GAMESCENES

CALL FOR ENTRIES: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2021 (DEADLINE: DECEMBER 15, 2020)

The fourth edition of the MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL will once again take place at IULM University (Milan, Italy) during the Milano Digital Week, which celebrates the driving forces that are reshaping art, culture, and technology of Italy’s most vibrant city.

Filmmakers and video artists engaged in the practice of appropriating, repurposing, and remixing video games are encouraged to send us their work for consideration. All submissions will be judged by an international panel of jurors comprising scholars, curators, and critics. A Critics' Award will be awarded to the most groundbreaking work.

Screenings of selected machinima will be curated around different themes and presented in different sections. The most interesting submissions are those which seek to capture or highlight a specific facet of contemporary life, from politics to art, from violence to creativity, from technology to ideology, through the aesthetic lenses of digital gaming.

The deadline for submissions is December 15, 2020. 

The full program will be announced in February 2021

Please carefully read our simple submission guidelines and requirements below before sending your work.

INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL FOR NEW MEDIA ARTWORKS GUIDELINES:

The Milan Machinima Festival defines machinima as any digital video made using video game technology (game engines, game tools, assets such as characters, items, environments etc.).

A preference is given to machinima created with/in video games rather than virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Submissions must be 10 minutes or less in length. The minimum duration is 2 minutes.

Submissions must have been produced between January 1, 2020 and December 15, 2020.

Multiple versions of the same machinima will not be considered.

Acceptable submission formats: digital video files only.

Acceptable exhibition formats: mp4, avi, mpg, Quicktime file (ProRes 422).

Each submission requires a one-time, nominal submission fee of 15 euros. Submissions that have not been accepted will not be refunded.

The applicant holds the sole responsibility of copyright clearance of any copyrighted material in the machinima.

The submission must include an accompanying artist statement/description no longer than 500 words in English.

The MMF is under no obligation to provide comments regarding submitted machinima to any applicant.

All applicants must complete the official festival submission form located on FilmFreeway.

Submission deadline: December 15, 2020

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2021: CALL FOR ENTRIES

GAME ART: THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS & SUN ARAW'S VELOCITY HOLOMATRIX WARP 7 (2020)

Sun Araw, Theo Triantafyllidis, Velocity Holomatrix Warp 7, 2020, digital stills (courtesy of the artists)

Velocity Holomatrix Warp 7 is an hour long interactive experience created by experimental musician Sun Araw and digital artist Theo Triantafyllidis which debuted on November 25 2020, featuring a soundtrack by Sun Araw & Tomo Jacobson and game design by Theo Triantafyllidis. This collaborative project is a navigable digital environment that is reacting in real-time to an improvised score, recorded by Sun Araw with Polish double-bassist Tomo Jacobson at CPN Vinter Jazz Fest in 2017. Velocity Holomatrix Warp 7 is available as a standalone executable for OSX and Windows PC and will also be Streamed Live during Overkill Festival, NL on Sunday, November 30th at 9:00pm (GMT+1). This is how Sun Araw and Theo Triantafyllidis describe the project:

It is thought, though not “known,” that planets must be spherical due to the force of gravity that begins to consolidate their mass and cause their formation.  However, new investigations of exoplanets and planetoid formations have revealed that some planetoids are able to sustain highly irregular shapes while still developing primitive atmospheres and magnetospheres just before they become large enough to be crushed into spheres by their own gravity.  These irregular planetoids have become highly sought after galactic objects for study, and while there is still no definitive evidence, it seems more and more likely that many of these stellar objects might actually have been crafted, sculpted, and even “arranged” intentionally by highly skilled ancient civilizations, in much the same spirit as the ancient tradition of bonsai here on Earth.  Some of these dwarf planetoids show such a complexity of gravitational geometry and electromagnetic balance that it is highly unlikely that they could have been the product of purely natural forces.  Indeed, many of them seem highly “sculpted,” almost as if challenging the limits of complexity while still remaining cosmically stable.  In addition, some arrangements of strange flora (both vascular and fungal) are so deftly and artfully composed that it is highly improbable they could be naturally occurring.  VHW7 is a recently discovered planetoid in this tradition that shows convincing evidence of being just such an alien bonsai sculpture.  While almost nothing is known about technologies capable of such feats (or civilizations that could have created such technologies) it is becoming hard to ignore the evidence that such civilizations have existed.  The extreme age of VHW7 and its ability to hold its intricate sculptural form for millennia against the magnetic and gravitational tides of its home system suggest an incredible and ancient skill, currently lost to the sentient species of the Universe as we know it. This program allows you to holographically explore planetoid VHW7 and its many intricate ecosystems: disorienting ionic bubbles, strange levitating mineral ore deposits, phosphorescent photonic anomalies, and phenomena even stranger.  In order to give a further sense of its formation and the delicate balance of forces that hold it together, algorithms have been created to convert its magnetic, electric, and gravitational forces as audio, allowing you to “hear” the skilled and intricate sculptural work that shaped and maintains it.  We hope this immersive experience will create a greater appreciation for these ancient cosmic artworks, and help to preserve their legacy for future millennia.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988, Athens, GR) is an artist who builds virtual spaces and the interfaces for the human body to inhabit them. He creates expansive worlds and complex systems where the virtual and the physical merge in uncanny, absurd and poetic ways. These are often manifested as performances, virtual and augmented reality experiences, games and interactive installations. He uses awkward interactions and precarious physics, to invite the audience to embody, engage with and challenge these other realities. Through the lens of monster theory, he investigates themes of isolation, sexuality and violence in their visceral extremities. He offers computational humor and AI improvisation as a response to the tech industry’s agenda. He tries to give back to the online and gaming communities that he considers both the inspiration and context for his work by remaining an active participant and contributor. He holds an MFA from UCLA, Design Media Arts and a Diploma of Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens. He has shown work in museums, including the Hammer Museum in LA and NRW Forum in Dusseldorf, DE and various galleries such as Meredith Rosen Gallery, the Breeder, Eduardo Secci and Transfer. He was part of Sundance New Frontier 2020, Hyper Pavilion in the 2017 Venice Biennale and the 2018 Athens Biennale: ANTI-. Theo Triantafyllidis is based in Los Angeles.

Sun Araw is the working title of a musical project helmed by Los Angeles-based artist Cameron Stallones.  Sun Araw has released a number of well-received and consistently innovative albums, with his ninth, Rock Sutra, released by Sun Ark Records (an imprint of Drag City Records) in 2020. Structural and spiritual inspiration for Sun Araw comes primarily from investigation into the nature of experience by the transformative power of simple observation.  The goal has always been the creation of a psychedelic music, by which is meant a psychotropic music: not an aesthetic sensibility but a method of discontinuous experience.  Supporting every Sun Araw composition is the fact of mantra: the ability of repetition with attention to change the perception of a melodic object.  By means of this constantly changing perception, the possibilities of improvisation become infinite.  More recent works attempt to effect the mental activity of the listener even more physically and investigate the expansion of the time-experience when the composition removes a fixed place from which to listen. 

Tomo Jacobson is a Polish-born double bass player based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He focuses his efforts on free improv and other creative music. With over two dozen albums to his credit, he is mostly known for the projects he is a leader, or co-leader to, namely MOONBOW, MOUNT MEANDER, IL SOGNO, or FREE SPIRITUAL, as well his solo double bass work, and free improv encounters with acclaimed musicians. Tomo is also an active music life curator and organizer in Copenhagen. Most notably he is a founder of the yearly Freedom Music Festival, which is focused on solo and duo free improvised concerts.

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis

RESOURCE: PAOLO PEDERCINI'S ON THE FLASH GAMES ECOSYSTEM

A phenomenal talk (cum transcript) by Paolo Pedercini aka Molleindustria about Apple's decision to kill Flash (spoiler: platform capitalism).

Here's an excerpt:

LINK: Paolo Pedercini's Gone in a flash

 

EVENT: VRAL #14_MARIO MU (NOVEMBER 27 - DECEMBER 10 2020)

ARCHITECTURE WITH GAMES IN THE TITLE

Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18' (3 x 6'), 2020 (Croatia)

Created by Mario Mu, 2020

VRAL

November 27 - December 10 2020

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

 

Architecture with Games in the Title focuses on the convergence between spatial memory and the architecture of games through the narrative framework of a dialogue. Mu compares the casualties of financial crises to video game players, forced to navigate a rigidly controlled “gamified” setting where trial-and-error is glorified as the only way to reach symbolic “achievements”. Created with Unity 3D, the scene depicts an office space replete with desks, computers, chairs, and other amenities of the modern working environment. Walls appear and disappear depending on the location of unseen characters, the “flexible workers” of the neoliberal world. This is a space without shadows, at once bright, warm, and phantasmatic. As the unseen characters engage in a conversation about architecture and memory, bots and ghosts, the surrounding environment slowly burns. 

The artistic practice of Croatian artist Mario Mu revolves around projects which are often constructed as extended gaming platforms. In addition to sound and drawing, his preferred media often include elements of game design, 3D animation, and performance. A student of Hito Steyerl, Mu received an MFA in Berlin from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin in 2017, a BFA with a major in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in 2015, and an MA from the the Faculty of Graphic Arts in 2012 from the same institution. Between 2016 and 2017, Mu was an active member of the Research Center for the Proxy Politics in Berlin. He has been working on several LARP events as an author, collaborator and/or performer at Play Co London and Zagreb, Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, Galerie gr_und, Acud and UdK in Berlin. Mu is currently working on a new game project initiated by the portuguese artist Odete and supported by Maat Museum and Boca Bienal.

WATCH NOW

GAME ART: JORDY VEENSTRA'S HYPER REAL (2020)

Jordy Veenstra, Hyper Reality, 2020, color, sound, 16' 15" (The Netherlands)

Artist and filmmaker Jordy Veenstra's latest project is a fascinating mix of ultra-modern and retro-future. Hyper Real is not only a homage to late Nineties online gaming but also a very contemporary critique of visual culture. Described as "an experimental 15-minute match of Capture the Flag within the game Quake III Arena (1999)", this short explicitly cites Jean Baudrillard's notion of hyperreality, mixing lo-fi aesthetics (VHS video), twitch-action, the typical first-person shooter cacophonic soundscape, multiple split-screens, phallic guns, hyper-competition, and the professionalization of play (see the reference to the the fictitious Master of Flags tournament). As Veenstra writes in his statement, Hyper Real is meant as 

a presentation of audiovisual chaos and the idea of hyper consumption in the most literal way (consuming as much moving images as possible within one single frame). A last form of inspiration was found in finding new ways of implementing Quake III footage for machinima purposes.

Veenstra also stresses the inherently spectactorial nature of Quake III Arena and introduces an interesting theory about bot-based spectacle:

With Hyper Reality, I aim to show that the perception and interpretation of Quake III Arena enthusiasts/professionals of gameplay and presentation are intertwined; heavy bot-induced gameplay will be less dreaded due to a higher level of visual presentation; standard bot-gameplay without artistic and aesthetic enhancements will receive higher levels of negative attention; viewers pay more attention to the concept of hyper consumption rather than the synchronicity of the film.

A stunning gender-bender and an overwhelming visual experience presented in 4:3 ratio, Hyper Real is a remarkable achievement in machinima-making like his previous Quake III-inspired work, the groundbreaking Depthmap, which was featured in the The Weird, The Eerie, and The Unreal program of the 2020 MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL.

Jordy Veenstra is a video editor, motion graphics designer, 2D animator, and experimental filmmaker based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In his practice, Veenstra connects art and narrative with technology and software through the medium of experimental film. His work examines often overlooked social and artistic concerns. 

LINK: Jordy Veenstra

EVENT: THE OVERKILL FESTIVAL (NOVEMBER 27 - DECEMBER 6 2020, ONLINE) [updated and amended]

The Overkill Festival

Opening: Friday November 27th 2020, 19:00 

Festival: Friday November 27th - Sunday December 6th  2020

Time Schedule: www.theoverkill.nl

The might collective Sickhouse  - founded by Aike Lutkemuller and Marie Janin - is organizing The Overkill Festival, a smosgaboard of game-related content and events comprising of three different programs: an exhibition room curated by The Rodina, an online exhibition space, featuring the works of the artists and game developers co-curated by Isabelle Arvers , and a series of YouTube streams. This killer package - framed by the theme “The end of the world as we know" - looks phenomenal.

For instance, check out the ART SELECTION...

...And the GAMES program

Sickhouse is a playful art space focused on the impact of digital & popular culture on society. It's also an exhibition space, a room for VR experience, a workshop area and our retro living room office located at the top floor of Warp Technopolis at Stationsplein 1 in Enschede, The Netherlands. Sickhouse present and co-produce crossover projects combining art, gaming, pop culture, science, music, philosophy…

LINK: THE OVERKILL FESTIVAL

EVENT: VRAL #13_LUCA MIRANDA (NOVEMBER 13 - NOVEMBER 26, ONLINE)

CHEATIMERISM

Digital video, color, suond, 14’ 55’’, 2020 (Italy)

Created by Luca Miranda

VRAL

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti 

By reconfiguring the spaces of Grand Theft Auto V, Cheatimerism investigates the political and economic implications of consumption and its side effects, including concrete waste, virtual surrogacy, and planned obsolescence. This machinima shows various sculptural forms made of identical vehicles, the Rapid GT, a sports car, and a waste collection truck, the Trashmaster. Capitalism, the artist seems to suggest, is the ultimate cheat mode.

Luca Miranda’s practice focuses on the relationship between reality and simulation. He is especially interested in the aesthetic potential of the avatar. In his work, Miranda critically investigates game mechanics and concepts such as immersion, identification, and interpassivity. Miranda received a B.A. in Media and Art from the University of Bologna and in 2019 received a M.A. in TV, Cinema and New Media at IULM University. In 2018, he co-founded Eremo, an artistic collective based in Milan. He is currently working on book about walking simulators.

WATCH NOW

GAME ART: CARSON LYNN'S STORM AND STRESS (2020)

Storm and Stress is Carson Lynn's latest project created for Silicon Valet’s Lot Residency #07, which took place on their Instagram page on August 1st and 2nd, 2020. The main window is divided into nine sections, and each one containins a unique short machinima mini-clip. This game-video-within-a-game-video glitchscape creates a Russian doll kind of visual experience that is truly soothing and hypnotic. Background information can be found here. There's also a great artist talk on Silicon Valet's Twitch channel.

Carson Lynn is an artist based out of Southern California who through the usage of digital materials, sublime landscapes, and exploration within gamespaces, creates artworks as a queering of heterocentric photographic conventions and game systems. He is working towards receiving his MFA from ArtCenter College of Design with a projected graduation in April, 2020. In 2015, he received a BFA in Photography and Imaging, also from ArtCenter.

LINK: Carson Lynn

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL'S VIDEO GAME ART PORTRAITS (2020)

A fascinating series of video game art portraits of Austrian artists and musicians such as Winfried Ritsch (musician and artist), Guenter Meinhart (composer), Anita Leisz (artist), Ferdinand Schmalz (author and playwright) and more commissioned by Province of Styria (a state in the southeast of Austria) for the Landeskulturpreisgala made with/in Grand Theft Auto V. Art colective Total Refusal made eight video portrait videos in total. Here's a selection:

Total Refusal, Ferdinand Schmalz portrait, still from digital video, color, sound, 5' 05", 2020 (Austria)

Head to Mullner's website for more.

LINK: Leonhard Müllner

EVENT: VRAL #10_MIKHAIL MAKSIMOV (OCTOBER 30 - NOVEMBER 12 2020)

INFINITE GRAVEYARD

digital video, color, sound, 666'“, 2020 (Russia)

Created by Mikhail Maksimov

VRAL

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

Mikhail Maksimov first encountered videogames at the age of twelve. His first time was with Clive Townsend’s Saboteur! (1985) on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Subsequently, he fell in love with first-person shooters – Doom II in particular – which he played at night on a personal computer installed in a dentist’s office (true story). Later in life, Maksimov turned his fascination for digital gaming into an arena for artistic experimentation. Unlike cinema and contemporary art – he once told a critic – video games are less reliant on curatorial arbitrariness. Moreover, video games can also reach a broader public via alternative channels, e.g. the internet, rather than white cube spaces. Infinite Graveyard is part of Maksimov’s ongoing exploration of gaming mechanics and digital aesthetics. Presented on VRAL as a 666 minutes gameplay video recorded by the artist, Infinite Graveyard is a commentary of the endless cycle of death in an age marked by toxic positive thinking, stultifying gamification, and neoliberal imperatives.

Mikhail Maksimov is an artist and filmmaker whose practice revolves around game engines, 3D graphics, algorithms, and neural networks. Among his most recent (and radical) projects is SAR, Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat! (formerly known as MOMAM, Museum of Modern Art Massacre), a dystopian first-person shooter set in the artworld and inspired by the writing of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway. After graduating in Architecture from the Moscow State Construction University and receiving an MFA from the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, Maksimov took part in several exhibitions and festivals, including the Moscow Modern Art Biennale, Venice Biennale of Architecture, New Horizons International Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival, Manifesta, Kansk Video Festival, the International Festival of Cinematographic Debuts “Spirit of Fire”, Locarno Festival, Hamburg KurzFilmFestival, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, and many more. Maksimov lives and works in Moscow.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: SKAWENNATI, "WORLD RE-BUILDING: ABORIGINAL TERRITORIES IN CYBERSPACE AND THE INITIATIVE FOR INDIGENOUS FUTURES" (NOVEMBER 5, ONLINE)

The History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series at UC Berkeley presents

Skawennati, "World Re-Building: Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures"
Thursday, November 5 | 5:00 — 6:30 PM | Online

Skawennati will present the artwork and ideas of the Indigenously-determined research/creation networks she has helped to found, lead and coordinate.

Skawennati makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. She creates machinima (movies made in virtual environments) as well as still images, textiles and sculpture. Her work has been widely presented in both group exhibitions and solo shows and is included in public and private collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.

Born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati belongs to the Turtle clan. She holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is based. She is Co-Director of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation collective who investigate and create Indigenous virtual environments. Their Skins workshops in Aboriginal Storytelling and Experimental Digital Media are aimed at empowering youth. In 2015 they launched IIF, the Initiative for Indigenous Futures.

LINK: Skawennati

LINK TO EVENT