notion of the moving image in numerous media contexts, such as video games, animation, digital cinema and virtual worlds.

Machinima’s increasingly dynamic use and construction of images from virtual worlds - appropriated, imported, worked over, re-negotiated, re-configured, re-composed - not only confronts the conception and ontology of the recorded moving image, but also blurs the boundaries between contemporary media forms, definitions and aesthetics, converging filmmaking, animation, virtual world and game development.

Even as it poses these theoretical challenges, machinima is expanding as a practice via internet networks and fan-based communities as well as in pedagogical and marketing contexts. In these ways, machinima is also transformative, presenting alternative ways and modes of teaching and commercial promotion, in-game events and, perhaps most significantly, networking cultures and community-building within game, virtual and filmmaking worlds, among others.

Divided into these two sections - machinima (i) in theoretical analysis; and (ii) as practice - this first collection of essays seeks to explore how we can understand machinima in terms of the theoretical challenges it poses as well as its manifestations as a practice. We are primarily concerned with offering critical discussions of its history, theory, aesthetics, media form and social implications, as well as insights into its development and the promise of what it can become. How does machinima fit in the spectrum of media forms? What are the ontological differences between images from machinima and photochemical/ digital filmmaking? How does machinima co-opt the affordances of the game engine to provide narrative? How may machinima, developed from the products of game and virtual world marketing, be used as an artistic tool? How is machinima self-reflexive, if at all, of the virtual environments from which they arise? What are the implications of re-deploying these media formats into alternative media forms? How does the open-source economy that currently defines much of global machinima relate it to broader cultural production generally?

In particular, we are looking for essays that address (but not limited to) the following ideas:

   * History: context; definitions; culture; relationships to gaming and play; development of technology; hardware and games; archiving of play;
   * Theory: image; ontology; time; space; narrative; realism; spectatorship; subjectivity; virtual camera; materiality;
   * Aesthetics: poetics; play; visuality; detournement; remix; digital mashup; appropriation; recombinative narratives; audio and visual theory; spatiality; narrative architecture;
   * Contemporary media contexts: comparative media; machinima vis-a-vis video games, (digital) cinema, animation, virtual worlds; the visual economy of machinima versus film;
   * Communities: Machinima as community-based practice and performance; user created content; online publishing; fan (fiction) communities; open source; cultural reflection;
   * Pedagogy: digital literacy; teaching models and practices; student-centered learning; critical making; collaborative authorship; rhetorics; problem based learning;
   * Marketing: crowd sourcing; viral marketing; peer to peer sharing; commercials, trailer promotions; grass roots versus astro turf; serials and sequels.

Please submit a 400 word abstract and a short bio via e-mail to understandingmachinima [at] gmail.com by 30 August 2010. We expect that final essays should not exceed 7,000 words and be due on 30 December 2010.

Jenna P-S. Ng
James Barrett
HUMlab, Umea University
Umeå University.SE-901 87.Umeå.Sweden
Blog: http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com
HUMlab: http://www.humlab.umu.se/
Sweden


 

Interview: Margarete Jahrmann and the "Synreal exhibition" (1999)

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

In 1995 Max Moswitzer and Margarete Jahrmann launched Konsum Arts_Server, by setting up a Linux server connected to a local network of servers in Vienna. The Konsum Arts Server is today the host for works as LinX3D a 3rdWeb MultiUser game on ASCII loginfiles datavatars. Jahrmann’s interest for Game Art was first discovered, as many other artists, at the Synreal exhibition in 1999.

 

Image: 2002 Jan Sprij

GameScenes: When did you start playing videogames? And why did you decide to use them for your artistic interventions?

Margarete Jahrmann: Well when I was still at school, playing with my first computer- that was in the mid 80ies.... The first game which impressed me was a black and white game- for Macintosh called Cosmic Osmo. It was a sweet alien, aesthetically, appealing and clever- reminded me of comics. Well in terms of gameplay I liked Shuffle Puck at this time – nice relaxing reaction booster. The switch to work with games was later. In 1999 I created the first game engine modification - which was then exhibited at the Synreal show in Vienna and other places.

GameScenes:  The “Synreal: The Unreal Modification” (1999) exhibition was the starting point for many artists experimenting with Game Art. Can you tell me some about your experience?

Margarete Jahrmann: I started artistically to work with games with Synreal. The game I made - was called "superfem" sth. It was playing with textures of different operating systems and aimed to establish a sort of "identity" by showing the login screen surfaces of the machine you started your application on. It was quite sophisticated already- involving multiuser- based on Unreal engine. For example if you came from a Unix system, or Windows or Macintosh system you could shoot your surface on to others. Synreal was a very rich experience- especially one night when we invited non art people for a tournament- to play in artists levels. I was moderating live on stage, like in a boxing ring, this night together with Hans Wu, a Viennese journalist, who with his Asiatic long hair looked like a real game nerd. It was an interesting experience that players said artists levels are unplayable ;) Later I made LinX3D in collaboration with Max Moswitzer. This was then integrating the question of the Interface already- exhibiting it with a retro style console- because we noted the problem of the adequate exhibition mode for game based works.

 
Installation: Nybble-Engine-ToolZ
Ars Electronica 2003

GameScenes: Your artworks have been displayed in several European museums and galleries for the past ten years. Did you notice a change in attitude toward Game Arts? Are critics and visitors reacting differently to your ludic artworks today compared to the early days of Game Art?

Margarete Jahrmann:  Museums need certain logics of arts and public display to be fulfilled. But for me this was always a positive challenge - to quit the boring pure virtuality and to make it more dirt by integrating the physical body, the art coded installation. Ars Electronia at OK Center Linz in 2003 was a very great opportunity- we built a player generated architecture of a shooter game- only the carved out shapes in human size- a complete room of about 60 square meters was filled with that- that was wonderful!

Also the experience at V2 lab Rotterdam at the Las Palmas exhibition space and at Gallery Mama in 2003/04 was perfect. We also had the opportunity to build a circular screen of about 12 meters for a real immersive experience - combined with a living room situation...to seduce players to send out anti-war mails by shooting. ... and showed an art coded print out of the game architecture- the generative architecture of course - in a vitrina like a modern
sculpture.

So the attitude of the art public and critics was that Game Art was hard to understand for both sides-because gamers were surprised that we were still working within the logics of arts and in the arts world it was still not recognised as art work and appeared as too nerdy. Maybe today that has changed- I don’t know. The last show was in Aarhus in a big museum AROS- and it was a gamework- among classical media arts works- and was at least received very well by a big audience. Link

 
Installation: Taunting Bots Dance on a red square machinima towards heavenly peace!
Red Gate Gallery Beijing, China 2004

GameScenes:  Today you work as a professor of Game Design at Zurich University of Arts. One thing that strikes me is that many of the artists who started to work with Game Art in the mid-Nineties today work at universities with videogames. Why?

Margarete Jahrmann: I think this is quite normal.... because due to market mechanisms only a few people can deal with art market. The playfulness is the main focus of insight- a method from my point of view. This is expressed in works as the very recent "toygenosonic". Urban Plays as interventionist art play critically address the surveillance dimension of electromagnetic topographies in present time’s urban space. The “invisible city”, which is in the sense
of Italo Calvino (1974) a narrative lived space, becomes a materialist topic and play field. While users were playing a game in urban space, namely those of competing to each other who would find the most accessible hot spots in an urban environment and documenting this by a photo, the awareness about the invisible topography layered over the existing visible city was made clear. A side effect of political explosiveness was the fact that by entering and scanning such points each player leaves traces. This was not topic of urban play as Objects of Desire 2008, Blitz Play Bergen 2007 and Toygenosonic 2009, which were realised with different collaborators under the label Ludic Society. However the mentioned arts projects have in common, that also a non-art audience is touched by the performances and play in public space, networked media, where the dissemination of the play takes place.

GameScenes:  Tell me about the Nybble-Engine project. It reminds me of The Matrix, an engine whose goal is to showcase the hidden information of the net and construct an architecture made of bits...

Yes - you got it pretty well. But in our case it was not ONLY textures- it was really a total conversion of the engine, which fully integrated commandos of a Linux server as working function into an game engine. So your REALLY could start commandos from inside the game - as NS look up traceroute, send mail, receive mail- only by shooting or bumping into objects.

We introduced a second text layer, which displayed all that feature live in real-time inside the engine. This was developed during a three month residency at the V2lab in Rotterdam and supported by them.

 
Installation: Nybble-Engine-ToolZ
Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, DEAF 2003

GameScenes:  Where would you say that Game Art stands today?

Margarete Jahrmann: Well - it is more integrated into art world may be - young artists quickly get invited into shows, if they label their work as "game art" - and then parallel also designer games are more art like nowadays. There is a whole strain of authors who creates mini games which are award winning - this is a big difference to the team work based big games. I don’t see the return of the author very positive in this concern. I am a too old fashioned idealist artist I know ;)

All images courtesy of the artist.

Link: Margarete Jahrmann

Text by Mathias Jansson

Related:

GameArtworld: The Early Years: Interviews

Interview: Sylvia Eckermann on “Hotel Synthifornia” (1998)

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

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: "Into the Pixel + Video Game Art Show" (Hotel des Arts, San Francisco, March 11 - April 2010)

Into The Pixel

Hotel des Arts
447 Bush (at Grant), San Francisco
Thursday: March 11, 2010
6 pm - 10 pm 

"Now in its seventh year, Into the Pixel (ITP) is the one annual opportunity for published computer and video game artists to be recognized by renowned fine art experts, the art-loving public and by their peers in the video game industry. Each year Into the Pixel convenes a jury of world-renowned museum curators, gallerists, educators, artists and interactive entertainment art veterans to review the art submitted by video game artists from all over the world. Only 16 pieces are selected by the jury to be printed by a master printer, framed, and hung in the ITP gallery, which then travels around the US and abroad. 

Into the Pixel was created by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) and the Prints and Drawings Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Launched in 2004, Into the Pixel is unveiled annually at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles, California. The collection then travels worldwide, and was most recently exhibited at the Design Center in Stuttgart, Germany; the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas; the European Festival of Art in Nottingham, England; the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Canada; The Bradford Animation Festival in Bradford, England; Animfx in Wellington, New Zealand; GC Asia in Singapore; the World Summit on Internet and Multimedia in Shenyang, China and the D.I.C.E. Summit conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

On March 11, 2010, Into the Pixel will open at the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco, and will be on display at the "Art Hotel" through April 2010.

“As an art historian and museum curator for traditional prints and drawings, Into the Pixel has been something of a revelation to me,” said Louis Marchesano, Into the Pixel co-lead juror and curator of prints and drawings at the Getty Research Institute. “What I’ve found is that the artistic quality of some of these images is sometimes poetic, sometimes nostalgic, and sometimes downright brilliant.”

"Each print is an icon of our industry’s artistic achievement. The ESA is proud to help bring ITP to the Game Developers Conference," according to Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade association that represents U.S. computer and video game publishers. "ITP is a forceful reminder of the powerful and compelling art that our industry’s storytellers, creators, and innovators develop."

“LTL PRINTS created and donated a collection of giant custom wall graphics for the Hotel des Arts exhibition, featuring the winning entries from the 2009 Into the Pixel collection," according to Kendall Schoenrock, CEO of LTL PRINTS, a startup company from Philadelphia. "The giant wall murals we created for Into the Pixel are custom-sized for the walls on the main floor and lobby of the Hotel des Arts, and the artwork is simply astounding. We are absolutely honored to work with the Entertainment Software Association, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and the Prints and Drawings Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to bring this amazing exhibition to San Francisco during the Game Developers Conference."

"Over the course of the last seven years, we have seen submissions of some amazing art, and we are very pleased to bring the 2009 collection to the Hotel des Arts during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco,” said Joseph Olin, president, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. “The Academy and ESA are thrilled to once again showcase the artistry and creative genius of the men and women within the interactive entertainment industry and like years past, the selected pieces are decidedly impressive, and we want to bring this collection to the widest possible global audience.” 

In addition to the Into the Pixel exhibition on the main floor of the Hotel des Arts, all five floors of San Francisco's 'Art Hotel' will be filled with artwork 'from and inspired by video games'.

Gallery partners for this unique VIDEO GAME ART SHOW include Super7, Gallery 1988, Project One Gallery, and the START SOMA art gallery.

The entire event was organized by John Doffing - the curator of the Hotel des Arts and creator of the art hotel's 'painted rooms' exhibitions, a former juror and member of the emeritus board of INTO THE PIXEL, and an advisor to LTL PRINTS. "I simply connected some amazing organizations and sent a few emails," according to Doffing. "The entire exhibition quickly took on a life of its own, and I am absolutely honored to bring the artwork that I personally love to the widest possible audience with a giant VIDEO GAME ART SHOW at the Hotel des Arts!"

INTO THE PIXEL + THE VIDEO GAME ART SHOW open on March 11, 2010 at the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco. "

Gallery:

  
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Snow Battle // Artist Name: Kekai Kotaki // Game: Guild Wars 2 // Software: Photoshop CS2

  
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Construction Site // Artist Name: Daniel Dociu // Game: Guild Wars // Software: Photoshop 

 
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Landing // Artist Name: Corey Butler // Game: Halo Wars // Software: Max 8, Brazil 1.2, Photoshop 

 
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Craft Cosmos // Artist Name: Kareem Ettouney // Game: LittleBigPlanet // Software: Photoshop

 
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Radiance // Artist Name: Nicole Cardiff // Game: Legends of Norrath - Against the Void // Software: Photoshop 

 
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Chinese Bar // Artist Name: Stephane Belin // Game: Army Of TWO: The 40th Day // Software: Photoshop 

 
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Drink Cart Pindown // Artist Name: Luc Allenet // Game: Wanted: Weapons of Fate // Software: Illustrator 

 
 INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: Enhanced Steamsuit // Artist Name: Chris Dien // Game: Legends of Norrath - Against the Void // Software: Photoshop

 
INTO THE PIXEL 2009 >> Title: "I Think You Knew My Father, Sir!" // Artist Name: Mike McCarthy // Game: Fable 2 : Downloadable Content 2 // Software: Painter 9 

Link: IntoThePixel 

Event: "Game Play" Art & Videogames (Tate Britain, London, Friday 5 March 2010)

 
 Gaming culture takes over Tate Britain. From low-tech parlour games Charades and Werewolf, to performance and interactive media art with Blast Theory's Can You See Me Now? Plus talks from presenters of Resonance FM’s One Life Left Ste Curran and Simon Byron, and experimental music from David Toop and Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra - it's all to play for.

A few highlights: 

Game Play: Can You See me Now? (Friday 5 March 2010, 18.30–21.30)

Artists' company Blast Theory has created a game happening simultaneously online and in the streets surrounding Tate Britain and Chelsea College of Art and Design. Players online and on the Manton Foyer computer terminals are chased by the Blast Theory runners, tracked by satellites on a virtual map. The audio stream from their walkie talkies allows you to eavesdrop on your pursuers: getting lost, cold and out of breath on the city streets.

Link: Can You See Me Now? @ Tate

Can You See Me Now? Tokyo from Blast Theory on Vimeo.

Video Games: design, narrative, gameplay (Friday 5 March 2010, 19.30–20.30)

How do game design, narrative and gameplay interact to make a successful video game? Ste Curran, game designer and Creative Director at Zoe Mode chairs a panel including, creator, writer and artist Charles Cecil, game critic Kieron Gillen and co-creator of Watchmen, Dave Gibbons

Link: Video Games: design, narrative, gameplay @ Tate

David Toop and Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra (Friday 5 March 2010, 19.30–20.00; Friday 5 March 2010, 20.45–21.15)

David Toop and Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra (London College of Communication) explore the dynamics, technical and interpersonal demands of group collaborations using digital audio tools and ‘unknown devices’, creating an improvisation using an unusual variety of instruments, noisemakers and gaming equipment.

Link: David Toop and Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra @ Tate

Event: "Tools, Trash & Technology" Marque Cornblatt, A 25-Year Art and Design Retrospective (March 10 - April 4, 2010, The Legg Mason Tower, Baltimore)

Tools, Trash & Technology

Marque Cornblatt, A 25-Year Art and Design Retrospective

March 10 - April 4, 2010

The Legg Mason Tower 
Harbor East on the Circle
100 International Drive 
Retail Suite 102
Baltimore, MD  21202

"This 25-year retrospective represents Cornblatt's return to exhibiting on the East Coast and his first major exhibition in Baltimore.  The show includes interactive web-based robots, sculptures, video installations and conceptual self-portraits spanning Cornblatt's career, as well as recent projects dedicated to do-it-yourself lifestyle and design.

From the very first Sony Watchman to portable DVD players, no technology is off-limits to Cornblatt's creative eye.  Using found objects, broken toys and re-purposed electronics, Cornblatt creates sculptures that challenge ideas about the relationship between technology and the self.  His recent use of videogames and virtual reality to digital self-portraits offers a glimpse into the future of hyper-mediated identity.

Cornblatt's will also be presenting the Sparky project, his pioneering interactive videochat robot.  First shown in 1996, Sparky has evolved from an assemblage of mixed parts into a worldwide network of telepresence robots capable of connecting people face-to-face in real time over the internet.

The gallery will be furnished with examples of Cornblatt's handmade design and housewares, including cardboard furniture, metal and glass tables, candleholders, chess sets and object d'art made from scrap metal and other recycled materials.   

Cornblatt will personally be in the gallery each afternoon, offering hands-on demos and opportunities to operate the robots."

Link: Tools, Trash & Technology

Event: "Game Over 3!" (Giant Robot, San Francisco, March 12 - April 14 2010)

  
Giant Robot San Francisco has announced its third annual Game Over gallery show. The game -themed art exhibition opens at San Francisco's Giant Robot store and gallery on March 12 2010. The opening reception begins at 6:30 PM. (via GameSetWatch & Brandon Boyer)

Game Over III at GRSF, March 12, 2010 - April 14, 2010
Reception: Friday, March 12, 6:30 pm - 10:00 pm

GRSF
618 Shrader Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
gr-sf.com
415-876-4773

Giant Robot is proud to present Game Over III, a group show that pays homage to the continuous evolution of videogames and their massive influence on popular culture. The impact and inspiration of videogames will be represented through a wide assortment of styles and genres provided by top artists in the fields of illustration, painting, sewing, indie comics, and videogames. Contributors are scheduled to include the following:

Sasha Barr
Blinky
Sean Boyles
Eric Butler
Kris Chau
Shawn Cheng
Ryan De La Hoz
Elayne Dixon
E. Dubois
Theo Ellsworth
Everybody Get Up
Matt Furie
Mark Giglio
Jake Gillespie
Girafa
Tim Gough
Andrew Holder
Paul Hornschemeier
David Horvath
Jay Howell
Martin Hsu
Mari Inukai
Marc Johns
James Kochalka
Le Merde
Phil Lumbang
Aaron Martinez
Andrew Perry
Mike Perry
Ferris Plock
Silvio Porretta
Carlos Ramos
Albert Reyes
Grant Reynolds
Alexander Shen
Snaggs
Kaz Strzepek
Superbrothers
Team Macho
Daria Tessler
Jeremy Tinder
Joe To
Kelly Tunstall
Aiyana Udesen
Amy Vazquez
Connie Wong
Anthony Wu
Lawrence Yang
Derek Yu

Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, as well as an online equivalent.

A reception featuring many of the artists will be held from 6:30 - 10:00 on Friday, March 12. For more information about the show, GRSF, or Giant Robot magazine, please contact:

Link: Game Over III @ Giant Robot

Interview: Sylvia Eckermann on “Hotel Synthifornia” (1998)

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

In 1998, Sylvia Eckermann and Mathias Fuchs participated in the exhibition “Synreal: The Unreal Modification” (1998), curated by Konrad Becker, at Public Netbase in Austria. Their work ”Hotel Synthifornia” and modified Unreal level, is described as a mix between the interiors of Stanley Kubrick’s movie “The Shining” and the music from the Eagles's legendary song “Hotel California”.

GameScenes: How did you get involved with the exhibition? Did you have any previous connection with Public Netbase?

Sylvia Eckermann: In the 90th Public Netbase was one of the most interesting and important places for digital culture in Vienna respectively in Austria. Konrad Becker and his team were not only responsible for the very first email and web accounts of many artists and people working in the field of art, they also supported the discourse of a critical and contemporary approach to new technologies. The conferences, talks, exhibitions held by Public Netbase where always on the cutting edge of what was going on in media art and theories. So, it was the place to be – for me too.

  

GameScenes: Was this the first time you worked with a videogame as a medium for artistic expression?

Sylvia Eckermann: When I was invited to take part in the game art exhibition “Synreal” I was very excited. I had no clue how to use a game engine or whether it could serve as an artistic tool. I couldn’t claim for myself to have been a gamer either. And – I had never heard before that there was a comparable exhibition in Europe. I think it must have been one of the first of its kind. During this time I was working with Mathias Fuchs on audio-visual installations that had a strong link to to spatial conditions. The engagement with space has always been the very first step of my concepts for immersive, interactive environments. I immediately got trapped when I got in touch with the “world editor” of the first person shooter “Unreal”. For weeks I could hardly leave my computer and became totally‚ ’addicted’. The “indoctrinator” was Max Moswitzer who was already pretty much into the techniques of game modification. He had a very important role because most of the invited artist then had little knowledge of Computer Game Modding – but some of them are still involved in Game Art. In my earlier works of spatial electronic art and media architecture I was confronted with given qualities and conditions that for me served as frameworks.  By using a Game Engine this framework went through a complete shift. The space was no longer the given starting point – it didn’t exist – instead there was a huge “something” from which I could carve out any kind of “space”. By pressing the “play” button, I – respectively my digital embodied appearance – could immediately experience the environment I had just now created. No SGI-machines, no expensive computers where needed to create a 3D-virtual world that moves with you in real-time. I worked a lot with digital images and digital video – now I had a tool to explore the 3rd dimension.

 

GameScenes: What is the key idea behind "Hotel Synthifornia"? The music plays obviously a crucial role in this work.

Sylvia Eckermann: At a flea market, we found an old record by accident: the Eagles’ “Hotel California”. There is this line in the song: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” – somehow that reminded me of the state I was in and the spaces I made. Spaces that only lead to other spaces but never to an exit. We decided to create a kind of Hotel – as in Stanley Kubrick’s movie “Shining” –  with endless corridors and rooms, elevators, staircases and a pool on the lower floor. Everything was covered with seamless textures that were reminiscent of these wallpaper ornaments of the 70th.  Mathias had the idea to install an old synthesizer in each room that could be triggered and one could then listen to the characteristic tunes of each machine.  So we called the Level “Hotel Synthifornia”.

 

GameScenes: How did the audience react to your work?

Sylvia Eckermann: Games are now acknowledged as culturally significant, generally speaking, comparable to film or television.  But back in the 90ies people considered videogames as an activity for nerds or children and even today many still think that way although there is immense theoretical discourse at universities, conferences and in the public media. I still have the feeling that whenever I tell somebody that I am an artist who does art installations with the use of Game Engines people react with astonishment.  Personally I think that one reasons for this is that I’m not young, I’m female and I do not fulfill their imagination of such a persona. But the main reason was that most people had no idea what I was talking about. Of cause that has changed.

GameScenes: After the “Synreal” exhibition you continued to work with videogames in works as ”FluID - arena of identities”, ”Expositur” and ”Femcity”. What did you find in games that you couldn’t find in other media?

For the “Synreal” exhibition in 1998 I did my very first work  with a Game Engine – I knew that there was a lot more to learn, to research and to experiment with and that I just got to know and see the tip of an iceberg.  For me the possibilities seemed boundless, if you had the knowhow.  At that time you had to look for the expertise in all the numerous forums in the internet and you found yourself sharing your interests with mainly young, male kids all over the world. There was something new – something you couldn’t find in books or learn in a university course – that was quite thrilling and challenging.  I invested a lot of time to learn how to use and modify the “Unreal”  Game Engine for my purposes. I had to broaden my skills in 3D-design and I had to understand at least a little bit of the language – which was something between C++ and Java – in order to not need to ask a programmer for every little detail.  And the more I found out the more I was sure that this it is my artistic tool for the next years. I started each project with a greater library of scripts, textures, animations and characters. But as “Unreal” released new versions that were not convertible to the previous ones my libraries were not very useful. I thought that it is not a good idea to depend on the ideas of the game industry. So I bought my own Game Engine, a license of a professional application that allows me to build up my own structure. If you invest a lot of time into something you really have to think whether you stop or continue. After ten years I still use Game Engines but it is not satisfying any more to be engaged solely with the virtual world. My interests are still in space and its perception, in interactivity and immersive environments, in the real and the virtual space. But I try to work out ways where both worlds interlink and merge.  One example is “The Trend Is Your Friend!” 2009 (MKL, Kunsthaus Graz, Gerald Nestler, Peter Szely, Technical University of Graz) an artistic translation of a futures trading pit where I tried to make the body and mind split visible by a horizontal membrane. People wore LED-devices on their heads and had to slip through an opening in the membrane. They could only use head movements and voice to interact with a 24 meter projection that dealt with financial markets and the idea of markets in general.

 

GameScenes:You have been working with videogames for a long time and thus you have a full understanding of their history and evolution in the Game Artworld. What do you think of the future for the videogame medium as an artistic tool?

Sylvia Eckermann:  Meanwhile there are many universities with special courses for game design all over the world; art universities are also providing courses. There are more and more huge exhibitions dealing with Game Art and even galleries have begun showing this kind of work. There are institutions that deliver the theoretical backgrounds and – today there is a generation of fathers and mothers that have been played computer games themselves. This new media is not new anymore. It has become an inherent part of a worldwide contemporary culture called Game Art.

All images from  "Hotel Synthifornia" courtesy of the artists.

Text by: Mathias Jansson

Link: Sylvia Eckermann

Link: Mathias Fuchs

Link: Download and play the “Hotel Synthifornia” level.

Link: “Computergames by artists”

Related

GameArtworld: The Early Years: Interviews

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

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"

Interview: Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson by Jon Cates (2007)

"Make your own exhibitions. Examine it, rip it apart and learn from it and do copy it. Don´t forget that stealing is everything." from the Museum Meltdown arken.map README by Palle Torsson and Tobias Bernstrup (1996)

Tobias Bernstrup and Palle Torsson collaboratively created a series of Art Games in the form of Art Mods called Museum Meltdown from 1996 to 1999. these Art Mods are among the first of their kind, New Media Art interventions into the site of their own exhibition which utilize the possibilities presented by the First Person Shooter as a genre of games. i interviewed Bernstrup and Torsson in 2007 to discuss these Media Art Histories for an essay of mine called Running and Gunning in the Gallery: Art Mods, Art Institutions and the Artists that Destroy Them, which will appear in From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art, edited by David Getsy. our discussion is both technical and conceptual, involving questions of Institutional Critique, site specificity and personal reflections of the often self-relfexive process of making museums meltdown... 

jonCates 
Chicago
2010

Q: how did you arrive @ the idea of developing the first instance of MUSEUM MELTDOWN in 1996 @ Arken Museum of Modern Art?
were there any previous works (artworks, levels, mods, etc) that particularly inspired or influenced you then in making the first MUSEUM MELTDOWN?

A: "At that time I was collaborating a lot with artist Palle Torsson. We met in art college and shared an interested for video computers performance and Internet. We did an early web based project 'Join Hands' in 1995. We both played a lot of computer games and was fascinated by the revolutionary game Doom and the possibilities of modifying the actual game. The initial idea of MM came while planning a new piece for a show at Arken MoMA, we went to see the museum space and were struck by similarities between the museum and a 3D shooter game. The museum interior had a lot of game like texture details such as fake metal panels and big sliding metal doors. So we came up with the idea of designing a game map based on the plan drawings and textures of the space. The in game artworks were to be reduced to low res pixelated images, working as recognizable symbols. The game engine we used was Duke Nukem 3D. Museum Meltdown 1 was followed by two more museum project until 1999 when Palle we did the a version of the Modern Museum in Stockholm based on the Half-Life graphical engine." - /tobias" (Jon Cates)

From "Running and Gunning in the Gallery: Art Mods, Art Institutions and the Artists that Destroy Them", included in From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art, edited by David Getsy, in 2011. 

Read the full text here

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