GAMESCENES

EVENT: THOMAS WEBB'S WORLD WIDE WEBB (AUGUST 14 2020- AUGUST 14 2021, ONLINE)

 

press release:

 

THOMAS WEBB

EXERCISE IN HOPELESS NOSTALGIA – WORLD WIDE WEBB

14 August 2020 – 14 August 2021

Opening: Friday, 14 August, 7pm CET

 

Online tour through the multiplayer simulation with Webb: Friday, 14 August, 9pm cet

 

http://twitch.tv/webblive 

 

Instagram Live – Webb in conversation with Johann König: Thursday, 20 August, 4pm cet Uhr, @koeniggalerie

 

This Friday, 14 August 7pm cet, KÖNIG GALERIE launches the digital solo show by the British artist Thomas Webb who is following the footsteps of his father, programmer Martin Webb.  His WORLD WIDE WEBB is a virtual world driven by Artificial Intelligence and real-time data. Webb created a world in which data is a common property. What if companies collecting data aren’t allowed to sell the data but are required to share it? What if data is not used in the interest of a company? How do people feel when an AI tailors a life for them based on their personality, choices they make, and things they enjoy through technology?  The digital visitor enters through the browser on a smartphone, and is invited to do an exercise in hopeless nostalgia. The WORLD WIDE WEBB is a multiplayer simulation, a digital exhibition space, and a world full of art and characters the visitor interacts with. Webb also recreates the social spontaneity of the world pre-Covid-19. 

 

Cambridge Analytica had Facebook users take quizzes designed to summarize their personality, using the harvested data to sway voters during the 2016 US presidential election. Webb instead trains artificially intelligent avatars that are capable of sensing the players emotional and logical decisions, allowing these in-game characters to change their narratives in real-time. Upon completion of the simulation (ca. 1h), Webb reveals insights into his algorithm. The algorithm is based on the same personality test theorem used by Cambridge Analytica, categorising players by their openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism through the lens of Webb’s experience in the digital age. 

 

EXERCISE IN HOPELESS NOSTALGIA is part of the exhibition series THE ARTIST IS ONLINE, curated by Anika Meier and Johann König, which focuses on art in the digital age. The exhibition can be experienced via the app KÖNIG GALERIE and the following link: https://webb.game/ There's an ad hoc app for the iPhone

Thomas Webb is an artist, hacker and coder. His artworks question systems, social media and technology, identifying the consequences of our daily dependence on software and hardware. He harnesses electrical engineering and computer programming to create AI, deep learning, microelectronics and real-time data as mediums. He juxtaposes a reflection on technology and contemporary life to explore the social dynamics of the digital age.

 

 

LINK: Thomas Webb's World Wide Webb

BOOK: ERON RAUCH'S SUCH IS THE POWER OF THE EMPTY LOT (2020)

Artist and curator Eron Rauch's latest project is Such is the Power of the Empty lot, a companion volume to the recently released Heterotopias 7, a wonderful publication on architecture and video games by Gareth Damian Martin. 

As Rauch write, "The book uses a wide mixture of real and virtual photographic methods (including multiple types of video game screenshots) to link the fictional versions of Tokyo, real estate bubbles' effects on urban landscapes, the weirdness of video game historical recreations, and photography's nebulous role in the age of screens." Rauch contemplating a limited physical run of the 100+ page book. Text is by Justin Reeve.

Some highlights:

Eron Rauch is an artist, writer, and curator based in Los Angeles whose projects bridge the shadowy hinterlands between fine art, fandom, digital imaging, landscape history, and video games. Among his game-photography work is Glitchscapes and A Land to Die In. He received his MFA in Photography and Media at the California Institute of the Arts, where he teaches an inter-media photography course. His projects often repurpose platforms and spaces outside of traditional fine arts venues to bring disparate audiences into new conversations. His writing has been featured in eight languages and his artwork has been shown in the United States, France, and Japan. Eron is a collaborating curator for the contemporary photography section of William's College Art Museum's upcoming Repro Japan exhibit, and has worked with Glitch City in curating at IndieCade West’s 2019 Night Games.

LINK: Eron Rauch

GAME ART: NILSON CARROLL'S UNTITLED (DRAGON WARRIOR GLITCHES) (2020)

The latest project by Rochester-based artist and curator Nilson Carroll is titled Untitled (Dragon Warrior glitches),

an evolving HTML hypertext collection of captured handmade hex glitches from the NES titles Dragon Warrior II, III, and IV paired with prose poems that explore game mechanics, narratives, and genre legacies, queering each through the glitch process. Themes questioned include heteronormativity, binary thinking, colonization, and the neoliberal values inherent in these and all games’ mechanics and goals. Not only are the games’ digital/physical boundaries broken and expanded, but the implied ones, too. The myth of the hero is shattered, the protagonist finally made vulnerable

The artwork was created as part of Carroll's digital art residence with Welcome to my Homepage, and it is the result of a month long exploration of Dragon Warrior's glitches.

LINK: Nilson Carroll

GAME ART: ERIC ADAMS ON MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR (2020)

The most powerful in-game photography tool ever? That's Eric Adams' main argument in his long video essay: 

Thanks to its fast "slew mode" and clever drone functionality, it allows users to move through the earth precisely, and to set up scenes with their preferred time, date, and weather conditions, giving photographers the ability to scout locations remotely in ways that Google Earth can’t even touch. You can experiment with lighting and weather to find out when you want to be there, how much time you’ll have to do your shooting before the light disappears, and what your optimal compositions might be as you slew around the environment exploring different angles and elevations and viewpoints. You can move with spooky ease to find your absolute best compositions.

Eric Adams is a professional photographer and writer living in the United States. His work - text and images - was featured in Wired, The Drive, Gear Patrol, Men's Health, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Forbes, and other magazines. His photographs also appear in the upcoming book Air Time: Watches Inspired by Aviation (Rizzoli, 2021).

LINK: Eric Adams (thanks Pietro!)

ART GAME: NEÏL BELOUFA'S SCREEN TALK (2020)

Neïl Beloufa's Screen Talk is set in a world affected by a respiratory pandemic (sounds familiar?). The project was originally conceived in 2014 as Home Is Whenever I'm With You. Since then, Beloufa ha shared several iterations. The latest was created during lockdown and rebranded as Screen Talk. Although the project is supposedly fictional, there are many references to the current situation. The game is modelled after the Wild Goose model, offering sarcastic takes at the current situation. Screen Talk is freely available online.

Neil Beloufa (b. 1985) is a multimedia artist primarily working in sculpture and film to explore themes of utopia and dystopia; assumption and fantasy as they play into narratives. His work has been shown in contemporary art venues as well as in film festivals around the globe.

LINK: NEÏL BELOUFA'S SCREEN TALK 

CFG: SHALL MAKE, SHALL BE (DEADLINE: AUGUST 8 2020)

The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University is pleased to announce Shall Make, Shall Be, an exhibition of playable works centered on the individual amendments in the US Bill of Rights. Ten artists and game makers will receive $5,000 commissions to create playable works addressing an individual amendment. More information, as well as a link to the submission form, is available here.

The deadline is August 8 2020

Shall Make, Shall Be: The Bill of Rights at Play invites artists and independent game makers to propose game-based artworks around the individual Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Drawing on both the legal meaning and the effect of the 10 Amendments on U.S. culture, these artworks are meant to use the mechanism of play to interrogate, critique, inform, and ask questions about our understanding of civil liberties in the 21st Century.

Ten artists will be selected, with each asked to create a playable work exploring one of the Ten Amendments from the Bill of Rights. Artists will be invited to develop their works with the support of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon. Artists will receive an honorarium and small budget for expenses. Upon completion of the work, artists will be expected to grant Carnegie Mellon a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to present the resulting works in the Shall Make, Shall Be: The Bill of Rights at Play project.

Selected artists will have one year to produce their playable work for inclusion in exhibitions opening Fall 2021, and will receive an artist’s fee of $5,000, plus access to a small supplemental materials budget on a per-project basis. We anticipate artist check-ins with the curatorial team every two months leading up to the first installation of the exhibition.

The ten commissioned works will be included in an exhibition opening Fall 2021 in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO For Creative Inquiry, timed to commemorate the 230th anniversary of the Bill’s signing. There are plans to travel the show to additional sites throughout 2022. The exhibition will be accompanied by a printed publication including essays from scholars, a catalog raisonné, and artist statements.

Shall Make, Shall Be: The Bill of Rights at Play encourages proposals from artists of underrepresented and marginalized identities and backgrounds including gender, race, culture, sexuality, citizenship status, and abilities.

This project is organized through generous funding and support from the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO For Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Selection Committee

Deborah Archer (NYU Law)
Salome Asega (Ford Foundation)
Shana T Bryant (Game Developer)
R. Luke DuBois (New York University) ex officio chair
Jessica Hammer (Carnegie Mellon University)
Elizabeth Joh (UC Davis Law)
Laine Nooney (New York University)
Paolo Pedercini (Carnegie Mellon University)
John Sharp (The New School)
Astria Suparak (Independent Curator)

LINK: SHALL MAKE, SHALL BE (Thank you Paolo!)

GAME ART: PETRA SZÉMAN'S MONOMYTH: GAIDEN / MASTER OF TWO WORLDS (2020)

Petra Széman, Monomyth: gaiden/ Master of Two Worlds, 2020, digital video, color, sound 10' 40"

Petra Széman's monumental Monomyth: gaiden series has reached its destination. With the latest and last installment Monomyth: gaiden/ Master of Two Worlds, Széman's the meta-referential, self-reflexive series that pay homage to Skyrim, among other things, is now complete. The grinding of everyday life acquires a whole new meaning in an endless loop of identity play. The penultimate episode, Return, was recently exhibited on VRAL.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Petra Szemán is a moving image artist working with animation and game-like immersive installations. Her practice is centered around instances in which real life can be experienced as fictional. Using a virtual version of herself as a protagonist across various digital realms, she explores liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a landscape oversaturated with fiction both on- and off-screen. Rejecting the idea of cyberspace as a radically alternative realm, Petra walks the line situated between dystopia and utopia. Petra is a recent Fine Art graduate from Newcastle University (2013-2017) and has exhibited since graduation at NEoN Festival in Dundee, Scotland; Big Screen Southend; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, as well as various galleries across the North East of England. She is currently based in Tsukuba, Japan, developing new work as a recipient of a research scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture (2018-2020). 

LINK: Petrà Széman

EVENT: VRAL #6_BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH (JULY 17 - JULY 30 2020, ONLINE)

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW

Digital video, color, sound, 7’ 01”, 2020

July 17 - July 30 2020

Introduced by Luca Miranda

Things are different now (2020) is both a variation of The Soft Crash (2020 – ongoing) and a complementary, consequential conversation with Brenton Alexander Smith’s other works I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) and Inverted Black Box (2020). All these works center on an impossible dialogue between the human and the machine. Things are different now tests the limits of the physics simulation in the driving game BeamNg.drive. The video shows a twitching car located in (or rather, on) a multi level car park environment. The jerky motion makes the vehicle look vulnerable and fragile, but the absurdity of the situation has comical undertones as well. Crashforms, the name given by the artist these hybrid artifacts, are both living corpses and the embodiment of one’s desires. In Things are different now, the machine is no longer a human prosthesis or appendix. It is transfiguration.

Brenton Alexander Smith is an Australian artist whose work explores the relation between the human and the mechanic, and the affective and sentimental responses generated through this relationship. Smith deliberately avoids narrative structures, preferring instead an apparently chaotic openendedness. Imbued with a sense of uncanny, his work transports the viewer into media res, that is, in a series of always already unfolding events. Smith received a Bachelor in Visual Arts in 2014 at the Sydney College of Arts in Australia and took part in several group and solo exhibitions. He exhibited at Kudos Gallery in Sydney, Australia and at The Wrong Biennale (2019) in Valencia, Spain. His solo exhibitions include I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) in the virtual gallery of Closed on Monday Gallery and Inverted Black Box (2020) in the Black Box Space in Sydney.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: PLAY SOCIETIES: WOLVES, LYNX AND ANT (JUNE 16 - SEPTEMBER 9, 2020, HYUNDAI MOTORSTUDIO BEIJING, BEIJING, CHINA )

PLAY SOCIETIES: WOLVES, LYNX AND ANT

(JUNE 16–SEPTEMBER 9, 2020, HYUNDAI MOTORSTUDIO BEIJING, BEIJING, CHINA )

Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, E-1, 798 Road
798 Art Zone, Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
100015 Beijing, China
Hours: Monday–Sunday 10am–7:30pm
motorstudio.hyundai.com.cn
T +86 10 5394 5200

Curator: Chen Min & Zhang Yehong (Winner of "Creativity" Hyundai Blue Prize 2019)

Artists: Angela Washko, Chen Baoyang, Chen Xin & Huang Yuwen, Lao Jiahui, Loopntale, Molleindustria, Nicky Case, Pied la biche, Tang Chao, Yao Qingmei, Zhang Wenxin, Zhao Bang, Zheng Da, Zhou Pengan

The award-winning exhibition of the 2019 Hyundai Blue Prize—Play societies: wolves, lynx and ants had its grand opening on June 16, 2020 in the Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. This exhibition is curated together by Chen Min & Zhang Yehong, who won the “Creativity” prize in the 2019 Hyundai Blue Prize .

Since its establishment in 2017, the Hyundai Blue Prize, hosted by Hyundai Motor Company, has always been pursuing the vision of cross-border sharing, national innovation and enjoying life. It sparks a public discussion on art, innovation and technology, while bringing the public closer to the emerging art ecology. The Hyundai Blue Prize serves as a foothold for outstanding young curators to step onto the world stage and stands as a vanguard of supporting young curators in China.

The exhibition aims to take audiences on a journey from the time when personal computers became ubiquitous, through the beginning of the Internet in the 1990s to the current era of smart devices, thereby exploring the social interaction/social intelligence problems faced by individuals. The exhibition uses play as a behavior and a medium, asking whether we can imagine a kind of "pan-intelligence" that combines human, animal and artificial intelligences.

The two curators said, “Playing is an instinctive act for animals and humans alike, and is the method as well as the medium of this exhibition. As Johan Huizinga once wrote, play predates culture and society; civilization arises in and as play. But what we have seen today is screens reducing desires into symbols and signs, game rules taking the place of intuition, data replacing the individuals, and algorithms eliminating chance. By constantly revising and iterating the rules inherent in collective plays, artists hope to introduce an incalculable quality to different communities and society overall, so that play and games will no longer be dominated by rules of competition and conflict, but filled with purer liquidity and spontaneity. At the same time, play is undoubtedly sociable; even “players” in the “console games” can talk to the creator (the game designer) through the game’s interface. Group plays help humans to explore the rules of how the world works, learn from each other and achieve unity through group collaboration.”

The three animals—wolves, lynx and ants—which symbolically represent the human society are shown through the different developmental stages of media technology, revealing the contradictions between the interconnected society and individuals. Meanwhile, “superhighway,” “refuge island,” and “arcade” are taken as cues for the overall design of the space. The exhibition is composed of artworks by 14 artists and game designers both from mainland China and abroad, and uses different interpretative forms, such as video art, paper painting, multimedia interactive installations, video games and other forms of interaction to show the concept of “play.”

Cornelia Schneider, the head of Global Experiential Marketing, mentioned “This exhibition will display many artworks with deep interaction and collective participation among audiences who can play, watch, or even do both simultaneously to experience the interactive electronic games designed by the artists.”

Meanwhile, to control the number of visitors attending the offline exhibition amid current travel restriction, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing has launched a virtual reality exhibition that overcomes the limitations of time and space. (press release)

LINK: Play Societies 

EVENT: OPENING OF THE REAL VIRTUAL DIGAREC IN-GAME PHOTO GALLERY (JULY 16 2020, ONLINE)

Press release:

Opening of the real virtual DIGAREC In-Game Photo Gallery (Online Event)

Photo: Sebastian Moring, 2016 (physical gallery, via Twitter)

July 16, 2020, 6 pm CET in Mozilla Hubs (best access via Firefox / Chrome, no login required) and on Twitch

We have the pleasure of inviting you to the opening of the real virtual DIGAREC In-Game Photo Gallery which shows a number of in-game photographical works which were produced by students of European Media Studies – a joint program of University of Potsdam and University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. The exhibition presents the results of their practical explorations of the medium of in-game photography as participants of three university seminars on the subject focusing on different topics: “Medial Environments, Milieus and Landscapes” (class of 2016), “Machines_ _Ethics; _Poetry; _Politics; _Poetics” (class of 2018), “Media Reflexivity” (class of 2019/20). This exhibition exists only online and makes use of the virtual meeting tool Mozilla Hubs. It is designed by Lars Pinkwart and curated by Sebastian Möring.

The opening starts with a brief reception and an introduction after which there will be a guided tour through the gallery. If you join through Hubs you will then be able to explore the virtual gallery space on your own and even start a conversation with other exhibition visitors over microphone.

Artworks by:

Aaron Richmond, Alexandra Günther, Barış Aydınlı, Celine Pilch, Christine Laqua, Daniel Latzel, David Gatidis, Dulguun Shirchinbal, Elise Kunze, Emily Hadrich, Fabian Brandtner, Finn Wittforth, Friederike Sophie Schulz, Hendrik Fischer, Jasmin Lehmann, Karoline Mushak, Laura Willikonsky, Lennart Mackies, Lisa Hein, Luzie Müller, Marian Billing, Marie-Lena Höftmann, Maurice Matthieu, Nadja Scherfy, Oliver Thurau, Philipp Röbke, Pia Zdila, Sandra Buttress, Sarah Töteberg, Stefanie Löbel, Till Schöneich, Ugur Yildirim.

In-game photography has been a research focus of DIGAREC (Digital Games Research Center at the University of Potsdam) since 2016: We have been researching the subject in the context of international workshops and university seminars. In recent years the scholarly, artistic, as well the economic interest in in-game photography has been on a constant rise. More and more academic literature gets published, exhibitions are being held in prominent museums such as the Centre George Pompidou, and ever more games come equipped with a photo-mode by default. In-game photography“describes a multitude of practices and technologies in which photography and video games Interact“ and it contains diverse practices such as „placing a DSLR in front of the unfolding events on the screen, using a video game's photo mode to take a picture, or playing a game where the use of the camera is simulated“ (Möring & de Mutiis 2019:70).

How to participate?

Option a: Participate with your avatar which you can control on your own (limited to 30 places). For this please sign up here: https://forms.gle/EaxssgbHgAGiRwhz6. We will provide the link a couple of hours before the event.

Option b: Participate as a viewer of our live stream on https://twitch.tv/digarec.